Dear Editor:
The homeless often lack two keys for survival: essential resources for today and encouraging hope for tomorrow.
Over the past 20 years of working with people in need, SCMACS (Sunflower County Ministerial Alliance Counseling Services) has seen and heard the desperate cries of residents who require practical, day-to-day, physical support that goes beyond the spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs that our counselors and mentors faithfully provide.
When an individual or family does not have access to fundamental resources – daily meals, safe shelter, clean clothing, reliable transportation – counseling can go only so far to help even the most committed citizen to recover from hardship and homelessness. SCMACS has been meeting some of these needs with our food and clothing services, but a major gap still exists for those who want to work but cannot sleep in safety, bathe regularly, and get themselves to a job. Some of your neighbors want to transition towards self-sufficiency but require help from the community to do so. Without access to the essentials for survival, even their counseling sessions are placed in jeopardy.
Recognizing the barriers to success for so many of the homeless and at-risk population, SCMACS developed a vision for a residential homeless transitional center. This facility would combine a counseling environment with suitable short- to medium-term facilities, coupled with essential daily services that would otherwise remain out of reach for those struggling to get back on their feet.
The mission of the proposed homeless transitional center is focused on two great needs:
Biblical Counseling – addressing a spectrum of practical life skills
Functional Living – granting the ability to move toward self-sufficiency
For many people today, these needs were real yesterday.
Each day is another day of seemingly insurmountable struggles. To effect real change, to bring real hope, SCMACS has partnered with Sunflower County and others. Together, we can simultaneously address current needs, discover available resources, and collaborate on practical solutions and reasonable compromises. For many people in need, we are already behind – we need to build now. For many more people in the future, we must plan well – we need to work together. We are not just encouraged – we are excited – by the commitment that the county board of supervisors has already shown to develop workable solutions, despite these difficult times.
A recent article in the Enterprise-Tocsin about our project might have given the impression that the team is facing difficulties – after all, it was entitled “Disagreement over transitional facility.” All of us who want to address the problems of the homeless in the county are prepared to face extraordinarily difficult problems. In fact, in a post-COVID world that suffers from extreme inflation, we should all be prepared for great challenges. And these challenges mean all the more that we must find ways to work together – creatively and collaboratively. That is why SCMACS is so grateful for our county board: they have stepped up and stepped in to work with us and many others to see this project through.
The article made reference to a “private meeting,” perhaps suggesting that efforts were being made to go around the standard processes. This would be an unfortunate interpretation, when the meeting was requested by the county architect, attended by four SCMACS board members and the county administrator, and was held in the county courthouse. There was nothing private about this meeting. It wasn’t private, but it was personal – each of the attendees made it obvious that we are personally and collectively committed to finding a way to build a successful transitional center.
We want to reassure the county supervisors and local residents that we are meeting fervently to discover how to accrue sufficient investment and construct at a reasonable cost to accomplish what so many homeless people feel is unattainable: hope and home.
If you want to join us as part of this critical project – personally, not privately – then please reach out to our team. We look forward to meeting with you and presenting to the county board what is
