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A group of city residents and churches have come together to form the Women’s Hospitality Network – an initiative aimed at housing single women experiencing homelessness.

“One thing to note is that the reason the network is using experiencing homelessness instead of referring to people as homeless is to be more humanizing,” founding organizer Derek Minno Bloom said.

Network member Kareen Delice- Kircher outlined why the clarification is an important distinction through a recounting of a once homeless woman’s journey. The woman, who now lives in Belmar, works as a nurse and is a network member.

“If someone saw her before, just as a homeless person but never saw she could become more than what she that, we would have missed out,” Delice-Kircher said. “If we just think of homelessness as a person’s current situation, then it doesn’t mean that that is all they will be forever.  These are people who deserve dignity, respect and love, just as much as the next person you run into who owns a restaurant. Now, in her capacity as a nurse, she is changing people’s lives.” 

Launching next month, the program will house a dozen women on a rotating basis at a roster of city churches. Volunteers will assist in providing food and shelter for the night, and social service help will be on hand at each site.

“People are being virtually ignored,” said Dan Harris, network member and deacon at Second Baptist Church on Atkins Avenue. “Because we ignore them, people simply don’t have a place to lay their heads at night and a place to eat in the morning.

“We also have to acknowledge that there are a large amount of working people who are experiencing homelessness,” Harris said. “Because of the cost living and the wages in New Jersey, it is almost like they are at a dead end; spinning their wheels. These are not lazy people, they are people who go to work everyday but are just living in unfortunate circumstances.”

Based on a similar program administered in Freehold, the network’s formation began 10 months ago after Trinity Episcopal Church, located on Asbury Avenue, hosted a panel discussion that featured those experiencing homelessness sharing the realities of life on the streets with an audience of 100. Two of the eight panelist have since died and four signed on to help bring the program to fruition, Minno Bloom said.

“It was so powerful that people took three folks home with them that night,” Minno Bloom said.

Among them is Kurt Stump, who met and befriended Adrienne Wert, a social worker who lives in Asbury Park. 

“At that time I was homeless,” said Stump, who has been a part of the Asbury Park Community for 20 years. “I was struggling; it was winter; it was freezing out; it was just insane.” 

Stump said it was the kindness of those who immediately opened their doors or offered a night’s stay in a hotel room that catapulted his redirection.   

“I don’t think people really understood…you can be homeless in one day,” he said. “You can’t call just anybody and get help; it just doesn’t work that way,”  he said. “I started out with the clothes on my back and nothing in my pocket. If it wasn’t for the church, the people within the church, and the help that they gave me, I wouldn’t be where I’m at right now.

Stump [at right], who now works at Barrio Costero, the Spanish coastal cuisine venue on Bangs Avenue, said getting social service aid and finding an affordable home remain stumbling blocks.   

“I decided I wanted change,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy and it’s a long process. I’m still struggling but I’m going forward.”

He said while the process began with a place to stay and recognizing the need for change, it got increasingly difficult as he tried to obtain his paperwork in order to a job, the first he’d held in two decades. 

“I had no birth certificate, social security card, nothing,” he said. “It was the ID, then it was work. We started looking for people who were willing to help people like myself – I’ve been incarcerated and had problems with addiction.

“You live a certain way for so long that you don’t know how to change,” he said. “You need someone to trust you again and give you a sense of self again. I think that was the biggest thing that helped me.”

Stump and panelists Dominqueca Jones, Joseph Brown, and Barbara White [Smith] worked with residents, the local churches and the Anti-Hunger Coalition to address immediate needs. They determined women would be best served by the local program.

“I experienced homelessness myself,” said Warren Hall [below right], a network member and pastor at Deliverance Temple on Sewall Avenue. “I believe I am probably just one paycheck away from homelessness again, so I know it first hand.”

Hall said his mother often shared her experience being homeless with a newborn child. 

“The hardship, and the sacrifice, and the compromise a woman has to make when she has no resources is different than what a man faces,” he said.

Stump agreed, saying there are only a handful of beds available to single women in all of Monmouth County, as opposed to the close to 50 beds available to single men.

“There are 24 at the [Jersey Shore] Mission and just about the same in Freehold,” he said. “It’s different for men because there are other places you can go for one night. We came up with this idea because at the time, when I was out there, there were women out there. It’s different for women who are out there; some horrible stuff.”   

Wert said a group began to meet immediately following the panel discussion and worked to address the misconceptions and/or stigmas surrounding those who find themselves living on the street and the ability to easily access social service aid.

“There’s a perception that social services is easy to obtain, and it is not,” she said. “The barriers that are presented by social services are unbelieveable.”

Minno Bloom said a large part of the network’s mission will be to help those experiencing homelessness find their way back to a self sustaining lifestyle by providing social service access.

The churches and organizations who have signed on to host or serve in a supporting capacity include Trinity Episcopal Church, Deliverance Temple, which will serve as the network’s headquarters, and Second Baptist Church; as well as Atonement Lutheran Church on Asbury Avenue, First United Methodist Church on Grand Avenue, St. Augustine Church on Prospect Avenue, The Campus At Macedonia on Heck Avenue in Neptune, and the Jersey Shore Dream Center on Corlies Avenue, also in Neptune.

“Each church can house people up to 39 day per year, two weeks consecutively, without having to change zoning laws,” Minno Bloom said, noting that the mission is a part of the religious First Amendment right. “Matthew 25:31-46 is the scripture,” he said. 

And while the program is designed to run through March, the network members hope to garner enough financial and administrative support to extend it into a year round offering.

“The idea is if we get 20 or 30 churches then each will only have to host the program once a month,” Minno Bloom said.

The Network is currently accepting volunteers, monetary donations, hosting churches, personal hygiene supplies, blankets, sheets, pillows, cots, and food, Hall said. A $15 pledge donation can host a person for one night; $105 for a week; $210 for two weeks; and $450 for a month.

Network member Trudy Syphax, who heads the 7 member finance committee, said giving does not have to come in the form of the suggested monetary donations.

“We don’t want people to think that it is just about giving money,” Syphax said. “You can do just about anything, if you have nothing but time.” 

Guests will be screened, nightly security checks will be done, and volunteers will be trained, organizers said.

“This started from the bottom up, literally,” Minno Bloom said. “We see homelessness as an issue of justice not just charity; with the idea that 43 million people experience food insecurity [hunger], and the 750,000 live on the streets in the United States. Out of all first world countries, we have the most hungry and houseless people.”

To learn more about the Women’s Hospitality Network, visit their website, call 732-774-3130, or email womenshospitalitynetwork@gmail.com. Monetary donations should be payable to Women’s Hospitality Network, ℅ Deliverance Temple, 504 Prospect Ave, Asbury Park NJ 07712.

[Photos, in part, courtesy of Women’s Hospitality Network]

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