By Melanie Hess
“They all deserve to be homeless. There are plenty of service providers. You’re a bum––a drug addict. Why don’t you get help?” are common phrases about the homeless that Wayne Walker, Executive Director of the nonprofit organization OurCalling in South Dallas, is tired of hearing. “Honestly, that’s the standard stereotype––A beard, a backpack, and a criminal record,” says Walker.
“In reality,” Walker explains, “most of our homeless friends have nowhere else to go.”
With 67 foster brothers and sister who were at some point placed in his childhood family’s home, Walker learned many of the world’s harsh realities at a very young age.
“I grew up with brothers and sisters who had lived through hell,” he says.
Eventually battling his own addiction and depression, Walker’s life took a swift turn upward when he found his faith during his college years.
When he and his wife moved to Dallas for seminary after college, the long-term plan was to move overseas. However, it wasn’t too long before Walker realized he not only had passion for, but a lot in common with, the individuals living on Dallas’ streets.
“I started going downtown and feeding the homeless 15 years ago,” he recalls. “And it feels like yesterday.”
What started as meals and fellowship with eight-to-10 volunteers nearly two decades ago has grown to a staff of 11 and thousands of volunteers at OurCalling, an organization aiming to serve Dallas’ unsheltered homeless.
“You realize pretty quickly that people need a lot more than food,” Walker says. “You watch people starving, and they get fed, and they’re still starving because their biggest needs are not being met.”
Walker explains that while many organizations in Dallas serve the homeless, very few focus on the unsheltered.
“I would say 80 percent of the homeless population is unsheltered,” he estimated. “And I would say that because I have records, photos, information, and faces of friends that I’ve shaken hands with.”
Not a Shelter, Meeting at the Margins
So what exactly then does OurCalling do, and how does it work?
“We don’t tell anyone no,” Walker says. “We don’t require IDs. We don’t check backgrounds. We care about the individual, not their past mistakes.”
He compares a shelter to a hospital, by explaining that people don’t ever want to go to the hospital, and when they do, the doctors want to fix them so they never have to come back.
Shelters, he explains, function in a similar way.
“Nobody wants to ever have to go to a shelter, but when they do, they want to create this conducive environment so they can heal you, and you don’t have to come back,” he says.
Walker notes that OurCalling’s end goal is entirely different.
“We want them to transform from the person receiving the services to the person that’s giving the services,” he says.
Walker describes a woman who came in as a victim of domestic violence, who was severely abused the previous night. One of OurCalling’s staff members accompanied her to a hospital to help her get stabilized. Prior to turning to the hospital, OurCalling’s staff reached out to each domestic violence center in Dallas, all of which were full.
“One day, we want that woman back here loving on other women who are going through the same thing,” he stresses. “We wouldn’t’t have known the pain she was going through except for some of the women in our discipleship program who have been through similar circumstances (domestic violence, drug addiction, prostitution, etc.) and who are now helping to serve with us. They were able to quickly identify and connect to her.”
But what may serve as a surprise for some, Walker says it’s his love for the homeless that makes him an advocate for not handing out cash.
“When you give money to a homeless guy you’re supporting his addiction. You’re paying for the drugs or the sex,” he explains. “When you see someone getting cash on the street, we find them under a bridge dying of an overdose or we find the girl who has been beat up by her boyfriend because she didn’t earn enough money on the street panhandling.”
Walker stresses that cash does not meet real needs, only felt needs.
“It sounds good,” he concedes, “but you could never guarantee where that money’s going to go. We feed lots of people here every single day. If you were going to go buy a guy a burger, fries and drink for about $6 at McDonald’s, we could take that money and feed almost 10 people because of economies of scale.”
While they are at OurCalling, people are welcome to eat, use a clean restroom, shower, meet with pastors, counselors or chaplains, find a mentor, attend classes, grab a change of clothes once a week, do their laundry, and more.
“We can meet a lot more needs than what you can do at a fast food restaurant,” says Walker.
Unlike a shelter that ‘heals’ you and sends you on your way, we never want to see anyone ever leave our program. We want to see someone transfer from the receiving line to the giving line.”
While he does admit the organization does see a lot of people get off the streets, he stresses that is not the goal.
“Our goal is to see them live a sustainable lifestyle and become a part of a healthy community,” he says. “You take a guy that’s been living on the streets for five years and you put a roof over his head, he is still functionally homeless.”
Walker claims most of the homeless people OurCalling serves are not ready for housing or jobs, explaining the biggest problem most of the people they serve have are relational issues.
“Take a guy who has lost the last 20 jobs. Only a fool should give him job number 21 without trying to figure out why can’t he keep a job,” he says.
Walker explains that OurCalling deals with the more personal, intimate issues for not being able to keep a job: life skills, emotional instability, conflict management, forgiveness, and working on a team.
“In our program, they’re homeless, they come in every day, they clock in like employees with a fingerprint scanner on the wall, go to team meetings, meet with their mentor every week, and attend addiction recovery classes. They want to be a part of bettering themselves and helping the community.”
Resources
Possibly the most well known resource established by OurCalling is one valuable to the entire Dallas community.
“We maintain the largest database in Dallas County on all these service provider––100s of them. We make connections every day. We’ll even have police officers call up and ask where can we send this person.”
It’s a resource directory the organization encourages everyone to carry in their car, and give to homeless individuals they see on the street. Walker notes Dart drivers and officers carries one of these, as do many families, hospital employees, in addition to Dallas public libraries.
“It’s printed on special paper so when the pages get wet the pages don’t stick together and it’s printed in larger fonts because the majority of the population we serve is between 40 and 60,” says Walker.
Free on the Apple App store, OurCalling recently launched an app version of this directory, which allows users to search resources (such as shelters, food pantries, mental health clinics, and more) by location and provides detailed information, including contact information, hours, and more. Additionally, it features access to the meal calendar the organization maintains with all the places to eat every day for free.
It also lets users report homeless campsites and sends the organization GPS coordinates, along with a photo and description. OurCalling has “Search & Rescue” teams that visit thousands of these campsites throughout Dallas County.
A site of remarkable work, OurCalling has received a lot of attention from other urban areas. Walker mentions that the organization has received requests to expand to 15 different cities and build similar programs. However, while he’s willing to share all the resources OurCalling has on how to duplicate their organization, his response regarding leaving is a simple “no.”
“Right now, we don’t want to get any wider,” he stresses. “We want to get deeper.”
