by Taya Kyle
Society thought it was helping, but what it was really treating was symptoms rather than the root cause, and inadvertently helping to keep people homeless. Rather than giving a hand up, their handouts kept people down.
His pass expired, Chris went back to base. A ten-year veteran, the Marine had planned to reenlist; the papers were already filled out. Instead, he left the Corps and began working with the nonprofit where he’d met Steve, assisting the homeless and others, trying to find ways to help the person rather than merely treating the symptoms.
Get up, suit up, show up—that became his mantra, and he preached to pretty much everyone he helped. Get out of bed, get presentable, attack the day by going to work, or looking for work, or doing whatever other necessary thing had to happen to move your life along.
One day in 1999, Chris, his wife, and their two young sons were helping out at a homeless shelter. Though designed for men, the facility was being increasingly used by single mothers and their children.
Momentarily distracted while working, Chris suddenly felt a tug at his side. He looked down and was surprised to find a little girl staring at him with a quizzical look on her face.
Her name was Jessica.
“She yanked on my sleeve real hard,” recalls Chris. “Jessica asked if I lived in the shelter with her and her mom.”
Hey, Mister? Do you live here, too?
Nine years old, Jessica was at the shelter with her mom and baby sister. The family had been assigned places to sleep on the floor.
This is not right, thought Chris.
“I’m looking at this nine-year-old girl, beautiful little girl, asking me if I live on the floor.”
The way she asked it told Chris that she didn’t realize there was anything out of the ordinary with living on a concrete floor in a homeless shelter. That being without a home, at the mercy of the elements as well as others, was a normal thing.
Chris got down on one knee and looked into her eyes.
“I don’t live here,” he told her. “But I am going to make you a promise. We’re going to get you out of here and back into your own home with a bed and your own pillow.”
That was the start of the story of Solutions for Change.
That moment led him to what he calls “a divinely navigated journey.” A deep believer in God, he takes Jesus Christ’s admonition to feed the hungry and help the poor as a personal commandment. But he gave the message both an American entrepreneurial spin and maybe a Marine Corps “get ’er-done” mentality tilt as he outlined plans for what became Solutions for Change.
His idea was to do more than provide a shelter, or food, or clothing. He wanted to provide the means for someone to get those things for themselves, to contribute rather than consume.
You’ve heard the saying Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.
That’s Solutions for Change in a nutshell.
“The Corps taught me the importance of serving others,” says Chris. “Society thinks that serving just to serve is cool. But I will tell you that one of the hidden problems we have in society is where compassion is just put out there and it turns into enabling.
“It should be serve to solve.”
His battle plan—that’s what he called it—was completely different than most of the plans for helping the homeless at the time. Rather than answering part of the problem and leaving the rest to other programs—say, opening a shelter and maybe handing out flyers on where someone could go for job training—Solutions for Change would be a comprehensive, one-stop program to help a person fully engage with society as a contributing member. It would, in effect, partner with the homeless to help them reach the goal of independent living.
Chris launched the project without looking for a federal or state grant. While that ruled out a potential funding source, it also meant that the project could be “outside the box” of other programs. Too often potentially good but new ideas get shoehorned into old forms, which limit and even strangle them. That wasn’t going to happen here.
Then again, nothing was going to happen without money, an unfortunate reality whether you’re a social entrepreneur like Chris or not. It took several years before the group he founded and now serves as executive director was able to open the door on its own, permanent facility.
“We went from a church to a small building where we could help ten families a day,” recalls Chris. “Then we built a place in 2004.”
The facility cost about $6.5 million, paid for entirely with donations and forgivable loans; there is no mortgage. A big portion of the funds came from seven different municipalities that resolved to help solve the homeless problem in their communities.
More than money, enthusiasm was important. Chris had plenty of that.
“In those early days, I would get up in the morning and fist pump,” says the retired Marine. “I couldn’t wait to get out there and help.”
He’s a touch more laid-back these days, but just as enthusiastic about helping people. His optimism is tempered but not diminished by realism and experience.
“Humans are messy,” he says. “The people we’re working with as homeless folks, there’s lots of drama, lots of other stuff.”
Addiction, broken homes, poverty, broken relationships—helping people overcome those things still gets him out of bed every day.
If Operation Safe Haven shows what can be done on a micro-scale, Solutions for Change shows what can happen on a larger scale. The process works roughly like this:
Homeless families—the average family is a mom with two kids—apply for a position in person at the Solutions for Change offices. They can come on their own or through a referral, but in either case they are interviewed by one of the organization’s staff and given information about the program. If they’re willing, they are placed on a wait list, which may mean several more weeks in whatever temporary housing they’ve managed to obtain.
Once admitted, they enter the first phase, or “university,” as Solutions for Change calls it. In a lot of ways, it is just like going to college, except the graduating degree is a PhD in a new, productive way of life.
Parents attend classes that are aimed at developing simple life skills, progressing to leadership. Financial literacy, parenting workshops—the curriculum ranges from very basic to sophisticated classes and discussions aimed at improving job skills. After early-morning classes—alarms are generally set for 5:30 a.m.—the students head to work at various places, either in the community or at Solutions for Change’s own enterprises.
While the organization does not proselytize, it does offer residents an introduction to religion. Chris is a Christian believer and sees a broken relationship with God as one of the key problems people in poverty struggle to overcome.
“People are so disconnected today in society,” notes Chris. “One of the big reasons we’ve been successful is that we help repair that connection. We tell our people they are loved. We are glad they’re here. To be able to demonstrate that level of care and love with another human being is so important. We get a like on Facebook and we’re like, woo-hoo.”
Solutions for Change University is a thousand-day program—but it’s one thousand days not just to independence but of service to others.
“We teach people to get two or three clicks above the mediocre,” says Chris. “They get on fire.”
The first phase lasts six months. Newcomers meet and live with other families and begin taking their classes. There’s always a bit of adjustment for the families coming off the streets—“shell shock” is how Chris describes it.
Three months of intensive job training leads to a full-time job; residents start paying a modest rent.
Residents are also required to put away a third of their salary into a savings account that they own.
Six to nine months later, residents reach the five-hundred-day mark, celebrated with a formal ceremony Solutions for Change calls Commencement. At that point, they graduate to
housing off-campus, so to speak—affordable housing in the community, still owned by Solutions for Change.
From this point, the graduates begin helping others in the program.
According to Chris, 74 percent of the people who come through the front door at New Beginnings, the official name of the program’s first phase, make it to Commencement; from there, 93 percent of them hit the thousand-day mark and officially graduate out of Opportunities, though they may come back as volunteers.
“That is about three times better than government programs at about a third of the cost,” says Chris. “It costs us about $24,000 a year per family, versus the containment model that governments use.”
Federal government data shows that poverty programs, not including Medicaid, averaged about $35,779 per family in 2016. (The bulk of these programs help families that are not homeless, though of course that can change rapidly with a job loss or some other unfortunate event. The figure for a homeless family is higher but varies greatly.)
Solutions for Change is now one of the largest nonprofit organizations helping the homeless in the state of California, which makes it one of the largest in the country.
To put that into perspective, though: with a budget in the $4 million to $4.5 million range, Solutions for Change is a minnow in the vast sea of organizations aiming to fight poverty, homelessness, and related problems. While size does limit what they can do, it’s also a bit of an opportunity, or at least an attitude. Chris sometimes takes a Marine’s attitude to the vast network of groups, government and otherwise, calling them collectively a $200 billion poverty-industrial complex.
“We’re the rebel camp,” he says proudly.
His goal is to disrupt the status quo—just like any Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Solutions now oversees about two hundred thousand square feet of housing and other space in some eight cities in California. There are about 150 families in the program at one time; the waiting list to get in had about 350 on it when we last spoke. Staff totals about forty, with another 350 volunteers. “These are people in a network we’ve built who are giving hundreds of hours a year.”
Ninety-three percent of Solutions for Change’s money comes from donations and its two social enterprise programs, Solutions Farm and Solutions in the Community, which themselves count for 40 percent of that number. The rest comes from donors—or as Chris calls them, “investors.” They range from foundations to corporations to small businesses to individuals. The other 7 percent of the fund at present comes from different government programs; Solutions for Change was poised to lose that money when we spoke due to changes in program requirements. (The organization gave back some $600,000 due to changes in regulations relating to addict recovery and housing. A good portion of that money was made up by donations when the community found out about the loss.)
According to Chris, Solutions Farm is the largest aquaponics farm in the western United States. The seven-thousand-square-foot greenhouse at the center of the operation was retrofitted from traditional nursery use with the help of volunteers and in-kind donated services. The charity computed that a total of more than three thousand volunteer hours over a ten-week period were involved in getting the facility ready.
Aquaponics farming doesn’t use traditional fertilizers and soil. As the name implies, it’s water-based, but there’s a lot more to it than simply growing herbs and vegetables in special containers. Fish are raised to supply nutrients as well as food stock. There’s a delicate interplay between all the elements; the concept is still relatively new, and the industry has had fits and starts in the U.S.
Chris, though, is as optimistic about it as any entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. The people managing the farm are veterans, and the farm doubles as a training program and employer of residents in Solutions for Change University. The food is certified organic; plans call for some 1.6 million servings of greens to schools and the like.
The revenue from the produce sales is then reinvested in Solutions for Change, reducing the need for outside donations and grants.
“The farm is an amazing social enterprise,” says Chris. “There are so many bells and whistles to it that it’s hard to describe. It’s basically the most environmentally friendly farming method in the world. It uses ninety-five percent less water than natural farming, and there are no pesticides.”
Solutions in the Community is the parent organization’s real estate development arm. Solutions for Change buys properties that are in disrepair and either rehabs them or knocks them down and rebuilds from scratch. They become housing complexes for people in the University, or in some cases, people who have already graduated.
“I don’t believe in shelters,” says Chris. “I want them to live in apartments.”
Residents pay rent, which helps support the project and ultimately the entire enterprise. Taken together, Solutions for Change represents a cross between social welfare and capitalism, or as Chris calls it, “social entrepreneurship.”
Chris grew up in the Detroit area. He had an experience early on that told him he wasn’t going to stay there. While he talks about God helping him along his path in life, it was actually a blizzard that set him on his course.
“It’s 1978; I’m standing on the roof of my house in a blizzard. I look at my dad and I say, I can’t do this. I’m not going to live here. I can’t do blizzards.”
That revelation led him to the U.S. Marines, who took him all over the world, including Beirut in 1983. This was during the attack on Americans there, and he witnessed firsthand the almost unbelievable horrors humans can inflict on one another.
“I was a pretty hardheaded kid. I didn’t have a lot of discipline. I didn’t have a lot of purpose. The Corps taught me how to have a higher purpose. Now, I have [another] higher purpose. I am serving God and the guy next to me.”
“When I was in the Corps, I always wanted to fix stuff. . . . I was always seeing things in my own way. I was an entrepreneur.”
That caused a little friction in the military, but once out, his creativity married the drive the Corps had given him. At the same time, his extended family’s own experiences with addictions made him acutely aware of how devastating those could be.
“The beast—it became the enemy that I would later fight,” he says, referring to the fact that a good number of the homeless are substance abusers. College courses in counseling and related courses “weaponized” him to fight the problem. You can still hear the Marine in his voice as he speaks about fighting addiction, homelessness, and other problems; he’s attacking them with a well-thought-out tactical plan aimed at a strategic goal. It’s just that his weapons no longer include M-16s and machine guns.
While Solutions for Change is fairly unique, it’s a likely model for the future. “We’ve won enough awards where it’s going to be replicated across the country,” says Chris.
It’s the ripple effect, on a national basis.
I met Chris Megison at a fund-raiser for Solutions for Change a few years ago. Talking with him, the staff, and people they’d helped, it was impossible not to be impressed by the long-haul approach the organization was taking. I was very impressed by a young woman who had gone through the program and was now giving back—that’s what happens when you empower people. The organization’s name is true—they looked at the problem and all its complicated levels, and came up with a series of solutions. They taught people to fish rather than giving them fish.
Short-term help in the form of soup kitchens and emergency shelters are very important, of course. The first priority when you’re hungry is food; if you don’t have a roof over your head, you want and need shelter.
But long-term help can be much harder to find and trickier to stick. Chatting with some of the graduates of the program, I was convinced the approach works, if not in every case, then in many.
“If you’re with our people in a room and meet them,” Chris tells others about the program’s graduates, “you would be in a sense of awe.”
I was, and I ca
n attest that he is right.
Or as he puts it, “it blows your mind.”
P.S.: The little girl and her family who inspired Chris managed to escape homelessness soon after meeting him. Jessica went on to community college, a job, a home, and a family of her own.
“That look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know,” says Chris. “She launched the movement. If I ever write a book, it’ll be called Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned from Wolfman and Little Red Riding Hood.”
He’s so Fly
Melanie and Marcus Luttrell
Government and nonprofit groups are critical in the fight to end homelessness. But individuals can provide solutions as well. And not just by sharing their couches.
Toward the end of August 2017, meteorologists warned Houston that a hurricane was headed their way. Among the residents battening down were my friends Marcus and Melanie Luttrell.
You’ve heard of Marcus, surely, whether through his book Lone Survivor, about his battle with and escape from the Taliban in Afghanistan, the movie of the same name, or his prominent role in the Patriot Tour. His wife, Melanie, isn’t famous, but those of us who know her value her seemingly boundless energy and open heart. Marcus would agree; she keeps his life and everything else together.
The Luttrells live on relatively high land outside the city, and so their house was a gathering point for friends and family in the area looking for a relatively safe place to ride out the storm. Things got a bit dicey when the clouds dumped so much water that the creeks on their property washed out their driveway and its two bridges, leaving the contingent stranded for six days without formula and diapers for friends and families with infants. Fortunately some police were able to bring in supplies and no one at the house was in any particular danger. As the waters subsided, a neighbor came by with a tractor and helped restore the bridges and driveway.