While the epidemic of urban homelessness rages on across the United States, with cities like Los Angeles, California, and Austin, Texas, experiencing the emergence of tent cities, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, has come up with an innovative solution to help homeless people earn their way to a new life.
To respond to the need for reintegration in the community, the city passed an ordinance in spring 2019 that offers a path to housing through work. The program, which was allotted US$80,000 and is run by the Canvas Community Church, offers homeless people minimum wage for picking up trash around the city.
For Roy Rawls, whose dream of becoming a barber was cut short by money problems that left him out on the streets, the program has given him a new apartment and chance to go back to school.
For Roy Rawls, it was a family tragedy compounded with health difficulties that prevented him from getting the education he sought. “My mother passed away and it left me out on the streets,” he explained. The onset of diabetes made things worse. Rawls’s doctor recommended the Bridge to Work program to him and helped file the paperwork online.
While the wage of US$9.25 per hour isn’t much, it gives the homeless a chance to start saving toward betterment of their lives. For Rawls, the chance to have a home again is a luxury. “This weather has got me all beat up, I’ve go to get indoors,” he told THV11.
But more than just refuge from the elements, a home also means he can start working toward his dream of finishing barber school. “I keep 9 or 10 pair of clippers on me at all times, so I can handle whatever job comes my way,” Rawls explained. He promises that he can satisfy any client. Whether with “scissors, razors, clippers. Just pick it out. It’s going to be a good cut,” he says.
Rawls’s story is one of several that have emerged from Bridge to Work, which has proven so successful that the city of Little Rock has extended the program for a further six months. During its initial time frame of operation, there were “a total of 130 sites cleaned, 1,821 hours worked, and 2,056 bags of trash [collected],” per THV11.
Bridge to Work has approached homeless people who were panhandling directly to explain the terms of the program: a small wage for a few honest hours of work. While not everyone has gone for it, the program has clearly started to make a big difference for those like Rawls who have stuck with it.
As Pastor Paul Atkins emphasizes, though, the experience of being mentored is just as important as the money, if not more so. “You know, that’s the kind of thing that you and I probably had from our families, and churches and synagogues and schools,” he said. “Our people have lost that, either because they did something to burn a bridge, or the bridge just fell in behind them, and they just need that extra support.”
With the Mayor of Little Rock Frank Scott Jr. fully behind the initiative and the Canvas Community Church congregation on board, there’s every hope that Rawls will be one of many who get a new start.
