Location: Mishawaka Food Pantry
Date: Tuesday, March 7th, 2017
Participants: Matthew McCormick
Interviewee: Michael Hayes, Director
Summary:
To gain further insight on what other cities might be doing to help the problem of chronic homelessness, I traveled to the Mishawaka Food Pantry. Upon my arrival, I was introduced to Mike Hayes, Director of the food pantry. Mike and I spent about 45 minutes discussing the scope of the project that we are working on for the city of South Bend and information that he could provide to aid us moving forward.
Mike has spent several years on the Mishawaka City Council in addition to his time at the food pantry, and has a strong relationship with the government on tackling this issue. I explained that at this point in the project, we are still in discovery mode, but will soon be narrowing our scope. He then gave two main points that I feel are very important to our project at this time.
- Most people that he sees regularly all have separate, individual problems. There is not just one solution that can solve homelessness. For this reason, we have to segment our solution and focus on one area. For example, focus on homeless people receiving adequate medical attention, or assist in finding job opportunities for homeless people with a criminal record.
- It is important to define what homelessness is, and figure out how South Bend defines it. His experience in Mishawaka is that if you ask the city how many homeless people there are, they will probably say none because when they find one, they immediately take them to a shelter and do not count them. Most recently, he saw a number that said 11 homeless people in Mishawaka. However, he feels that there are many more who go “couch to couch” and do not consider themselves homeless but really indeed are. This is something that we should take into consideration when looking at South Bend specifically.
My time with Mike was very beneficial. He was open to helping out the team moving forward if we have any more questions and even said he has experience writing grants if we ever come to that point in our solution. He was a wealth of knowledge and I am very thankful that he took the time to speak with me.
