City Mission: Offering food, shelter, path to self-sufficiency

Over 120,000 meals and over 35,000 overnight stays were provided in the past year to Hancock County's neediest people by City Mission of Findlay. While providing meals and shelter is a main thrust of the homeless shelter, its ultimate goal is to help people become self-sufficient when possible, said Executive Director Kathryn Bausman. In fact, a recent study found that over 74% of people in a homeless shelter can, if given the right opportunities, become self-sufficient, employed and paying rent within a year, Bausman said. City Mission's guests may come with addictions, mental health issues and other complicating factors, and the nonprofit has no team of psychologists, psychiatrists, case workers, counselors or life coaches. Instead, it has what it calls advocates, who help guests identify what brought them to City Mission. Those advocates then put City Mission guests in contact with community agencies and resources for counseling, transportation and mental health services. "What we really do is try to get people to where they can utilize all of the services that are available to them" in the community, Bausman said. But first, advocates build relationships with the guests. "People aren't homeless because they don't have a house or money. People are homeless because of a lack of relationship," she said. "Everything I have can be taken from me tomorrow: my home destroyed and my bank accounts, my identity stolen, and I wouldn't be homeless. Why? Because I have healthy and strong relationships." Advocates build honest, healthy relationships with City Mission guests. Sometimes it takes a while for people to identify their issues or obstacles. So, advocates help them through conversation and building their trust, asking them if they might be willing to be evaluated for a mental health or addiction issue. "If we can get people to move past other people taking responsibility for their lives and they start taking responsibility, they start embracing the hope that they can have a better life," Bausman said. "Well, then it's going to be continuous. I don't want to be giving a warm bed and a bowl of soup to the same people in five years. That's not my goal. I want to help them identify what they need to do in order to move past that." City Mission also offers a discipleship program for Christian and spiritual growth, which includes classes, counseling, time in chapel and community service. "It's a pretty rigorous program," Bausman said. The discipleship program lasts for three to six months, but within 30 days of starting the program, the City Mission guest begins the work readiness program. But neither discipleship nor work readiness is forced on City Mission guests. When someone comes to the Mission, they can sleep and rest there, eat meals and do laundry. They have seven days to decide whether they want to go into one of the other programs or to leave. City Mission has 118 beds to house its guests. In addition, during the winter, the shelter puts out cots in the chapel/classroom area each night, giving an additional 30 to 50 people a warm place to sleep. The next morning, they get coffee and breakfast. The Mission serves about 400 meals per day, most in its dining room for those staying at the shelter. To reach out to others in the community, the Mission cut a hole in an exterior wall and created a walk-up window where people pick up hot meals twice a day. When the walk-up window was first opened in the pandemic, it served about 30 meals a day. Now, 100-150 meals per day are served through the window, Bausman said. "I really believe a lot of that is because with COVID — prices going up, bread going up, gas going up — people are making it, they're working, but sometimes they have to make a decision whether or not they are going to eat or pay the light bill," she said. "So this is a way that we can say, 'Come get food for the entire family, put it on the table and spend your money where you need to spend your money.'" Wilin: 419-427-8413