Pass it on: 211 is call away for needy
From The Detroit News
DETROIT -- Bill Sullivan is learning a thing or two about the homeless in southeastern Michigan, and he's doing it by talking to them.
They aren't just roaming the streets of downtown Detroit, an occasionally unsettling sight in a cleaner and redeveloping downtown. He's talked with them in Royal Oak and Mount Clemens, too, corroborating United Way for Southeastern Michigan data that there's more poor in the tri-county suburbs (270,000) than in the city of Detroit (261,000).
They aren't all drunks and drug addicts, he's found in the more than 60 interviews, so much as individuals with their own hard-luck stories and sometimes their own demons. No permanent address. No phone. No transportation to get to work, if they can get a job.
As Michigan struggles with the collateral damage of its wrenching economic transformation, calls for more cash inevitably will rise -- from nonprofits, from local governments and state politicians. But Sullivan and his team are finding that the help is already there, and the trick is matching the services to the needy.
Bruce: A success story
There's Roderick, who told us Tuesday he's lived on Detroit's streets for 35 of his 44 years. There are Monica and Angelo, who live in a tent behind the UAW-Ford National Training Center. He's disabled, has seizures and can't work; she wants to, but has trouble finding any.
There's Bruce, who'd spent two homeless years in Macomb County until he met Sullivan, operations manager of the United Way's 211 center, a 14-month-old social service information center. Bruce used the two quarters Sullivan handed him with a brochure, dialed 211 and within two days he had a voucher for low-income housing and soon landed a job.
Bruce is, so far, a Sullivan success story.
"There are resources out there," Sullivan told me during our break from walking the frigid streets, along with United Way President Michael Brennan. "But we're doing a really poor job of helping the community know about the resources."
That's where the United Way's 211 system, begun in December 2005, can help. Essentially a 24-7, 365-day social service help line, 211 is a vast database of services that can do everything from help a caller with her gas bill to help a homeless guy find a home.
50 cents, $5 and 211
In its first 12 months, the tri-county 211 system fielded 100,000 calls, and this year its call volume is growing anywhere from 15 percent to 30 percent per month. Yet only 5 percent of the potential market in southeast Michigan, Brennan says, is aware of 211.
That needs to change. Michigan's economy is likely to get worse before it gets better, as thousands leave their jobs under a slew of buyouts, as auto production ebbs to meet demand, as foreclosures and personal bankruptcies rise.
One answer: Bill Sullivan's mobile 211. Stuffed into the back pocket of his blue jeans are 211 brochures wrapped with $5 bills and two quarters taped to each one, a quid-pro-quo to folks on the street who don't want to be.
If the measure of a community's character is how it treats its less fortunate, Sullivan and the folks at 211 are one yardstick that should be used, and often.
Daniel Howes' column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106, dchowes@detnews.com or his blog at http://info.detnews.com/danielhowesblog.
[Source]
DETROIT -- Bill Sullivan is learning a thing or two about the homeless in southeastern Michigan, and he's doing it by talking to them.
They aren't just roaming the streets of downtown Detroit, an occasionally unsettling sight in a cleaner and redeveloping downtown. He's talked with them in Royal Oak and Mount Clemens, too, corroborating United Way for Southeastern Michigan data that there's more poor in the tri-county suburbs (270,000) than in the city of Detroit (261,000).
They aren't all drunks and drug addicts, he's found in the more than 60 interviews, so much as individuals with their own hard-luck stories and sometimes their own demons. No permanent address. No phone. No transportation to get to work, if they can get a job.
As Michigan struggles with the collateral damage of its wrenching economic transformation, calls for more cash inevitably will rise -- from nonprofits, from local governments and state politicians. But Sullivan and his team are finding that the help is already there, and the trick is matching the services to the needy.
Bruce: A success story
There's Roderick, who told us Tuesday he's lived on Detroit's streets for 35 of his 44 years. There are Monica and Angelo, who live in a tent behind the UAW-Ford National Training Center. He's disabled, has seizures and can't work; she wants to, but has trouble finding any.
There's Bruce, who'd spent two homeless years in Macomb County until he met Sullivan, operations manager of the United Way's 211 center, a 14-month-old social service information center. Bruce used the two quarters Sullivan handed him with a brochure, dialed 211 and within two days he had a voucher for low-income housing and soon landed a job.
Bruce is, so far, a Sullivan success story.
"There are resources out there," Sullivan told me during our break from walking the frigid streets, along with United Way President Michael Brennan. "But we're doing a really poor job of helping the community know about the resources."
That's where the United Way's 211 system, begun in December 2005, can help. Essentially a 24-7, 365-day social service help line, 211 is a vast database of services that can do everything from help a caller with her gas bill to help a homeless guy find a home.
50 cents, $5 and 211
In its first 12 months, the tri-county 211 system fielded 100,000 calls, and this year its call volume is growing anywhere from 15 percent to 30 percent per month. Yet only 5 percent of the potential market in southeast Michigan, Brennan says, is aware of 211.
That needs to change. Michigan's economy is likely to get worse before it gets better, as thousands leave their jobs under a slew of buyouts, as auto production ebbs to meet demand, as foreclosures and personal bankruptcies rise.
One answer: Bill Sullivan's mobile 211. Stuffed into the back pocket of his blue jeans are 211 brochures wrapped with $5 bills and two quarters taped to each one, a quid-pro-quo to folks on the street who don't want to be.
If the measure of a community's character is how it treats its less fortunate, Sullivan and the folks at 211 are one yardstick that should be used, and often.
Daniel Howes' column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106, dchowes@detnews.com or his blog at http://info.detnews.com/danielhowesblog.
[Source]
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