I pulled some interesting statistics off of the association of gospel resuce missions ( www.agrm.org ) website, and here are some facts (in a year's time):
· Served 33 million meals (the approximate population of California).
· Distributed more than 24 million pieces of clothing.
· Provided 12 million nights of lodging.
· Graduated more than 12,000 homeless men and women into productive living.
· Provided more than 155,000 medical and dental services for the poor.
· Provided more than 210,000 families with 735,000 items of furniture.
· Provided services and residential care to more than 40,000 homeless mentally ill.
· Conducted more than 720,000 counseling sessions.
· Welcomed 220,000 volunteers.
Rescue missions have been on the scene since 1826, and have provided shelter and food; in essence, little more than a bandaid for those living in poverty. They also break up families, requiring men to stay in separate facilities from women and children, despite the fact that families are the largest growing portion of the homeless population. They also operate on a "faith based" perspective, an outlook that recipients of aid find patently offensive at times (it leads one to wonder if they're doing it because they truly care about homelessness or because they feel they're scoring points with God).
AGRM's site actually acknowledges that their approach needs refinement, as they have this to say about it:
In 1994, Baum and Burns published their little blockbuster book, A Nation in Denial: The Truth About Homelessness, (a compilation of 107 different studies) and concluded that 85 percent of all street people are so addicted or damaged that only 15 percent can be reached by traditional "soup, soap and salvation" strategies of shelter and transitional hospitality.
Much more will be required.
The problem that many of these missions face is that they provide short term solutions, rather than long term approaches. They fill the stomachs of the homeless with food, but they fail to fill their hearts with hope. A better approach to poverty, in my opinion, is one that provides one with a road map of how to escape the trap of poverty.
Respectfully submitted,
Gideon MacLeish