By Alex HernandezIt was Tuesday night and other men chatted or ate inside the makeshift shelter at a church gymnasium on the West Side. Mike Bryant sat at a table with a sketch pad and colored pencils.
“I’m painting at Douglass Park Field house,” said Bryant, a homeless man who goes to the shelter at Walls Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, at 200 S. Sacramento Blvd.
Bryant had cut out a magazine ad of a woman on a beach, which was held to his sketch pad with a paper clip as he recreated the ad freehand, talking all the while.
“I read a quote by Emil Zola,” said Bryant while he was still working. “It’s okay to have the gift, but the gift is nothing if you don’t put work into it.”
That sentiment is why Bryant and the other men, according to many here, are at Walls.They not only want to seek shelter for the night, but to also be able someday to leave the streets.
“Many of them are working homeless,” said the Reverend David L. Bryant Jr. (not related), who runs the church and its programs geared towards the homeless.
Bryant’s office overlooks the church gymnasium that serves as the homeless men’s home for the night. He sat recently, hunched over the church’s budget for groceries, worried about the rising cost of food amid a continuing slumping economy.
“They do work jobs but are not able, based upon the number of problems in their lives, to have adequate housing,” said Bryant. “It comes as a result of many different areas. It’s a complex problem; there is not an easy solution to it.”
And reaching solutions for it has become harder as the economy falls deeper into a recession. According to the U.S. Department of Labor the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent this past February. While this has created a difficult job market for most people, it has created a near impenetrable fortress for the homeless.
According to Bryant, many of the men who are at the shelter want nothing more than to work again. Many of them go out and look for jobs. Often, the biggest challenge holding the majority of them back is that they have no permanent residence, bank account, or even identification. And even many of those who do have had run-ins with the law that hold them from getting jobs.
“I have a heart for community,” said Bryant. “I have a heart for people and trying to make a difference in the quality of life of people on all different levels.”
Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Bryant said he has nearly always been involved with community activities. With an undergraduate degree in social work, he says he brings a social-conscience mission to his ministry.
After serving 14 years as a reverend for a parish in Kansas City, the Methodist Episcopal Church decided to assign Bryant, he said, to Walls in Chicago because of the outreach ministry that he had been practicing. They felt he needed to continue his work in Chicago because of where Walls is located—in the heart of one of the city’s poorest, most troubled communities—and in terms of the church’s mission of outreach to grow. So in 2006, Bryant pack his bags and set up shop at Walls in Chicago.
“Upon my arrival here, I was saddened to see some of the tremendous challenges that this community is facing right now,” said Bryant.
“We’re on the West Side of Chicago and we’re partially located in the East Garfield Area, which is one of the high unmet hunger areas in Illinois,” said Bryant. “We have a high number of children whose parents have been or are currently incarcerated in the country.”
Since 1999, Walls Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church has provided overnight shelter for the homeless in the area, using the church’s gymnasium area, which it transforms into an overnight shelter in the evening for approximately 65 men, primarily for ages 18 and over.
In addition to providing a hot meal, showers, and a cot for the night, Walls also is involved in case management to help rehabilitate its patrons into society. This involves Walls and its volunteers helping the homeless men find employment, housing and education.
“Prior to my coming here, many programs were already in motion,” said Bryant. “We’ve been expanding on it nurturing it of course. We have now haircuts that are offered throughout the month so they can feel good about themselves and prepare for interviews.”
According to Bryant, in order to fulfill his mission of outreach, Walls can’t just house its homeless population and give them shelter from the elements. That’s just the number one on the list.
“Number two is our partnership with the Greater Food Depository,” which supplies area food pantries and organizations with food, said Bryant, “because feeding 65 guys a night is a great great challenge.”
But because of the economy, many people who would normally donate food are tightening their belt, and cupboards at food depositories are not as full as they once were.
“It takes a lot more to do what we used to do,” said Bryant.
Regardless of the challenges, Bryant has continued to expand the outreach of Walls through what the shelter’s Interim Housing and Empowerment Program. The homeless men that qualify for the program are given assistance in getting back to mainstream society.
That program works to identify four different areas that we try to help the participant in. The first is life skills. Many of the homeless men do not have checking accounts and the program tries to help them get into the habit of saving their money by opening up a checking account and depositing it.
Often, many of the men don’t have such accounts because, being without ID, banks refuse them. Another aspect of the program at Wills addresses this issue by helping homeless men with the paperwork required to get a state ID.
It also offers seminars and counseling for the men where they can talk about the choices that they’ve made and where the aim is to help raise their self-esteem, encourage group interaction and work on personal interaction skills.
“We try to provide some counseling and help them understand where they went wrong and then what they need to do to stay above board to move forward,” said Bryant.
Part of helping them moving forward is also to help them improve their education.
“Many of the men are high school dropouts,” said Bryant. “Many are illiterate or have had struggles with education. So we try to help them get their G.E.D., high school diploma, vocational training, that way they have job readiness in their resume.”
Yet, even with all of this assistance, many employers often are apparently wary of hiring these men. Seeking to be able to provide an economic lifeline, Walls has recently purchased franchising rights with Jani-King, a national commercial cleaning company. Men who go to the shelter and are in the program will be able to use as a stepping stone to other jobs and a life off the streets.
“Many of them have a desire to work,” said Bryant. “The most important thing is having a place to work.”
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