Season 6, Episode 13
How can churches be good neighbors to families experiencing housing insecurity? This week on 20 Minute Takes, Nikki talks with Edith Yoder, the CEO of Bridge of Hope, an organization that has equipped Christian faith communities to end and prevent homelessness since 1987. Edith shares stories of transformation and empowerment as churches have learned to extend meaningful relationships to their unhoused neighbors.
If you are interested in learning more about Bridge of Hope and how they might be able to partner with your church community, you can learn more here.
Additionally, find you can find them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action.
Host: Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Edited & Produced by: David de Leon
Music: Andre Henry
Transcript
[00:00:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hello, this is Nikki Toyama-Szeto. I’m the Executive Director of Christians for Social Action, and your host for today’s episode of 20 Minute Takes. Today I talk with Edith Yoder. She’s the CEO of Bridge of Hope, an organization that works with churches to equip them to be good neighbors to those who are experiencing insecure housing.
Join us for today’s conversation.
Edith Yoder, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of 20 Minute Takes.
[00:00:48] Edith Yoder: Well, it is great to be here with you.
[00:00:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Edith, I wanted to ask you a question, just by way of introduction to our listeners. Your friends, people who know you best, what’s one adjective that they would use to describe you? And do you agree with that adjective? Or is there a different word that you’re actually like, oh, actually, they think this, but really I’m this.
[00:01:11] Edith Yoder: That is a fun question, and the first thing that comes to mind is energetic.
I don’t always feel that, but that is often the the word that is used to describe me. And I think maybe the older I get, the less it’s applicable.
[00:01:31] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: But you’re the one who brings the energy into the room. People know when you’ve arrived, I love that. That’s great. I’ve really appreciated the opportunity that I’ve had to get closer to the work of Bridge of Hope. I think it’s really fantastic. What is a common misconception that you think people have about those who don’t have access to regular or secure housing?
[00:01:54] Edith Yoder: I think there are so many stereotypes about those we refer to as homeless. So often we think of who we see—on the streets or visibly—somehow look like they don’t have housing. But most of the families that we serve— individuals with children—most are not recognizable in other settings as being without a place to live.
So often we make assumptions, and we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, right? I mean, as a child who I thought of as homeless were the what we called hobos that knocked at my grandmother’s front door and asked for food. I think today we have those same stereotypes, and we fail to realize that a mom who’s living in her car with her children is not necessarily looking like she is without a place to live when she shows up at her job as a cashier at a grocery store.
[00:03:09] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm hmm.
[00:03:12] Edith Yoder: So we miss those who are most vulnerable around us.
[00:03:18] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah, I confess that even as you’re talking about it, I recognize in my own self, if you were just to use the word homeless, who I would pull to mind. And then at the same time, I know in our own school district, people have talked about families who who might not have a regular place to live.
So as you’ve described, maybe it’s a working mom with a couple of kids, and maybe they are sometimes sleeping in a car. Maybe they are sometimes sleeping with a family member occasionally. This is the sort of community that we’re talking about. It feels like such an invisible community.
[00:03:51] Edith Yoder: It’s exactly right. And the reason that they are invisible is they need to protect their children.
I mean, obviously a mom who is visibly sleeping out is not going to keep her children. We don’t allow that for children, but we allow it for adults. Right? So how does a mom do that?
She stays a couple of nights with a friend who will allow her to stay. And then a couple of nights in her car. And then maybe her mom lives in a senior living setting, but she can stay there once a week without her mom getting in trouble with her lease.
So the lingo right now is couch surfing; I’m not wild on that for the families we serve, because they’re not surfing by choice.
[00:04:40] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah. It’s not like adventure travel, couch surfing, which is, but this is actually like someone in their community. This is how they’re making it day to day, month to month, week to week kind of a thing. When I hear the story, I feel like this must be extraordinarily rare. How common is this our communities?
[00:05:00] Edith Yoder: It’s so common that it is staggering.
[00:05:04] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Is that right?
[00:05:05] Edith Yoder: Every school district keeps numbers in terms of how many families. And those are just the ones they’re aware of. And I am astonished at the phone calls we get for help. Which honestly, in the past four years, we have seen an increase of over 400 percent in our calls for help.
So we know the numbers are growing in terms of those who are asking for help. And every story is just so, so different. I actually was visiting a church and heard the pastor—they were in a suburban setting—reference the homeless families that are in Philadelphia, and said, “You know, I recognize we’re not seeing those families here.” I really wanted to stand up and say, “We’re not seeing them, but they are here, too.”
[00:06:05] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm. So just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist in your community. Bridge of Hope works predominantly with parents and families. Is that accurate?
[00:06:21] Edith Yoder: Yes, we serve families with children under the age of 18. So 95 percent of our families are moms or grandmothers with children. The other 5 percent we have served this past year are a couple single dads, a couple two-parent families, and we have a sibling raising her younger siblings. So those are the 5 percent, but the 95 percent is single moms.
[00:06:50] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay. And what I understand is that churches, maybe organizations, might come to Bridge of Hope and say, teach us about your model, and that’s something that a church community brings into their neighborhood. What is this Bridge of Hope model that you’re talking about, and why does it particularly match with these vulnerable families that you work with?
[00:07:15] Edith Yoder: One of our values as an organization is embracing the church as part of the solution to ending family homelessness. And so every family in Bridge of Hope is connected with a group of neighboring volunteers from a local church or Bible study, worshiping faith community.
[00:07:37] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay, like a small group, like a Bible study small group or a welcoming group from the church that gets a little organized. Okay.
[00:07:45] Edith Yoder: So it’s six to 10 people who walk with one family, and we have a case manager who joins that group, and we call that a community of support.
So the community of support is the neighboring volunteers, the family, and a Bridge of Hope case manager. Together, their work is to walk with the family and help her to reach her goal of housing stability, family stability, and a community of support around her.
[00:08:23] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love that, that it’s this wraparound and really holistic thing. I think it recognizes both that people are not individuals and it’s a little bit more than just maybe securing a more reliable job situation or getting to sign that lease and setting up a house. I love that there’s this community of folks who can kind of wrap around this family and be present, be neighbors.
That to me reflects this picture that God has of what community—and really what church—looks like. Edith, can you tell us a little bit about why it is that you all work through churches?
[00:09:05] Edith Yoder: Well, we believe that the church is the hands and feet of Jesus in our world. And so it is through the church that we want to empower individuals to live out their faith in meaningful ways and in relationship with families who are vulnerable. I have heard so many neighboring volunteers say over the years that the family they are walking with has changed them more than they’ve changed the family, and I just really enjoy that reminder that it is together that we are impacting each other.
It’s not a one-way relationship—”Oh, I’m helping this family.” But it’s really a mutual learning and walking together. And I think that humility that neighboring volunteers can bring speaks volumes to a family who is maybe coming from many different experiences around faith and may have a very strong faith or may have no faith at all, but that humility really speaks volumes.
[00:10:16] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I appreciate that. I also find that folks outside the church are sometimes surprised at how multi-generational the church can be. I think Bridge of Hope is the only organization I know that is really engaging multi-generationally with those who are experiencing insecure housing or some vulnerability.
There’s also that match-up that I think is so fantastic. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe one of the families or one of the stories of a neighbor that has come through the program?
[00:10:54] Edith Yoder: I will share Shadell’s story. She has told her story in many settings, and she really came to Bridge of Hope while in a shelter with her daughter. She shared recently with me a memory that she had of trying to take her daughter to the bus and not let anybody else at the bus stop know they were coming from the shelter—and just the humiliation she felt of being in a position of needing to ask for help. As her story continued, she said how much dignity she felt from her neighboring volunteers, that the fact that they did not continually refer to her as “a project” was something that gave her great trust in them as they began building a relationship.
So, Shadell and her daughter were in a shelter. She learned about Bridge of Hope from a shelter director. And so we accepted her into our program and said, we’re going to introduce you to a group of neighboring volunteers. This particular church wa—there were seven of them. They were all women, which was an unusual group.
Usually it’s, it’s men and women, but this group was very diverse age wise, but it was seven women. Shadell, over the years, since her time in Bridge of Hope, talks about “my women.” And I love the fact she later shared that that was an important piece for her that she hadn’t recognized just in terms of trust building, but these women invited her into their homes.
And into relationship with them—most of them were married and had children, and that was an important step. One of the neighboring volunteer’s husband helped her daughter with a school project that built trust. So as they walked together, this group helped her find housing, helped her move out of the shelter, helped her find a job.
And then she realized she had no transportation to get to the employer, and they helped her think through how much could she afford to spend on a car. She wanted to buy a used car that was going to cost quite a bit. And they would keep saying, “Whatever you do, we’ll support you. But here’s an idea, somebody has a car that you could borrow for six months,” and as Shadell shares the story, she was aware of how she could save some money around a car and not have to put a lot of money into it.
I love that one of the things she shares is that the budget red notebook that she used in Bridge of Hope she still uses today.
Shadell has served on our national board. She is also on the local board in her community right now and has really excelled professionally in her field as well.
[00:14:38] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love that. I love the way that this community of women journeyed alongside her for a bit and how that expanded. Possibilities and options. That’s so fantastic. I’ve noticed that you keep using the word neighbor, and other folks might use the word client or something else. What is the thinking behind that?
[00:15:00] Edith Yoder: We really want to be person-centered. I certainly would not want to be known primarily for my housing status. We really want to give that dignity to the families we serve—that we are neighbors together. We are not, I’m the helper, you’re the helpee. We will learn together and journey together.
And so we try to have our language reflect that as well.
[00:15:29] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Oh, that’s fantastic. As I hear you describing the work that Bridge of Hope does and how it shows up in the community, it also reminds me just a little bit of of when churches volunteer to be receiving or host spots for folks who are refugees. Are there similarities to the model or are there some pretty distinctive differences?
[00:15:55] Edith Yoder: Well, you are spot on. I will tell you the vision for Bridge of Hope, 34 years ago, originated around the idea of the refugee resettlement programs.
[00:16:07] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Oh, is that right? Okay, so folks who are familiar with that, this is a similar but domestic program.
[00:16:12] Edith Yoder: That’s exactly right. And that was really the the intention. Now, I will say many refugee resettlement programs are different. Our case management is a very intensive case management that we provide through the social worker on our team.
And many refugee resettlement programs don’t have a strong case management program. So that would be one bit of difference. We’re in the family’s home every week. We are doing budgeting. We are doing whole family case management. So it’s a pretty intensive case management program that we are supporting the families on.
The other difference is that before neighboring volunteers meet a neighboring family, the neighboring volunteers must go through five hours of training. And so we are really clear on pieces that we can offer to the church. This is our field of expertise. The church has many areas of expertise, and one of the joys I get is—we have a small church right now in one of our Bridge of Hope locations, and the pastor just said that over 50 percent of her church is neighboring right now. They have two neighboring volunteer groups and those two groups comprise over 50 percent of the adults in her congregation.
[00:17:41] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Amazing.
[00:17:42] Edith Yoder: What I love is that they have used the Bridge of Hope model in other situations where their church wants to come around somebody—maybe they’re not homeless, but there’s another thing they’re struggling with. They’ve learned a lot from Bridge of Hope and the different times they have neighbored, and they can translate that work into other settings and other ministries that they are doing as a congregation. And I love that.
[00:18:13] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Oh, that’s amazing. Intentionally pressing in to loving your neighbor in this way totally translates to all the other ways that we’re trying to be present and be a witness in our neighborhood. Has there been anything that’s surprised you, or been very unexpected in the context of the work for you personally?
[00:18:39] Edith Yoder: I feel like there are many surprises. God is a God of surprises. We get a call from a mom in a certain school district, and the next day, a church from that school district calls and says, “Hey, we’d be interested in getting involved with you guys.”
So that’s always, you just go, “Okay, Spirit of God is at work here.”
But I would say, big picture, the thing that surprises me is that across the board, across our theology, across our politics, across all the cultural wars, God is moving people’s hearts to compassion and care for those who are vulnerable that we serve.
And it is deeply humbling to me. It’s beautiful. It is. It is just beautiful to see God planting seeds in people and nudging toward someone. I had a neighboring volunteer a couple of weeks ago say to me, “Honestly, I feel like I live in a bubble. I don’t know people that are struggling financially in my world, and Bridge of Hope has opened up something deep in me.” Now, I don’t know what God is going to do in her life, but that opening up and her being able to identify where she is and where God is nudging her to was beautiful.
[00:20:18] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love that picture. Edith, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. I think as you’ve been sharing, I was just reminded of the two great commandments, that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and we should love our neighbor as our self.
And you’ve presented such a fascinating and compelling picture of the way that God works in us and in that process as we love neighbors who we might not recognize are our neighbors. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about Bridge of Hope.
[00:20:52] Edith Yoder: Yes. And we would love to talk to anybody who is interested if something is nudging in them and they feel like, Oh, could we bring Bridge of Hope to our community? We’d love to talk. We are open to that conversation.
[00:21:07] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Fantastic. Thank you so much.
[00:21:10] Edith Yoder: Thank you.
[00:21:17] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: 20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. We’re produced and edited by David de Leon. I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and the music is done by Andre Henry. You can find us on the web at ChristiansforSocialAction. org. Give us five stars, write a review, and share about the podcast with your friends.
