2011 Holiday Message

Here at the Torres Community Shelter, we are starting to be impacted by the holiday season. This time of year for us is intense and frenzied, exhilarating, heart-warming, and sometimes heart-breaking all at the same time. Due to weather, our numbers will most likely be up until the spring, long after the annual focus on issues related to homelessness begins to traditionally fade away each year. When you provide a meal, a shower, a bed and case management services for up to 120 people per night who are all in crisis situations, and when it also happens to be the cold, wet, busy holiday season, it can be pretty intense! Here’s why…

a) The holiday season is very busy as the number of people we serve every night goes up because of the rains and the cold. Last year at this time there were over 100 people here at the Shelter on many nights, and we expect more people to stay with us this winter. As you can imagine, breaking records isn’t always good news when you are running an emergency homeless shelter. This year has turned out to be our fourth record-breaking year in a row, as we accomplished the following:

• Set a new record for the total number of people we served.
• Set a new record for the total number of beds and meals we provided.
• Set a new record for the number of people we served in one night.
• Set a new record for the number of families that stayed with us.
• Set new records for both the number of children at the Shelter at one time, and the total number of children we served in a single year.

Having so many guests at the Shelter takes an emotional and physical toll on our staff. Of course, we’re happy to be here for people who need our services, but I’m looking forward to when the economy eventually improves and we see a decline in the number of people needing our services.

b) The holiday season is both heart-warming and heart-breaking as the number of families and children we serve goes up because of the holidays. Many families, especially families that have never been homeless before, are hesitant to come into a shelter because the parents are concerned about exposing their children to a shelter environment. Right now they might be doubling up in someone else’s house or sleeping in their car. As the stress and chaos of the season sets in, some of the families doubling up with others will be asked to leave, and these families will need to come stay with us. For those that have been living in their cars, when the rains and cold come, many will decide that they have to give the Shelter a chance, despite their concerns about going to a homeless shelter. Added to all of this, when parents realize that they are not in a position to provide a “Christmas” for their children (no tree, no gifts, no stockings, not even a bed of their own) this will often be the catalyst they needed to accept that they can’t make it through this period in their life without some help, and they will come to the Shelter. The good news is that, once they get here, the parents will find that most of their concerns weren’t warranted, and they will find that they’ve brought their families to a clean and safe place here at the Torres Community Shelter.

c) The holiday season is stressful in that, like most non-profits, the majority of our fundraising and the majority of our donations occur during this time of year. Donations greatly decrease after the holiday season. Imagine having to earn enough money in a couple of months to cover your expenses for the entire year! Imagine knowing that there are many more programs and services that could be offered that would help our guests be even more successful, if we could only raise enough money! In part, the success of our fundraising efforts this month will determine what we can budget for and accomplish in 2012. Do we have to cut back? Do we just have enough to safely provide the services we currently offer? Do we raise enough in the next few weeks that we feel confident starting new programs? So, the holiday season is not only our busiest time of year because of the number of people we serve, but it’s also our busiest fundraising season as well.

Yes, the holiday season here at the Shelter is intense and exhilarating, and it won’t stop after the holidays. We know that the need for our services will be higher in 2012, and that we will be extremely busy during the wet, cold winter months. We know that we will be serving more families than ever before. With your support this holiday season we can continue to provide a bed, a roof, a shower, a meal, a path to self-sufficiency, and most importantly—hope to everyone who will need our services in 2012. Please support us this holiday season, either with a one-time donation or through our People Helping People program. People Helping People (PHP) is our monthly giving program, which provides our most consistent and reliable source of funding. People Helping People donors allow us to spend less time fundraising and more time helping people!

To recap, it’s already December—here we go again!! I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! Despite the chaos, the extra work, the higher numbers of Shelter guests, and the anxiety of wondering if we’re going to have a good year or not financially, it’s all worth it to me! Our staff does a fantastic job each and every day (365 days per year) at staying focused on our mission to help people move our of homelessness and into self-sufficiency. We get to witness the impact we have on people’s lives—from incremental impacts to monumental impacts! We are rewarded by witnessing people moving into their own places. We are rewarded by knowing that we are here for the people who need us that would otherwise be on our streets, alleys, and doorways or in other bad situations. During the holiday season, we get to witness the beauty of children having a Christmas against all the odds, and we get to see their parents accept that coming to the Shelter was the right decision they needed to make to build a better future for their kids. During this time of year, almost every member of the staff will be deeply affected by something they experience at the Shelter. At some point, most of us at the Shelter will be brought to tears by something that happens. Some tears will be happy and some will be sad and a few will be angry. All will be part of operating an emergency shelter for people in crisis during the holiday season. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from all of us at the Torres Community Shelter.

Sincerely,

Brad Montgomery

Executive Director
Torres Shelter
opwindows@aol.com or brad@chicoshelter.org

2010 Message from Brad Montgomery

As the Executive Director of the Torres Community Shelter I have the opportunity to give tours of our facility. We also have other staff and volunteers that can give these tours but, whenever I can, I do these tours myself. I’m eager to because I really enjoy them and I’m quite proud of what we accomplish everyday at the Shelter. Talking about what we do energizes me as much as it does our visitors. I also see the reactions of people when they find out a little more about what we do and, frankly, their reactions are often priceless.

The most consistent comments I receive after the tours are “I had no idea how complex this is!” and “This place wasn’t what I expected.” I understand that people have preconceived notions of what an emergency homeless shelter is. I’m glad that our Shelter consistently surpasses these expectations. Just to be clear, we don’t do anything special to prepare for these tours. They are often impromptu. People come through and see us with our blemishes intact and exposed for anyone to see.

I honestly wish that we could have the entire 200,000+ population of Butte County stop by for a tour because I believe after everyone in our County had a firsthand experience at the Shelter, we’d never have to worry about funding our basic services again and could focus exclusively on the additional programs we need to expand our reach.

We serve so many people (over 600 in the last 12 months!) and the labels and stereotypes regarding homelessness really don’t apply when you’re working with real live people with their own complete histories, weaknesses and dreams. How can one facility accommodate the complexity of needs for so many? Examples: How does someone who has worked all their life and has just been hit by the economy interact with someone just released from jail? How do we ensure a safe environment for more than 50 kids per year while still being a place where a meth addict can get a second chance? How do we handle a potentially ugly breakup of a married couple when they both are living with us? Or in very basic terms, who gets the bed closest to the bathrooms when you have elderly men who need walkers, or people with Cerebral Palsy or Muscular Dystrophy or a woman that hears voices and sometimes needs to go to the bathroom just so she doesn’t scream and wake everybody? All of these are decisions and scenarios we need to deal with in order to have a smooth running Shelter.

There are some that would like to write off everyone we serve at the Shelter as worthless. Of course I bristle a little at this, but I understand where it comes from. Some of our guests have made poor choices and people do need to be held accountable for their actions. At the same time, whether someone “deserves” to be staying at an emergency shelter or not has very little to do with our day to day operations. For us it’s pretty simple; people are here, homeless and don’t have another safe place to go. We’d rather have the 600+ people staying with us where we have a chance to help them break the cycle of homelessness, than have that many more people living outdoors throughout our county. We provided more than 25,000 nights of stay over the last 12 months and we’re proud that every one of those nights with us was a night that an individual didn’t sleep at one of the creeks or behind a warehouse building or in someone’s backyard. With this economy, the number of people we serve continues to escalate dramatically; my staff continues to rise to the occasion. Please help us continue our work.

Thank you,

Brad Montgomery

Executive Director
Torres Shelter
opwindows@aol.com or brad@chicoshelter.org