Bread for the City

“Sherita assisted me in getting into the place where I’m established now. When I ended up on the streets of DC, a case manager with the homeless division suggested that I could get specific help at Bread for the City. I was tired of jumping in and out of shelters. Sherita directed me to the Vet Center at Chesapeake House. And even though I didn’t meet all the criteria—I didn’t have 60 days clean—I was able to talk to the people and they were ready to give me a stable, sober environment. Today I have six months clean time and my own home.”

With winter on its way, the “Bread for the City Boutique” is busy getting people into warm clothes. (We gave away almost 150,000 articles of donated clothing last year and are on track to exceed that this year!)

Next week, Bread for the City Grant Writer Ryan Hill will get busy getting out of his clothes.

Ryan is preparing to walk in the Help the Homeless Walkathon on November 20, a fundraiser for which he can choose from one of one of dozens of local organizations that serve homeless individuals. Ryan has selected Bread for the City (of course) as the beneficiary of his walkathon, and we’re excited not just because donations to his personal page will help us do our work; they’ll also result in quite a spectacle. For each donation received in his name, Ryan is volunteering to walk in progressively less clothing. (To an extent — this is a family-friendly event.)

As of this writing, he’ll be sans hat and scarf. We’re only $30 away from getting him to remove a glove. $300 more and he’ll literally give Bread the shirt off his back. We should note that the average temperature for November 20 in Washington, DC is a chilly 47 degrees, and that it will likely be colder when the walk starts at 9:00am.

Ryan’s not the only one walking for Bread for the City. We’re always joined by a rowdy crowd including staff, volunteers, board members, family members and sundry admirers. Speaking of which, you can donate to me here! My parents came last year and had so much fun they signed up months ago for this year’s walk.

If you’d like to sponsor one of our clients to walk (a great way to cross-promote our healthy lifestyle initiatives!) contact Nathan LaBorie at nlaborie@breadforthecity.org. There’s also a “virtual walker” option for those who live far away or who’d prefer to virtually walkathon in the comfort of their own homes. But if you can make it, join us by signing up at the Walkathon site.

This week, in promotion of our Holiday Helpings campaign, the People’s District published five stories told by people from Bread for the City’s community. Today’s is a familiar voice to this blog: Bread for the City community resources coordinator and all-around superstar Sherita Evans. Read Sherita’s story below:

“I think that we did our children a great disservice when we took the neighbor out of neighborhood. Neighborhood should mean something. To me, it means that we take care of each other. I think that the overwhelming needs in places like SE are why our communities have broken down. We all want to be good people and give back, but what happens when all of your kids and grandkids are in need. Then, your nieces and nephews are in need, too. And, then there is your neighbor in need. All of the need becomes overwhelming and you just focus on yourself.

“Working for Bread, I have come to learn that the same thing that broke down the neighborhood is what can bring us back together. We are all in need, but we can learn to help each other and help ourselves block-by-block. We know that problems in this city are never limited to just one block. One block’s problems can spread to another block and then another, and soon the whole city feels it. People need to recognize that, or at least think about how poverty in my neighborhood in SE impacts those who live uptown.

“I live in this community and see people I went to school with at the supermarket not able to pay for their groceries. I used to work in telecommunications for seven years and had to write-up my employees for work issues that turned out to be the result of lack of affordable child care or health care. Come on, these are basic human rights. No one should be allowed to starve or get in trouble at work because they are too poor to have someone take care of their kids.

“I wanted to work to change these things, so I came to Bread as a volunteer and now work in a dual role as the intake and community resources coordinator. When people come in, I sit with them and tell them about the resources available to them. I help them get social services. I tell them that while Whole Foods or Harris Teeter may not advertise accepting food stamps, you can still go there and shop like everyone else.

“The other part of what I do is going out into the community to let people know about Bread. You would be surprised how many people I meet who think that all we do is literally give bread out to the city. Other people may think that we only do legal work in NW. I tell them that we pride ourselves on being a non-traditional service provider across this city.

“Working here, I see how the lines of poverty have changed. It is no longer only the traditional African-American family coming in for help. Now, I see a real diversity of people coming through our doors. Everyone is in need of help. Everyone has a cousin or aunt or grandma in need. I also deal with a lot of veterans. I am not talking about Vietnam or Korea, but Iraq. If you are an E Class 1, your pay was never meant to support you and a family of four. I work to help those families get services.

“I have had a lot of jobs, but this is the only one that gives me instant gratification. You know that job that everyone seeks out of college, the one where you are going to make a difference and make an imprint in the world, I get to do that every day. A mother will come in and say, ‘I just paid my rent and I can’t feed my children. How am I going to feed my babies?’ If I can help her with food, she will be able to give her children the best part of her. It is a wonderful feeling to be a little part of that.

“So, if we really want to end this, let’s be neighborly again all of the time. Let’s not just wait for the holidays to help. I want someone to be neighborly in March when all of the Holiday Helpings are long gone. If you don’t have money, teach someone a skill or lead by example. Stop reading about the statistics in the Washington Post and hearing what they say in City Council and come and do something about it.”

Many thanks to People’s District for this great series!. Celebrate this holiday season with us by making a gift to Holiday Helpings today! Just $29 will provide a healthful, plentiful holiday meal to a family of four.

This week, in promotion of our Holiday Helpings campaign, the People’s District is publishing five stories told by people from Bread for the City’s community.

Check out yesterday’s feature of our Executive Director, George A. Jones.

In my conversations with people trying to make ends meet with public benefits like Food Stamps and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), I often hear the old saying, “One step forward and two steps back.” There are a lot of reasons why using the safety net can feel that way. One is that people spend time in transit between different service providers, only to wait in long lines for assistance, as you saw in our post last week about utility assistance. Another comes from eligibility requirements that suddenly remove people from programs as their income increases. Imagine making another 50 cents an hour and suddenly losing your health insurance and having to pay out of pocket. There are also programs that aren’t meeting the goals and needs of participants.

This month, the City Council is entertaining two bills that would reform the District’s TANF program. TANF is the primary safety net for single mothers who have exhausted all other means of support. It can also be a gateway to education, job training, affordable child care, substance abuse treatment, and health care. One of the two bills would take our city a step forward, and one would take us way, way back — to 1996, the year of Welfare Reform.

The TANF Educational Opportunities and Accountability Act of 2010, introduced by Councilmembers Tommy Wells (Ward 6) and Michael Brown (At-Large), would accomplish a few things we’ve blogged about here at Beyond Bread:
- Expand the range of job training and education services that TANF recipients can utilize,
- Assess each recipient’s barriers to work, interests, and goals; and make referrals to both support services and meaningful job training and education opportunities, and
- Require DC’s Income Maintenance Administration to track both referrals to the above programs and outcome measures such as employment and income at 12 months after leaving TANF.

These changes would put TANF recipients on the right path to meeting their goals for employment.

And here’s how we would backslide: the District of Columbia Public Assistance Amendment Act, introduced by Councilmembers Marion Barry (Ward and Yvette Alexander (Ward 7). If passed, this legislation would limit TANF recipients to 60 months (5 years) of TANF benefits. Even worse, the current language would make families ineligible for all public benefits – no Medicaid, no child care, no food stamps, no homeless shelter.

Research has shown that these harsh tactics are not effective at encouraging work. They are likely to result in higher rates of child poverty, with many families disconnected from any form of support. With our progressive programs and policies, DC has mostly bucked the national trend that’s reduced the number of eligible families served by TANF from 84 to 40%. That’s right: Nationally, sixty percent of families in deep poverty who could be on the program are not.

Our city has chosen not to go down this path for good reason. These harmful policies harm families, take dollars out of the local economy, and create costs in other parts
of the city’s budget such as child welfare, homeless services, and education.

The timing of this bill is disturbing. It couldn’t come at a worse time. Job opportunities have yet to rebound from the recession and the city is on the cusp of meaningful reforms.

We encourage Councilmembers Alexander and Barry to take the long view on helping their constituents. What programs and policies can help people be ready to respond to the return of the recession, poised to take advantage of sustainable jobs connected to a career path? And, in the meantime while they are still on the program, what supports do they need to maintain their housing and provide for their children?

Let’s consider how we can invest in these families, so our whole city can take steps forward together.

Want to get involved?
- Email Monica Bell (mbell@legalaiddc.org) to sign your organization on to this letter.
- Contact your Councilmembers to let them know your views on these two pieces of legislation. Tell them: “Vote yes on Bill 18-1007 and no on Bill 18-1061.”
- Testify at the hearing on the Barry/Alexander bill — November 15 at 11:00 a.m. at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Email Vivian McCarter (vmccarter@dccouncil.us) to sign up to testify.

This is the second installment in a weeklong series by one of our favorite blogs, the People’s District, an oral history project featuring the people of Washington DC. This week, the People’s District is publishing five stories of people from Bread for the City’s community, in promotion of our Holiday Helpings campaign. Many thanks to Danny Harris for this series.

Today’s story comes from our Dr. Randi!

“For me, medicine has always been a balance between helping people stay healthy and helping others manage chronic disease. I feel lucky that I have the education, skills and knowledge, and I have always wanted to help people who didn’t have those opportunities. After I did my training at Ohio State and my residency at Northwestern, I followed my husband to D.C. and did a fellowship at George Washington. I always knew that I wanted to be at a community clinic, and found Bread for the City through a woman named Eve Bargmann at GW. She brought residents here once a week and convinced me to come along one day. When I came with her, I realized that this was exactly the kind of place I wanted to work at.

“At that time, the city had a hiring freeze, so I wasn’t sure that working in a community clinic was even an option after my fellowship. While there was so much need, no one had any money and these places were struggling. When I finished my fellowship at GW, I asked the staff at Bread where should I apply for work. I knew they had a shoestring budget and probably couldn’t hire me, but thought they might have some ideas. Instead, they asked me how much I would need to make and if I could work part-time. This was back in 1991.

“One of my favorite stories that I like to tell is that they wanted me to make a two year commitment when I first took the job. My whole life had been committed between school, medical school, residency, and fellowship. I didn’t want any more commitment because I didn’t really like D.C. and wanted to be free to leave when I wanted. Well, as you can see, 19 years later, I am still here, and I still love what I do.

“Working here has made me a part of this community. I love walking here from the subway and seeing all of my clients on the street. I think that it is very meaningful to people that I am still here after 19 years and I didn’t give up on them. People constantly say to me, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that you are still here!’ For me, I stay because I love seeing patients. The ability to help people everyday makes all of this worthwhile to me. And working with the students and volunteers helps them put a face on poverty and to the issues that they read about every day.

“The health care that I do here involves a lot of time educating patients on their medical and nutritional choices in a non-judgmental way. It is up to the patient whether they take medicine or not, or if they eat healthy or not, but I want to be supportive and make sure that people have the information they need to make their own decisions. Many people here eat the foods that are easily available, even if it is unhealthy. I also think there is an eating disorder that comes with the stress of poverty, feeding your emotions. When people are stressed and feel like nothing is going their way, they look to things they can control, like eating. You may be poor, but you can still eat a cheeseburger and french fries when you want. Because of these dietary issues, I see lots of cases of depression, hypertension, arthritis, and diabetes with my clients.

“Some of my clients are very concrete. You will tell a diabetic that they should not be eating waffles with syrup and butter every morning. They will come back and say, ‘I didn’t have waffles today because I switched to pancakes with syrup and butter.’ Many of them don’t make the connection that they are the same thing. I think that people are eager to learn though, but making behavior changes remains difficult, especially if people grew up with poor eating habits.

“At Bread for the City, we have been working to make proper nutrition an important part of our work. Until a few years ago, we would host food drives and give out anything that people gave us. Even if we received donations of candy and cookies, we would use that to supplement the food bags. After some time and a lot of conversation, we realized that we needed to model good behavior and pass out food that was healthy and made sense. We now have a nutrition consultant on staff to help advise the food program, and are giving out fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms. While we have made progress in terms of our work and the food we pass out, it is always amazing to me how much work remains to be done.”

Support that work by making a gift to Holiday Helpings today! Just $29 will provide a healthful, plentiful holiday meal to a family of four.

We’re pleased to announce that one of our favorite blogs, the People’s District, is hosting a week-long special series in promotion of our Holiday Helpings campaign. People’s District will feature five stories on the people affected by and fighting against hunger and poverty in D.C.

Today’s story comes from Ruby, one of our clients. Thanks for sharing, Ruby!

“My parents were share croppers in South Carolina. They moved us up to D.C. when I was just a child to find a better life. Thing is that when we all got up here, my Momma got a job cleaning houses in New York. My grandmother raised me over by where the Convention Center is now, and my Momma would come home on holidays. It wasn’t easy, but I appreciate the sacrifice that she made for me.

“Back then, life was good and easy, you know what I am saying. Going to the movies wasn’t nothing but nine cents and I would collect soda bottles to have enough money to see the films. I remember when the movies went up to ten cents and I was all mad because it was too darn expensive. That will tell you how old I am, even though you probably think that I am still young and beautiful.

“When I had to start working, I took a job at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and stayed until I retired on September 30, 1993. I did everything there, and I mean everything. I was an information receptionist, so I was the first person you saw in the morning and the last person you saw at night. I moved to medical maintenance, and then left there to work in the red building where they do the experiments with the animals. You know them animal people still get upset when I tell them what I did, but we needed the animals to help cure diseases. I saw a lot of people get help because of those animals.

“After I retired, I was looking forward to sitting back and enjoying life with my babies and grandbabies. But, my aunt got sick, so I left D.C and moved to Massachusetts to take care of her. When I came back in 1995, things were hard on me because I had to take care of all of my grandbabies, too. I had three kids, but one of them passed in 2004. For a lot of reasons, I had to take care of all of their kids. I did it because I had to, but it was supposed to be my retirement. I am now raising my last granbaby, and then I hope I can relax because I am 68 and tired.

“When I realized that I needed help feeding all of these extra mouths, I first came to Bread for the City in 1995. I needed food and milk for the kids and quilts in the winter time and didn’t know where else to go. On my small pension, I couldn’t afford to buy stuff that could support all of us. Because I was from the neighborhood, I knew about Bread. I wasn’t ashamed or nothing to ask for help because when it is about your babies, ain’t no one who is too proud to beg to put food on the table. When I was working, I never had to go with no food, so it scared me to see myself and my babies not having enough to eat.

“I thank Bread for helping me to improve my situation. They gave me the things that I needed when my kids were cold and hungry. I tell you, it’s a blessing. Because I see how they helped me, I try and help others. I volunteer at the National Capital Area Food Bank, and help at my church. See, I don’t only feed my family, but I try and feed many, many families with the assistance I receive. With my holiday helpings, I am going to make a big meal and share it with the other families in need. You best believe that.”

You can help us be there for thousands of families like Ruby’s. Give today to Holiday Helpings. Just $29 provides for a family of four. Make a donation here, and to learn more about operating a food or cash drive in your workplace or community group, contact Nathan LaBorie at nlaborie@breadforthecity.org or 202.386.7611.

Meanwhile, check back with the People’s District each day this week!

One rainy, cold Thursday morning this October, a young man came into our Northwest Center during our walk-in hours, a utility notice in hand. It stated that his power would be cut off that evening if he was not able to pay. This man had already called or visited all of the other agencies that receive funding to provide utility assistance. He ended up in front of me, soaked and desperate for help.

Most people in his situation get assistance through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), designed to both assist individuals with a shut-off notice and help low-income people budget for their utility costs throughout the coldest months.

On September 3, the District Department of the Environment’s Energy Office hosted a Joint Utility Discount Day at the Convention Center. Lines wrapped around the block with people hoping to finally receive energy assistance. In total, 8,000 D.C. residents signed up.

And what if you did not apply for energy assistance on September 3rd? The Energy Office announced that it would open on November 1st for emergency walk-ins. However, on November 1, Fox 5 reported that “hundreds” of people stood outside the Energy Office.

In this case, you could only get assistance if you had a disconnection notice in hand. The District Department of the Environment’s website tells people who need assistance and are not currently facing service disconnection to call 311, the city-wide call center, for an assistance appointment.

As of today, the next available appointment is in April. April is a long and dreary winter away from today.

The Social Services Department here at Bread for the City is consistently returning phone calls and meeting with clients that are on the verge of being disconnected, with very few resources to protect them and their family from living without utilities this winter. We see this as a most pressing issue. In our Northwest Center, my colleagues and I fielded 126 phone calls this September and October, before the most high-cost winter months. This is an increase of 34% since last year.

The city’s budget for energy assistance in fiscal year 2011 (which just started October 1) is $17 million in local and federal funds — well below the pre-recession fiscal year 2008 level of $21.9 million. Back then, LIHEAP helped subsidize exorbitant energy expenses, and acted almost as a form of rent supplement. Now, the program is only helping people who are already under threat of disconnection — and even those people have little help of preventing a shut-off unless they can bargain with the utility companies to hold off until April.

The young man I met with was incredibly angry at the wild goose chase he had been sent on in search of energy assistance. The transportation cost alone to pay for such a seemingly futile journey would make that week’s budget particularly tight. Thousands of people like him face the very real possibility that they will not be able to pay their energy bill every month, which in turn makes it nearly impossible to focus on more long-term goals. The only option this young man had was to return home to a very dark and cold apartment.

Big thanks to Kate Sims for authoring this post.

Let’s take a break from our exciting Holiday Helpings campaign, and have a sneak peak next door at the expanded Northwest Center. It’s scheduled to be open by the end of the month!

Check out this video tour with our Executive Director, George Jones, below:

Here’s a rendering of the front facade of the center:

We look forward to the day (soon!) where we can use an actual image instead of a graphic! In the meantime, see some more photos of the expansion in progress here in our Flickr feed.

On September 23rd, Bread for the City started implementing our Client Choice model in our Northwest Food Pantry, based on its great success in our Southeast Center.

I’m pleased to report that Northwest client choice is running smoothly, thanks to the efforts of staff and volunteers and the willingness of clients to try something new. Gone, now, are the days of prepackaged grocery bags, repetitive meals and wasted food! Instead, our pantry has a spiffy, spacious new layout that’s more like a grocery store than a warehouse.

It’s a pretty major change that pivots away from the way our food pantry has worked for decades—and it was undertaken gradually, methodically, and to widespread satisfaction. Feedback tells us that this new system is favored over our old system by clients, volunteers, and staff!

All part of the plan. Specifically, the plan for Quality Improvement. Quality Improvement (QI) is a specific organizational development model that we’ve adopted at Bread for the City in order to assess and improve our own services. The basic idea of QI is that we can improve our services by making slight changes, tracking measurable data that reveals the effect of that small change, and then continuing to tweak and assess accordingly.

For example, in the food pantry, we’ve been tracking “cycle time”, or how long it takes one client to enter the pantry, get processed in our computer system, and go through the pantry to pick out their food. Cycle time before client choice would hover between 4 and 5 minutes.

As you can see in the graph below, our “cycle times” in the the Southeast food pantry shot up when we first implemented Client Choice, but they consistently improved thereafter, to the point where it was just as fast as it was before Client Choice — even faster!

We had a few hiccups that taught us useful information, like that the cycle time depends heavily on volunteers. Using the QI method, we determined that if we don’t have enough volunteers on any given day, the cycle time shoots up (like it did in early April) — but as our volunteers learn the new system over time, cycle time gradually decreases.

Once our staff and volunteers knew the best ways to run the system, it was easy for them to help transfer the model to our Northwest center. We’ve been running client choice in NW for almost a month, and cycle time started off at and has hovered around 5 minutes.

This is just one of the QI initiatives that Bread for the City has taken on. We’ve also used QI to improve both staff and client use of our phone system, wait-time for our medical clinic patients, and ways that our staff shares information. (Special shout-out here goes to BFC’s Special Projects Manager Julia Eddy, our Super QI Enfabulousinator.)

Bread for the City: good work is good, better work is even better!