Editor’s note: On Monday, August 23 we ran a piece about homeless shelters charging their guests fees to stay in their shelters. Andy Bales, the CEO of Union Rescue Mission (URM) in Los Angeles, CA recently announced URM would charge some shelter residents a fee. Andy has written a two-part series for Poverty Insights explaining URM’s reasons for moving to a fee-based model for some guests.

I first became aware of the idea to allow guests to participate in their eventual transition out of homelessness by paying a proportion of the cost of their program when I walked into the Door of Faith mission in Des Moines, Iowa, over twenty-four years ago.

The Door of Faith was an interesting place, because it had been established by a man, George Holloway, who had himself experienced homelessness for thirty-seven years.  George did not like what he had experienced, so he established a mission that welcomed men, fed them extremely well, helped them avoid addictions, expected and enforced sobriety, allowed them to stay in all day or rest on their bunks when they were not working, and required them to either work or utilize their income to pay a portion of their own way.

When George first started Door of Faith they charged their guest’s $6.00 a day because he believed men would feel better about themselves if they paid their own way and carried their own weight.

By charging their guests, Door of Faith created a good working model of a rescue mission. One-third of Door of Faith’s operating revenue came from churches, one-third came from individual donors, and one-third came from the men themselves, contributing to their own recovery.

Everything I learned about running a mission came from George Holloway, a man with only a third grade education, and his successor, Chaplain EE Peters, who taught me how to love someone out of homelessness.  My friend and mentor, John Perkins, the grandfather of Christian Community Development, also has reaffirmed to me that people feel better about themselves when they can pay even a portion of their own way and help themselves.

The only good additions that I made to the Door of Faith philosophy were to invite people to chapel rather than requiring chapel attendance, and to gradually increase the fee from $6.00 the first month, to $7.00 the second month, and $8.00 in the third and final months to gently encourage the men to move on to their own apartments as they became ready.

Skepticism and Realism

I brought this philosophy with me to Union Rescue Mission, but when I mentioned charging guests, or allowing them to invest a portion of their income to empower their recovery, I was met with some skepticism, as it was a new way of thinking.

Knowing the perils of bringing too many changes too quickly, I dropped the subject for a few years.  However, during a recent staff town hall meeting, the idea came up again.  A front lines staff person, concerned about long time guests who had a substantial income that they were frivolously spending while residing at URM for free, asked, “Why can’t we ask guests with a substantial income to participate by a paying portion of the cost to reside here?”

I quickly shared with them that I had thought of that before, and that we would explore it.  Understand this question comes from a staff person, who is not highly paid, who during this recession, has along with the rest of us, had their pay cut twice by 5%, is no longer receiving a match on their 401K, and is contributing a larger portion towards their health care benefits.

Remarkably, even with all of this, about 65% of our staff also donates some of their earnings toward the operations of Union Rescue Mission. They not only give their time, talents, and energy, but some of their own income towards this work and the people they love.  Why wouldn’t we explore allowing guests with substantial incomes to participate in their own recovery?

So we explored the possibility over a number of months, I even discussed the idea openly on my blog. In my next post on this subject, I will provide insight into how this policy looks at URM and how our guests have benefited.

Photo credit: Eliya