Jim Ward on Homeless Veterans
In this episode of Signature Required, Jim Ward shares insights from running the 49-bed homeless shelter in Nashville's Vine Hill area for the past four years. He discusses the challenges of helping veterans navigate poverty, addiction, PTSD, and mental health issues to rebuild their lives. From eye-opening statistics on homeless veterans to inspiring success stories, Jim sheds light on a nationwide issue that demands our attention.
About Jim Ward
Jim Ward is the Executive Director of Matthew 25, Inc. The organization is a service-intensive transitional housing program in Nashville, TN that offers men comprehensive supportive services that enable them to return to independent living and obtain employment. Approximately 80% of the men served by Matthew 25 are veterans and Matthew 25 works closely with the Veterans Administration.
As an organization, Matthew 25 provides case management, employment and housing placement assistance, substance abuse recovery support, as well as life and social skills development and training.
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Spencer 00:03
Jim Ward, Executive Director for Matthew 25 Welcome to signature required.
Jim Ward 00:09
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Spencer 00:10
We're excited to have you today. For anyone that's trying to figure out what Matthew 25 is, most people probably won't know. They might try to pull some scriptural reference and say, I cannot recall from Bible study what Matthew 25 is. So maybe you can tell us what Matthew 25 is all about.
Jim Ward 00:27
Yes, and for people who go to to the Bible and start to look it up, there's a lot in Matthew 25 I did this last night, and I tell people, we're not dealing with the separating the goats, the sheep and the goats. But we take our inspiration from the portion where Jesus is saying, if you do this for the least of these, you've done it for me. And the sections where, when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was basically homeless, and you gave me shelter. I was a stranger and you invited me in, and that is written on the walls of several places around our facility. I was a stranger and you invited me, and that is the inspiration that the founders took. We were founded here in Nashville by volunteers from two separate congregations, first, Presbyterian Church and Christ cathedral downtown. And they 1986 they were like, we need to do something for homeless men working poor. And it is grown from from there, from being in the basement of a church to now being in we have two floors of a facility here and in Nashville, in the vine Hill area, which started out a few years ago as a long time it was, quote, a low income area of town. We had subsidized housing. I got there at about the time they broke ground for the soccer stadium. So I managed to spend two years looking out my window watching it go up. And Nashville is an interesting place. I have $600,000 homes across the street from our homeless shelter.
Spencer 02:13
So you know your role in preparing for this. You got started in February of 2020. I did, and people like you are some of my favorite people to interview, because those that started in the immediate days preceding the pandemic, whether it's a business, a new job, I just kind of feel like perhaps you were put into place for such a time as this, like your Unique leadership was necessary or or or you're just incredibly unlucky, and you deserve immense punishment to be put in right 30 days before the pandemic. So which one of those two is it?
Jim Ward 02:50
I don't think it was a punishment, although I actually used that exact word talking to a friend of mine, and it's like, so she's like, God has a plan for you. And I said, or there's some discipline going on that I need to I need to learn. When I came they needed an interim director. The former executive director had left to start a church and move on, and he was someone who had worked for me for years before in a different organization. So he and at the time I was doing some consulting work, he said, I want to recommend you to my board to be the Interim Executive Director. And okay, this sounds good. I'm in between the consulting places that I needed. And so came and talked to the board. We agreed to, I believe it was four months of until we can get some things in place. And almost immediately, from the time I got there, they had had a little problem. It was really a technical problem with some funding sources that they had had. So suddenly it's like, oh yeah, by the way, we don't have any money in the bank,
Spencer 03:57
And we, by the way,
Jim Ward 04:00
We got a little reserve over here and so, you know, and those are just some really nice, I said, some technical things. It took us about 30 days to find that and to get it back. But as an organization, we were living, have been living pretty much most of the it's a very small nonprofit. And so to say that we live fairly hand to mouth is pretty I know, you know, getting to a place where, okay, I know where next month's payroll is coming from. I know where next month's food costs are coming from. I can pay rent on time. You know, they pretty well moved along. But at the same time, February 4 is the day, I walked in and nobody had whispered the word COVID. Didn't know anything about it. My wife was the first person a couple of weeks in she had read something, people were starting to talk about stuff and, you know, and it was popping up on the news and things of that nature. She's like, I think this may be something, and I'm always the dismissive. One I'm like that is, you know, that's flashing the pan, flash in the pan, not going to happen. And by mid March, we were in the throes of it and and that meant everything from working with the Veterans Administration, which is, we partner with them, and a lot of what we do working with homeless veterans, you know that we were just making, I don't want to say making rules up as we go along, but we were making rules up as we were going along. We were tweaking the protocols, working on this and and it was like, we need to go to single occupancy rooms. All of the veterans now can't come to the VA for their appointments. They need to be virtual they we, as an organization, we had, we had no Wi Fi beyond 20 feet from the modem that was sitting in the middle of the admin section. I'm like, I can't put somebody on a video call, you know, things like that. We were trying to crawl through the ceiling and drop another hot spot. Maybe we can pick up some more Wi Fi in the lunchroom and things of that nature. So we weren't technically prepared. We were still doing everything on paper. So we really didn't my social workers, which they are the heart of the program, in terms of working day of the day. With the guys, we didn't even have laptops. They were tied to their desk, so working from home became very problematic to the degree that we could do that.
Spencer 06:29
So and maybe to thoroughly just understand the complexity of the issue. We first have to just really understand what Matthew 25 mission is. So maybe just take us to that and help us understand what the mission is. Because I think the story that you just tell there is uniquely appreciated amongst the backdrop of what you do and the housing you provide in your mission.
Jim Ward 06:49
So, Matthew 25 is what is known as, what we call a transitional housing program. So we have at max capacity on our transitional housing program, 49 beds that we can bring 49 homeless men into. About 80% of those are veterans. We are in that space pretty heavily in terms of the population that we serve. And they are double occupancy rooms. You come in, you are assigned a social worker. We develop a goal plan, a service plan. The goal is, ultimately, to get a person into addiction recovery, if that's what's needed, to get them employed, if they're employable, and ultimately to leave our place with the key in their pocket to their own place, and that that's how we know we've been really successful. And we have a wall at at Matthew 25 with pictures of the guys holding the big real estate key. I found them one where we're moving guys out and they're going to apartments, they're going to housing, and that's the end goal, if you will. And while there, as to the mission, we're working with them spiritually. We're trying to build them up. We're trying to keep them and move them onto a path of basically self sufficiency and stability. And some of them have been homeless for a short time, and some of them have been chronically homeless. They've been in and out of shelters like ours for years, or they've, they had a place and they lost and all of the stories that you can imagine, we have had examples of all of them. Either it's an addiction problem, it's my addiction problem, or we, you know, we have an elderly gentleman recently who lost his home in the most stereotypical today way, his house was sold. It was, he was living there with two or three other people. The landlord sold it. You got to go. We're tearing it down in Nashville, and we're building two houses, you know, and and he had nowhere to go. So it's across the spectrum of the types of folks that we see. So we serve three meals a day, 365 days a year. They have a warm place in the winter, a cool place in the summer, and they work daily and weekly with on site, master's level social workers in developing their plans for getting housing. We're a sober living environment, so there's a lot of accountability involved in that. A lot of working with the men to sort of straighten up your behavior while you're here. And we have two levels of program. One we call service intensive, which is just what it sounds like. It's a basic level program, but their work is the same. Get them in, get them on a program. Ultimately, we start right off the bat, how are we going to get you housed? How are we going to keep you off the street? Is going to be necessary to do that. And then the other part of our program, which is growing for us, is called clinical treatment, and that is a more intensive program that we work with, and that is a minimum of eight to 12 weeks commitment to four day a week, group and individual therapy. So every week, for that period of time, you're spending three to four hours every day in group therapy, in individual therapy, working on addiction, recovery, radical change, radical change. And that is, and I say we're growing that we currently partner with another mental health organization here in town. We bust the guys in a van over there every day we leave the place at eight o'clock in the morning, we pick them back up after lunch and bring them back to us. We want to bring that in house, and so we're renovating a place in their facility to allow us to set up a situation where a lot like your studio here, but it's where we'll have the classroom set up. We'll have everything we need. We'll hire our own licensed clinician. We'll be licensed by the state to make provision of this, and that way we can better control the curriculum, also better control the accountability for the men we're now. We're watching you, you're in this program, and you're also here, and we're going to so it will be a major, radical step for us.
Annalee Cate 11:28
So I want to, I want to go back. It's really helpful to understand the mission when, when we were talking just before this, on your the timing and everything, as you came in, I could see the complexity of the program that you're running and the timing of that absolutely creating for you in that moment, feelings of, what have I done? Like, this is not recoverable. I'm in a mess. And, you know, there's, there's no way out of it. You've got changing, you know, funding problems. You've got changing compliance requirements coming down. You're in this whole new world, you know, dealing with veterans and all of the complexity and challenges there. Did you have that moment of, like, I don't know if I want to go forward, and if you did, how'd you How did you push through that?
Jim Ward 12:12
I think I have those moments every day for about the first six months, probably a year, because it can be exhausting if you're, you know, looking at nonprofits, any nonprofit, and particularly, you know, one like ours, in sort of a business sense and an entrepreneurial sense. You're, we're no necessarily different than than the guy with the small business, and he's trying to, he's trying to make payroll next week. And I hope I sell enough here. I hope I've got that. You know, that's where we were in terms of, you know, cash flow was always a question. And it was just like the small businessman, I'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning and go, I don't really know what, what we're going to do here. I don't know. Have had those, yeah, I don't know how it is Wednesday, payroll. I have to fund payroll Friday, and I have no idea how I'm going to do it. And and it, there was a lot of that, and there were a lot of times when it was like, Okay, I think it just be easier to just chunk this and, yeah, find the next thing. But, you know, I tend to just sort of put my head down sometimes and and sort of power through it. And it was the kind of thing where it required, like I said, a lot of of work from a lot of sources. I mean, I have a great local board that have been many of whom have been on the board for a good period of time, and they have put, literally, blood, sweat, tears, money in into funding, the program, helping to find the funding. And I think, I don't want to say COVID was a good thing, because it clearly wasn't. And I don't know that we handled everything the right way. I don't know that the VA handled everything the right way, but we it was new. We'd never done this before, at least no time in the past 100 years so, but it did become a catalyst for us to move to change a lot of things. Yeah. I mean, it became, you know, very critical infrastructure, which is what I started with, in terms of we have to be prepared, not only for the next thing, hope there's never another next thing. But how do we upgrade the facilities and now and into the program, we were able to say, Okay, we we have Wi Fi now we have, we had to, we had to go out and find the money to spend the money to fix these problems. But I can now set a veteran up, and we do all the time with you. Have an individual place where you can go in your room and you can you can video conference with with whomever, whether it's the doctor, whether it's a social worker at the VA, whether it's a family call whatever, we've upgraded. We were able to upgrade our computer facilities for the veterans. So we have a. Facility now, where they have better computers than anybody in the than their staff does that are sitting there ready for them to go online, do what they need to do, whether that's resumes, whether that's emails, whether that's, you know, getting in touch with the, you know, landlords and things of that nature. They can do that. They can also play games. We have to kind of limit that. But can you been playing World of Warcraft for three hours, and we, and someone else, needs the facility, but so I say that, that it was a catalyst for us to make a lot of changes. And how? How do we do things? You know, differently? How can we do things better and upgrade what we have change the way we everything from all of our record keeping, we're now completely electronic, yeah.
Spencer 15:51
Can you take a step back and when we hear about the mission of Matthew 25 being predominantly veterans focused, let's zoom out and realize that part of the nationwide narrative is what is going on with our veterans, the suicide rate, the tragedy that is going on for veterans, for our country that have fought for the very things that we enjoy on a daily basis and sometimes take for granted what in the world is happening with our veterans that Matthew 25 is even needed to begin with, because part of when I hear your mission, it's that was this done in response to a significant veteran crisis, that you're having such a concentration of veterans, or was it the other way around, that veterans are just uniquely in this spot, more than most, but for someone that is living and breathing this every day, can you help us have a lens into what in the world is happening?
Jim Ward 16:53
So I don't, I don't think it is to you can say, Okay, you're a veteran, so it's guaranteed that you're you're going to have a problem. Now, what we do know statistically is veterans are two times as likely to become homeless as the rest of us the average population. That's to say that they are over represented. The amount of people that are veterans are over represented based on the numbers in the homeless population. Statistically, right now, about 49 to 50% of the homeless veterans are Vietnam era veterans, so they're getting up in age. But that's, you know, only about four to 5% right now. You could say our Iraq war, or on those levels,
Spencer 17:47
That's a useful data point.
Jim Ward 17:48
About 79% have of homeless veterans have a substance abuse problem. Okay? That is just, that is, again, a statistic that's pretty solid, and in the 40% of them also have a diagnosed mental health issue. So PTSD, obviously, everybody wants to go to that, and that is, I would back up and say there are a lot of different things that are traumatic, and trauma itself is one of the things that drives that. And the chicken and egg question, Did I have trauma and I tried to compensate with drugs, yeah, or did I start with drugs? And some people do, and then that led to trauma. But using Substance Abuse is substance abuse is really a major driving cause, and if you add to that, as I said, mental health issues, it just makes for a serious issue. Now, there are studies out there that say just because someone was in combat does not mean that they, you know, have PTSD for that matter, much less that it leads them the ones that are combat that percentage doesn't seem to be well, all of the homeless veterans had some really tough combat experiences. Doesn't seem to be the question. So it has to and I think broader, what happens when you leave the military? 89% of homeless veterans are honorably discharged. So again, it's not the wash trouble, it's not the troubled. It's it's 89% of them are have been honorably discharged. So the question comes, okay, so civilian life is is different and and difficult, and we see that for guys that have been in a long time, and then literally, you do come out, and there is absolutely no one telling you what to do, where to be, where to go. And these are smart and intelligent people, just like the rest of us, but just like my world is different. Yeah, I don't know how to navigate this. So. World, and I think that there's a higher percentage of veterans that fall into that category after they get out.
Annalee Cate 20:07
Yeah, and it's, it's, you can't appreciate it either. I'd like so my husband spent a decade in the Marine Corps, so this is a topic that hits close for us in terms of some of the experiences we've been through. But I'll tell one story that I'll never forget. He was talking about when he transitioned out of the Marines, he took a job. He was living in DC, and took a job in DC, and was walking to work one day. And so he's he's in a corporate job at this point, and so he's wearing a full suit, and said he was standing at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change, and he was standing there, and he got that feeling that you get when it's like something's off, like everybody's looking at me. Something's happening. I don't I don't know what's going on. And it took him a minute to figure it out, but he said he looked around and realized that everybody else was under an umbrella, and he was in a full suit, and it was just pouring torrential rain, and he's like, Everyone's looking at me. He said, I'm headed to this big meeting, and I had a real like, Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore moment, because I would, you know, rain would never stop me for the last decade of my life. I'd be working and running and working out and standing in line and, you know, and it's just right on, life is, life is different. For them, they're, they're different. And I, you know, I've got some adjusting to do, but it's like you don't realize those little daily moments that are different for us that haven't experienced it. But I want to go back to the substance abuse piece and understand that a little bit from obviously, there's a drug crisis happening right now in America, but when you think about what you're seeing pattern wise, obviously, fentanyl is a new problem, but the drug crisis is not a new problem. And so what are you seeing as kind of the common gateway when we talk about substance abuse, like, is this? Alcoholism? Is it? Is it weed? Is it, you know, like, hard, prescription drugs like, where is the path that's creating such an 80% substance abuse problem in the candidates you're dealing with, right?
Jim Ward 22:07
Well, the last thing that you said, we don't, particularly, we don't see a tremendous amount of prescription drug abuse. Now there's going to be some of that. And again, to me, the you know we we now know the stories. We've swung the pendulum back and forth on the opioid crisis. So you know, we'll say, we over prescribe that, and then we turn that spigot off, and said to someone who's been on oxy or Vicodin or something along those lines for 10 years as a pain management. You can't have that anymore. We're gonna, we're gonna roll that back at that point. You know, you do have some people who sought out other other things, but generally the same drugs are always there. You know, we're when we test for drugs, and we do regularly. So you are subject to regular test, you're subject to random test, you're subject to test on suspicion. And for us, coming back with a positive test does not mean well, okay, you violated the rules. You're out of here. It means we're going to work with you some more. We're going to put you on a behavior plan. We're going to try to work with you as best we can, to again, to to become clean and stay sober. But the drugs are common. They're the meth, the cocaine, the benzos. Those are the things that we see pop all the time, the fentanyl pops, marijuana pops. I don't know that. I would say that we necessarily see. I would not go out and go, this is the gateway drug for that. I just don't know. And there are some that are your, your typical I don't do drugs. I drink, yeah, yeah. And we have some of those. I never do drugs, but I drink and and alcoholism is age old in terms, and it was the start, if you will, of the baseline idea for all the 12 step programs is beginning this, this process. And we have three or four of those groups going a week at our place. So we do fentanyl is that monster that is out there now and and our, our case managers are working with these guys, and they'll come back, well, you tested positive for this and fentanyl. I don't do fentanyl. I'm like, but you can't. Number one, it tested positive for it. Number two, it's really hard to say today that you don't do fail, whether you meant to or not. Yeah, nobody has a very good, clean, certified clean dealer on the street. That's just not happening, and they are cutting things on purpose. Uh, people with no real chemical ability. So how much does this batch of of whatever have and, and we see it in, you know, we you say news stories I read, getting into this space, I've started following a lot of different things. And, you know, you have people that you hear the story of the 21 year old girl who died from a pill that she got from her friend, and it was fentanyl laced, and she she just meant to take an upper or a party pill, and it turned out to be a fentanyl pill. So as we work with these guys, we're like, you don't know what's in there, but yeah, but this is clearly in there. And we've had a couple of times everybody in our staff, and we also have regular training of the residents themselves for opioid overdose training. So everybody I carry Narcan now I've learned one of the things that's changed is I need a couple of Narcan kits in my car as I'm riding around, because I'm and I have come across someone laid out in a Walmart party lot, and so, you just know, to look for that sort of stuff these days. But we've had a couple of instances, you know, over the past four years where, you know, one of our staff has had to, fortunately, we caught it and was able to use Narcan, and they came back up. And even then they're like, I didn't use fentanyl, I didn't use heroin, and like, this only works, yeah, on, on opioid overdose. So the fact that you're now back means you took it, whether you meant to or not, yeah. So it is. It's that thing. It's just, it's almost like a gremlin that's just out there, and it's going to be in things that they didn't anticipate, they didn't mean to but it's still there.
Spencer 26:48
Can you talk a little bit about just mechanically, how someone finds Matthew 25 if I'm a veteran? Is it family that's helping me get connected? Are you interacting with generally veterans the first time and just walk me through what a week or two of onboarding looks like? Are you having to turn people away just just some of the mechanics of how Matthew 25 works?
Jim Ward 27:14
So we are a referral based organization, and that sounds like we're gatekeeping but, but we tend to get referrals from other social service agencies, so we are in communication and partnership with the other ones in this in the Nashville space, you know, we have room in the end. We have operation stand down. We have organizations like that. We work with the with the rescue mission, which is the massive overnight, you know, there, they have hundreds a day there. So we'll get referrals from all of those people that we have so and so, who would be a good fit for your program, or they're coming off of this, and they need, they need housing, veterans, primarily, it we work through the VAs office of Homeless Services, so they are right there on the VA campus. We have a liaison all of us who deal in in the space, and have a VA liaison who we communicate with on a daily basis. So we're, we're talking about the cases. We're talking about the gentleman daily, really, with their liaison in terms of the information passed back and forth and what's needed, and getting them VA healthcare, some of them come in and it's a process of, you don't have anything by that, I mean you don't have a primary care physician, you don't have any sort of medical plan, you don't have anything like that. So we start with referrals. You can go online and fill out an application. Social workers do this all the time. That goes directly to our intake coordinator, and she begins the process of contacting the veteran, contacting the VA, contacting the social worker, and bringing the process in of agreeing to come in right now, as I said today, I think went home last night and we had one bed open of the 49 so we're tend to deal right now with a wait list, so we're constantly kind of working through that, and that's where we also partner with the other agencies in town that also work in the veteran space. And in terms of, can we get this person into their program, or can we it's, it's not to make a lot of it's almost like a trading card thing we all have got, you know, and we've, fortunately now have a singular application process, so we all fill out the same application, so we all get the same data. They work with their liaisons. We work with ours in terms of getting them moved into the program. Program. And the program, the VA has several different programs we participate in, one called grant per diem, and it is we get a set amount from the VA to support an individual per day, so they have to be there today, sleep there tonight, and then we'll apply for funding. It's retroactive, so it's like, as I said, we spend, yeah, we spend March money, yeah. And then in April, you know, they will send us so much back. We tend to accounting is everything, and we get about 60% of the funds we need for the veterans through the VA. We have to basically raise the other 40 so we're we're out there trying to bring in grants, trying to bring in major gifts and things of that nature to help support the program.
Spencer 30:59
Is the VA aware of that, that the funding that they provide is insufficient in order to take care of somebody. Is that the design of the program? Or would the VA, if here say this should be enough? I
Jim Ward 31:11
think it's the design of the program. I think there is a set. It's set way up in Washington, like our local VA has nothing to do with with, for sure, the per diem rate and is and so that rate is set. It has gone up significantly. It went up skyrocketing at the beginning of the COVID crisis. They were like, Okay, so there's, as I said, there's a set rate. So it is set at a maximum rate per day, and it varies from state to state, so they call it the state Max okay, I would imagine that the per diem rate in New York City is set much higher than than ours is, as it probably should be. But during COVID, there was, you could go up to one and a half times, or two times the max rate, wow, oh, wow. But you still have to put together a a it's not just here's here's money. So you have to show how you're spending the money, and then you have to prove, after the fact, that you did spend the money the way that you you do. So it, but it is not hard for us to say we spent 100% of what you brought in.
Spencer 32:19
Have those funds come down now, since COVID, like, has that receded from the double
Jim Ward 32:25
Yes, so the double you can apply to double is is long gone. Everything changed. May 11 of 2023, was we signed the COVID is over. You know, so that that was when COVID Emergency stopped being declared by the administration, by all of the different departments, so that automatically changed. So the rates, again, they fluctuate every year, and they're set on a on a fiscal year basis. Sometimes they go up, and then you can reapply for a different rate. There's a lot of accounting that goes into saying, Okay, this is how we're going to spend this money. And they clearly don't want you to just, we're on national calls every month with the National VA that you know there, there's always, here's an educational section of the call, and here's this, and here's here's finance is going to come on the Office of Business Management, make sure you're doing this and make sure you don't do that. So yeah, entrepreneurially,
Spencer 33:23
I appreciate you letting me go into the kind of economic side of it, because that's so much. That's my heart language, and what I feel like starts to peel back the layer of how to at least try to solve for whatever is going on here. So when you think about the federal support that you receive from the VA, is there state support specific to Tennessee that is available, that is critical, and does that contrast with other states of saying, well, there's some states that really do come alongside the VA and supplement it. How do you think about Tennessee specifically and the support you receive.
Jim Ward 34:03
There are no programs in Tennessee that specifically address daily basis kinds of work. Now, the state has quite a few programs aimed in the direction of housing first, obviously we, we get our guys, if they're not VA healthcare eligible, we have to work, work them into the TennCare program, those, those kinds of things. There are a lot of programs aimed at, as I said, providing housing and helping in that regard. And there are, there are grants out there. We just never had a way to necessarily qualify for them. Because we're transitional housing. Our goal is to get you in here and then out of here into your actual house. So primarily we are, as I said, federal grant funded, and then we. We, we raise the rest of it.
Annalee Cate 35:01
Just to make sure I understand that. So you're saying, essentially, there's more programs available for long term housing support than there are for the transitional program, right?
Jim Ward 35:10
That is what they're they're aimed at now we and again, we're, we're fortunate to try to partner with pretty much everybody that's out there doing the things that they do in their space, Second Harvest Food Bank is one of them. We're a purchasing agency of Second Harvest. So we go over there once a week and we can buy food at a much, much reduced rate. And then they also have some things that we that we can get from them that, you know, so we're a donor, they donate to us, and so we're able to manage those things that well, so and a lot of that, but most of the time, our most expensive, you know, we're just like any other you mentioned a business. What's your biggest line on salary, taxes and benefits? I mean, that's just that is our program. And as I always tell people, I've got, you know, five or six social workers here. They are the program. They are the ones who are in the trenches with these guys on a daily basis. They are the ones doing housing navigation. They are the ones developing the care plans and holding these guys accountable so they they need to be paid, and I don't pay them enough and but that's our number two cost is food. So it is, if you can imagine right now, if I'm feeding 49 guys in our transitional housing program, we also have a second program called progressive housing, which is a income based rental program. So we do have 17 departments in our building that we can rent back on an income base, and we have but they still have an on site social worker that works with them every week. It's so and that program is for people who are not quite ready or not quite able. They may have more evictions that they need to pay off. They may be waiting out felony terms. There's a lot of different things that for reasons that people can't rent here. So we'll in any given day, we have 16 or 17 guys, and what we call we just call it the third floor program, because that's where it is. But it's progressive housing, and they're up there, so we also allow them to participate in the meal plan. So just to say, I've got on any evening, I'm feeding probably 60 guys, three meals a day, 365 days a year. So that adds up, and it doesn't cost me any less to buy milk than it does the average family.
Annalee Cate 37:47
So I have a couple rapid fire questions just to try to understand the program. So question one is like, what's the average time a guy spends in the program to get through the transition right?
Jim Ward 38:00
So our average right now is about six months. The average time a person is at Matthew 25 is about six months. You know, we have some guys that come in and they're very successful very quickly. Yeah, I have a couple of gentlemen who've been here going on 400 days
Annalee Cate 38:16
Meaning that by the end of that six months, they are in a place of their own. They've got the key, like you talked about, you know, and then they're, in some in that capacity, self sufficient. So that is the goal. That's the goal. Yeah, so, harsh reality, right? Because it's a tough situation. What, what is the long term success rate of that? Like, how many of these guys are we seeing come back versus, hey, we got them through it.
Jim Ward 38:44
I would say one, obviously recidivism is just one of the things that we look at. I've been there four years now my interim period is really stretched out. In that four years, I've probably seen three or four guys that are back. Okay, okay, so why don't we have Mr. So and So back? That's hardly any though, yeah. Well, back to us. So I would say, you know, one of the things that we do now is we, I keep saying we've added programs, but we have added another one called an alumni program, which we now have a social worker whose job it is to basically provide programming for guys after they leave our program and get into housing, and that may mean everything from she works with them on budgeting. We're delivering food bags because they may get over there and they're living still trying to live off $500 a month disability income or something like that. That's impossible. So we're, you know, always working on that, trying to help them get furnishings, but also helping to build some community. Because we have some guys, a guy's been here six months, and we've had them tell us, suddenly, I'm here and and now I have, I see the same people every day. I have community, I meet dinner, and then I get housing, and I'm alone and I'm alone and I'm just stuck over there alone. And so one of the things that that our alumni program is trying to do is bringing those guys back, and we're doing simple things. I mean, she a Chick fil A lunch for 10 guys, or she'll go around and pick those up who need to be picked up. Last week, she took a, you know, five or six guys to zany's. Yeah, they've never been anything like that, you know, and again. But the long term goal is, you know, she runs a rent WISe program. How do you budget? How do you pay? Trying to keep that out. Now, I will say, using a national statistic, there has been a push every year by the National VA to house. In 2022 it was 36,000 I believe, homeless veterans. In 2023 it was 40,000 homeless veterans. Interesting thing in 2022 they did that we housed 38,000 homeless veterans. Homeless Veterans increased by 7% so it's like you're filling the pool back up from the bottom, even though we're getting guys into housing and on, if they said there are 65 to 70,000 known homeless veterans this year, and you housed 40,000 of them that should only leave 2025 and it just unfortunately hasn't worked that way yet of the ones. So the new push this year, there's a new new goal, 41,000 I believe it is. But there's also a goal of reducing the recidivism. So what we found was about 5% of those that were placed into housing. So there's kind of that. So we're not always successful. Is I can go back in 12 months and go, you're still here. So and then we everything's a metric, and everything's a metric for the VA, and we have a goal of keeping what we call our negative exits at below 20% and so if I bring in 150 individuals this year, I'm trying to keep the ones that leave the program before success below 20% and that can happen for a variety of reasons. They can just leave, you know, using the military term, we call it, going AWOL, and next thing I know, they they've just left, yeah, and we can't find them, and their family doesn't know where they are, and they they've just, you know, they've stepped out. Or we have some that just are, so they refuse the program, as we say, and you get to a point where we can't just put you up here so you can try to sneak in substances, or you're just not going to do you're not making any progress. We're not so we try to keep that below 20% and we're pretty successful at doing that. But I would say probably, you know, statistically, I think we're about, like the national average, there's probably gonna be five to 10% that we can go they're homeless again,
Annalee Cate 43:11
Yeah, this may be too big of a question, but as we went through that series, what I wanted to get to the root of, to just understand is, I'm amazed at it's only six months on average to get them, you know, not homeless, right? And somewhat self sufficient, and I'm amazed at how low your recidivism rate is. So for me, when I hear that, I think what I'm looking for trying, and I imagine we would all be asking, is, when you think about those different programs and the things you're doing, obviously, it's unique to everyone, and it's, you know, this problem for this person and this problem for this person. But are you able to kind of see that common trend of like, if we can just get them through the substance abuse problem, or if we can just get them through the psychological issues, or if we can just teach them how to budget and how to transition into the real world. What is, what is, kind of, some of that common thread that you would say is like, Man, this is what's really moving the needle for these guys and making the difference.
Jim Ward 44:11
You know, I think it's, I don't know that there's a single thing, and I think it's all of the above. I think it's a concept of, we're not doing anything for these men that, you know, they have to, at a point, agree, you know, and I have some guys, I've had a guy sit across on my desk, and he's a homeowner now. I mean, he's moved through our program, second floor, third floor, progressive housing program left. Not only need to leave with a key, he left owning a home. He had bought a house out in Ashland city. But you know he said, Matthew 25 saved my life. And because we finally had people who went, we're going to hold you accountable to some behaviors here that nobody has for a very. Very long time, but they still have to get to that place where they're willing to be held accountable. And one of my board members, you know, I was just frustrated. You talk about the frustration, I'm like, there. It feels like there are times when I have social workers who are sitting across the desk from these guys meeting with them, and I can almost hear them going, will you let me help you? Yeah. Will you let me help him? And sometimes the answer is no. It's kind of Jesus by the pool of Bethesda. That is exactly my board member I'm doing this complaint. And he tells that story, and he goes, if you've ever read it this way, and he was like, the question of the weird question Jesus asked is, do you want to be well, yeah,
Spencer 45:43
It’s an incredible story. It's like, oh, maybe lot of people, yeah. There's a lot of people that wrestle with that to say there is a commitment that you cannot make. Someone get well, they have to want it. They have to have that, that desire for radical change.
Annalee Cate 46:01
I have two questions on that. This is something I'm curious about, twofold. And my husband and I have talked about this a lot. Is that one of the things kind of post? Well, actually, let me ask a question. First, do you see any consistency across the branches or patterns? Is it, is it across all branches, the groups that you're dealing with? Or do you see any particular branches where you have a higher
Jim Ward 46:21
Oh, I will get in trouble with that. I think it's across all branches. And this is off the top of my bald head. I probably see less air force than anything, okay, okay. But in general, most will have a majority are straight army, because that's, frankly, the majority the numbers, numbers, yeah, so I think it's just a numbers, numbers game that way. I've, you know, I've had people you tell stories that, you know, what did you do? I was on a submarine, which, to me, is just like, well, that's just the most unbelievable thing in all you know, and so, in,
Annalee Cate 47:07
Yeah, so, so here's my question. So when you think about what y'all are talking about, you want to get well and this ideology, one of the things that comes to my mind in thinking about these guys transition, and things my husband and I have talked about is, in there's an element of, once they've, you know, served their country, and the kind of the mentality they have to take on to do the work that they're doing and live that life, to come out of it. There's, there's a loss of significance that's going to be really hard to ever replace or refill of of what you're doing being really meaningful, and you know that that identity, so I'm curious when I hear you talk about, you know, getting these guys into community and having these social workers really engage with them, I wonder how often it is kind of having that connection of someone that really cares, and making them feel like you know you are loved and you are supported, and and giving them a reason to want to get well, or some sort of hope or optimism on the other side, that there's something better waiting. And I think about it, with regards to the high like divorce rates, right that you see for military. And I wonder, too, for a lot of the guys that you guys treat, how many of them you know are estranged from spouses, children, family, is that a common theme? Is that something that comes out a lot.
Jim Ward 48:30
That is a very common theme? And we have guys who are, you know, and sometimes they're like, I'm I'm homeless, I have a job, I've got massive alimony payments, or I've got massive child support payments, or I'm behind this much in, you know, again, you can't get housing if you've got these, yeah, three different judgments against you right now. They're just, it's just very difficult, difficult to do. I think, you know, it's really a statistic I've not sat down and looked at, but I would a significant, significant, if not. The majority of our guys are divorced. We almost never have someone who's there and currently married or currently even in a partnership relationship, or we have a few, and then sometimes that's that's a problem, you know, you know I can hear stop going back over, yeah, to her place, yeah, yeah. You know that that she's already got the typical the restraining order against you, yeah? But she says you can come Yeah, but then it's going to blow up again. Stop doing that, you know? And it's so those kinds of interpersonal things are pretty common as well. And for a lot of our guys, you know, here in Nashville, this the issues are we, and it's true, there is a lack of affordable housing. However, you. Want to define that and, and, and, you know I got, not only did I get to Matthew 25 right before someone mentioned the word COVID, also across the street from our facility is this beautiful soccer stadium that I got to watch them break ground and see the superstructure come up and all of that, I have a 600 several 600 $650,000 homes across the street from our place. So that's to say that there's just less and less of definable affordable housing we work a lot with two different programs. One is, you know, Housing and Urban Development, and other is the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing. So we just call it HUD VASH. And there are, again, income limits before you get subsidized housing, that wait period then can be quite significant. So we get them in the in the process, we get them in the cycle, we get them approved, then finding an apartment that's that we can that suitable to them and that we can get them in, that takes some time. And in that regard, we've had some people waiting months to get a place, and they're frustrated. You know, they're they're here, they're they're in the recovery program, they've got a job, they just can't get into the housing they want. And then, if you have those, and there aren't, we have a few that make good money. They're they're skilled labor. They're working in places. They're making good money, they're putting it in the bank. We have a savings program. We try to help monitor that they don't qualify for any kind of subsidized housing. So now you're looking at market rate, and where are we going to find use some market rate as a single individual, maybe no car that sort of thing in in Nashville. So there's all of those things come into play when we're trying to get guys even moving through the process.
Spencer 52:16
So me, as a business entrepreneur, I can't help but hear this and say, How can I help? How can we fix so let me put a business consultant hat on for one second and just ask you, because when I look at a business sometimes, as with every nonprofit, I say, how do you increase revenue, which for you is going to be donations, since you can't control what you get from the VA or other subsidies. But one of the other sides is assessing cost and say, Well, how do we eliminate costs? Because that can serve the same function. If I can cut my cost, then my dollar goes further. And something that stuck in my head, since you mentioned it is about your food costs, saying that, I think you said, was the second largest cost that you have after salary, taxes and benefits.
Jim Ward 52:58
it is
Spencer 53:02
so help me understand that, because when I think about food costs, which I imagine is in the hundreds of 1000s of dollars, if not more, for you, it seems as though there's more infrastructure in the Middle Tennessee community around making food available for those that would otherwise not have it. Now, food pantries, you mentioned Second Harvest, so the concept of your having to pay for food is something that I'm trying to wrestle with as perhaps a way to be able to help an organization like yours. So have you ever had any luck with a restaurant tour in Nashville that may not be able to help 365 days a year for three meals, but they may say, You know what we can do, eggs like breakfast. We got it. Walk me through some of that.
Jim Ward 53:52
To say, well, I will say we have high food costs in terms of the percentage of our budget and that sort of thing, but we don't, fortunately, also have to buy 100% of everything that we serve. So we partner with several restaurants in town. So we have three weekly runs that we go and pick up food from Papa John's, Starbucks. Where we get big donation from whole foods every week. So we bring in. So the thing is, we have a one of our guys. I remember who it was made a statement one time about if you come to Matthew 25 you will gain the Matthew 25 because Hopper Johns.
Spencer 54:37
I get that
Jim Ward 54:39
We're going to serve you food. And you know, there's never a day where you can't go into the lunchroom, and there's all of there's the pastries and the this and the that and the snacks and the things of that nature available. So lunch is usually a lot of Papa John's and sandwiches and soups and things of that nature. I. Our breakfasts are pretty Continental, I'll be honest, because most of the time they're served out at 536 in the morning. We got working guys that got to get up and get going and that sort of thing. Dinners are fully prepared, usually, so we employ a cook full time that works and prepares the lunch and dinner menus and works things up for for PrEP, on on the weekends. We also partner with a couple of different organizations. We have a caterer, we musically Fed is a is a organization that where we get a lot of things. We just got all of the leftover Green Room food from the Nicki Minaj concert. Okay? And usually that is high end kinds of things. So the next thing you know, our guys have got the vegan option, and they've got the fancy chicken, and they've got the, you know, the shrimp and grits and the whole nine yards. So musically Fed is an organization that we can get things through, and that's usually during the concert season, we'll, next thing you know, they'll show up on on Sunday evening after the thing. We also work with a group out of Virginia called Mercy chefs, and that is a group of chefs and entrepreneurs who decided to do just that. We can provide meals. We can provide foods to us, and we now can go to them, and they will bring us several loads every week of pre prepared things. And then we can also order up so they're able to give us a meat, three vegetables, a roll in a dessert for three bucks. Wow. Okay, so they deliver. So we're, you know, we do work with a lot of those kinds of organizations to try to keep the costs down.
Spencer 56:49
So it sounds like you've got a lot of inputs from different ways, but even amongst all those examples that you gave, would you say that that a third of your food is free and you're having to pay for two thirds. What does the ratio? Because I just what I hear in that,
Jim Ward 57:05
I would say probably maybe 15% 20% of our food is free. Oh, wow, we pay for the rest.
Spencer 57:12
It's interesting, because I just I wonder, and part of what I hope is that people listening to this, I hear three major brands that you've talked about Papa John's, Starbucks, Whole Foods, clearly nationwide. Brands, what I don't hear immediately in there are local brands, groups that are right outside, literally your front door, that may have a heart uniquely for veterans and for your cause, that at least, from what I hear, could be of enormous benefit to you to just help try to move that 15% of free food up to 30. I mean, how big of a difference would that make any of those, you know?
Jim Ward 57:54
And the thing is, we like to serve our guys, someone would say they're probably a little heavily starchy, but, but you're not going to go hungry. Yeah, and, and so, so we do, particularly for dinner, there's a lot of food prep that that goes into that sort of thing. One of the things that we have worked at doing, and we've been moderately successful is trying to convince everything from churches to families to companies and organizations to do what we call Sunday dinner. If we could have 52 Sunday dinners prepped and paid for. And we've had groups to do that. And you can do it in multiple ways. You can cook it, you can cater it in. You can come to our fully functional commercial kitchen and prepare meals for 60 people. And we also want those you know, when you do that, to come and serve the guys and sit down and have dinner with the guys and stuff like that. And so Sunday dinner in Matthew 25 has been one of the things that, if we could just, and if you think about it, I mean, it's a percentage of 365, meals, but it's 52 weeks a year. Is the big, hairy, audacious goal, as you were to say, we're we're not buying that food, we're not prepping that food. Someone is coming in and doing that for us.
Spencer 59:19
And because that's where I get passionate about this, is that the nationwide narrative is to say our government is failing our veterans. And that may be true. It likely is true, in some respect, to say that it's clear the VA money is not adequate. It's clear that the transitional support is not where it needs to be, and some of that is way more complex than anyone like you or I could ever try and solve for we're just trying to pick up the pieces along the way. But what I also hear is the opportunity for Tennessee to come as a state that says, You know what? We're gonna let Illinois do what Illinois does. New York do what New York does, but here in Tennessee, we treat our veterans with respect. We come alongside them and pick them up from a place to help them pursue a life beyond their military service. And what becomes very tangible and real for me just starts off with like, hey, come bring a meal. And if you can't bring 52 meals, it is what it is, but come alongside us in a real and tangible way, because I feel like that, that experience of seeing what you're doing there with 49 beds will just change someone's whole worldview about looking into the eyes of somebody that has been willing to lay their life down for you, but now is in a place where they need help, right?
Jim Ward 1:00:47
And I think you know, I would say, as you mentioned, the we're fortunate in Tennessee and in with the VA that we have. You hear a lot, as you say, hear a lot of stories about the it just makes news. The terrible VA hospital, the terrible this. We have a good VA healthcare here in Tennessee. That's good to know we have a good office of homelessness. I mean, we have good folk, and they do throw. I know throw is the wrong word, but commit to millions and hundreds of millions of dollars towards veterans homelessness across the country. And you know the goal being, they're trying to address it with all of the different programs. It's the VAs program to say we're going to house 38,000 people. We're going to house 40,000 successful at doing it, preventing the refill of the pool is, is a part of the you know.
Spencer 1:01:52
I don't think we've got a handle on what, what that is, why there's more. When you say refill the pool, you're talking why there's just a few house this many.
Jim Ward 1:01:56
But then homelessness VA. Homelessness grew 7% Yeah, there could. Coming in and filling back up the pool. It's not the same people. We're not housing the same 38,000 next year as we did this year. So I think it's trying to figure out how that works and what you can do there. We're in that ground level space of going and we all want to say really large I think we want our words to say things like, our mission is to alleviate homelessness. Our mission is to end homelessness. We don't even pretend at Matthew 25 that that's our mission. We're going to do that one person at a time. The broader perspective, we can't prevent it. We're just trying to, we're trying to eliminate homelessness for this individual, yeah, and move this individual through. And as you know, why do you do it? Well, simple, Jesus asked us to, we didn't say you had to fix everybody. It's like we're bringing this in right here. And just like everything else, it just like any nonprofit, really, but, but it just takes the same money to do what we do as it does, to run a gas station or to to buy the things of that nature. And we do try to keep, you know, the food costs are, they've gone up. It's like, what is my legacy of my four years it's been, well, we were spending this much, and now we're spending this much, and part of that is if, if, if, in 2020 we had got to where we had 20 guys, 18 guys on site now we have 49 and another 17, and I got that many guys. That's just that alone, yeah, is, you know, plus the fact that the foods themselves have just, if you're going up 8% a year in real food costs, just the cost of the food. Some things have come back down. We're not in just like everybody else. We're not paying the same for the eggs. I know because we were and like in 2021 Oh, my goodness, but, but I always like to look at, you know, well, the rate of food inflation is down this year. Yes, yes, it is. That's just a saying. It's not going up as much, even further we've climbed to here, and we're not going back down, it doesn't appear.
Spencer 1:04:29
Well, that's really helpful, and at least gives something tangible for the feeling that everybody has, and hearing the story of just saying, how do I help? And there's clearly financial ways to be able to help. I think there's other creative ways to be able to help. All of it is needed. So maybe Annalee and I will wrap by each doing one more question to kind of bring us home.
Annalee Cate 1:04:53
You know, I think when I think about that, this community in particular, and working with veterans. And, you know, maybe to even just bring a little bit of levity to it, as as you've interacted with these guys over the last four years, one thing I know about veterans is that, you know, sometimes dark, but they have a sense of humor on them, you know, to navigate these things, but, but I'd love to hear some of the stories of where you guys find the joy, the celebrations, maybe some of the wins, you know, how, any of those kind of victories you can share from the last four years?
Jim Ward 1:05:26
Yeah, and I think, you know, we, we have several. We have them every day and every week. As I said, you know, you, if you come to our place and you'll see the wall of pictures of all of our guys, where we have taken the Polaroids and we put them up and we, you know, those, those are our most happy success, powerful. We have guys, not all of them, but we've now had, in my four years there, we've had three guys come through our program, and they've come in onto our transitional housing program. They moved up and graduated into our progressive housing program. So now they're, they're renting an apartment from us, working that still progressing forward when they left, they left, signed on the dotted line as a homeowner. Yeah, and those, those are your ultimate successes, you know, now, tell will. Well, that just means now you've got to mow your own grass, and you've got all those things the rest of us have to put up with, but you're right there. Most of their guys are, you know, they have senses of humor, and they can be dark, they can be quirky. They can be like, Okay, we have a weekly, a monthly, rather resident meeting. And it is that we go through and we sort of tell them, maybe this is the problem of the month. Guys, y'all are not doing this or that or whatever, because all of our guys have chores. Everybody's responsible for doing things, and we rotate them around and helping keep the place maintained. Because I don't have a staff of, you know, 15. I don't have concierge housekeepers. And then we hand out awards for, you know, everything from most creative to the biggest one was, was the mountain of molehill award every it's the person who's like, Okay, I'm going to take this down and sit to take this up. But then we have an Open Forum period of time there. And I'm always like, oh, Lord, what are we going to talk but it's always interesting to see these guys who all have been in the military, and they almost always now stand up and go, y'all know, pointing everybody else, all their fellow guys. We're not supposed to do this. We're not supposed to do that. Police your own, you know. So they try to help themselves accountable really well as well so, and they're just, you know, some are just, they're their own person, and then others are just always in the mix of of everything. We have one guy right now who spends a lot of time. He's very talented doing artwork, and so he's just always drawing, and we they're just hanging up everywhere. We're like, Okay, Mr. Brown, we gotta, we gotta build a portfolio at this point. I can't have them hanging everywhere, that's great.
Annalee Cate 1:08:23
Thank you.
Spencer 1:08:24
Maybe what I'd ask is, you know, true to your brand, Matthew 25 there is a missional focus of caring for these men, but I imagine also bringing them to the Lord and having professions of faith. I think that would be a compelling narrative so that church goers that are hearing this program can also understand that there is something deeper going on here than giving them a key to their place, right and making sure they're fed. So can you just talk about that component of what that's looked like over the last four years?
Jim Ward 1:08:56
Yeah, and I, you know we do. We have a weekly Bible study that that guys are invited to. We also do regular worship service and service of communion on on about every other Monday at Matthew 25 one of our staff members is actually an ordained minister, so we keep that moving in most of our 12 step programs are basically spiritually based programs. Now we don't we're not as a board. Now we had a big discussion about this, and we're not necessarily an evangelical program, but you cannot come to our place, and if you want to come to a place where you're not going to hear about Jesus, you're not going to be talked to, you're not going to be invited to a Bible study. You're not we're not for you because, as we say, it's, it's on the walls, it's why we do what we do, and we we hope that that our guys realize you're actually showing me the love of Christ. Least this way, and that it's, it's not as big as you know, I think y'all had asked for a book that I read, or things of that nature. One of the things that just finished here is that was a book called liturgy the ordinary, and a really big part of that is, whatever you're doing is is basically service to someone else, if you pay attention to how you do it. And we hope that our guys feel that bubbling up, that, you know, we're not telling you, you're you're homeless, you're addicted, because you're a sinner. We're like, hey, that's true, actually. And that's the same reason I have my problems and everybody else has their problems. Yeah, here's some answers for for how to help that. And then the truth of the matter is, and this, this, and I say this sometimes when I go to speak at churches, the concept that I'm going to get you in, you're going to hear, you're going to get saved, and that's going to solve all of your problems is really totally untrue. That's right, yeah, it's, you know, it hasn't solved all of mine in the sense that, well, I no longer have that temptation. Sometimes that works, but off time. It's like, okay, so now, now you're, you have someone who's in it with you. It's a daily walk. It is a daily walk. And that's kind of what we try to get across to our guys, that this is the way to do it. And the Bible studies are interesting because, you know, right now they're in Romans. I mean, that's, that's a pretty interesting way to spend a Wednesday evening with a bunch of homeless men is doing a study in the book of Romans.
Spencer 1:11:46
Jim Ward, I respect the heck out of what you're doing. Running a nonprofit like you are. You've got the chops to be a business guy in a for profit world. You've clearly had to navigate a really tough COVID period, and have brought an organization, having grown through a period that killed off many more nonprofits than it helped stabilize and so the fact that you have pulled that through while serving the least of these, serving those that are forgotten, is something that certainly has our respect and admiration, and we really appreciate what you're doing for those that are sometimes forgotten here in Tennessee in particular. So thank you.
Jim Ward 1:12:24
Thank you for having me and getting the story out.
Spencer 1:12:27
Absolutely. Thank you.
