The Bridge
Suzanne Viehmann
3603 N. Seventh Ave.
Phoenix, Ariz. 85013
(602) 943-4871

The chips and salsa are tasty at the improbably named Carlos O'Brien's restaurant in Phoenix, and the servers are just as chipper and friendly as you'd expect of an Anglo-style Mexican spot that specializes in Margaritas the size of birdbaths.

Our server, a young woman whose badge bore the name "Tory," had a particularly attractive smile, sparkling and even, and it flashed as she listed the day's lunch specials.

"We paid for that smile," confided my companion, Suzanne Viehmann.

Eh?

That comment stopped me for a minute, but only one. Tory was a participant in The Bridge, one of the best transitional-housing programs for homeless families I've run across anywhere. Viehmann, the director of the program, set up the lunch at O'Brien's so she could show off one of her prize people. Tory, a once-homeless mother of two who'd ended up living in a Salvation Army shelter, got an apartment, a lot of support, and a few thousand dollars worth of dental repair work from The Bridge. Things were looking better in her life, she said between the burritos and the tamales, than they had looked for a long, long time.

"They gave me a lot of support here," she said, flashing that expensive smile. "I finished school, and every time I wanted to whine about something, they let me do it."

Like the guys I met at the Cafe 458 program in Atlanta, Tory was lucky enough to find her way to a program that understood one fundamental secret of turning people's lives around: It has to happen one on one, and it has to happen in a setting that takes time to listen to people long enough to understand what they really need. This is another premise that will recur: You can't rebuild people's lives on an assembly line.

The Bridge rebuilds lives with a flourish. Surprisingly simple in concept, it's a partnership of a dozen Phoenix-area churches, each of which agrees to raise $400 a month to cover the rent for a specific homeless family -- like Tory's -- for one to two years. But that's not all. In addition to cash, each organization also commits 10 volunteers to "coach" the family during that period, giving them support and friendship to back up the more traditional "case management" that each family gets from a Bridge social worker. The Bridge uses the word "coach" consciously, former director Marlene Bjornsrud told me on an earlier visit, because a coach shows people how to do a job but never does the job for them. A coach helps people determine their potential and then lets them reach for the goal on their own. It's all aimed at helping the individual identify and work out the problems that got her on the street in the first place. This is not a short-term project; it takes three months of counseling before a formerly homeless parent is ready even to begin addressing underlying problems.

In a significant variation on most transitional-housing programs, Bridge families aren't segregated away from the community in an institutional setting reserved for homeless people. Rather, they're moved into nine units scattered through the thoroughly middle-class La Mirada Apartments, a 300-unit adobe-style complex with shady, manicured lawns, laundry rooms and swimming pools. Bridge families aren't singled out as "special" or "different," and their neighbors generally don't even realize who they are.

After four years of operation, The Bridge is starting to establish an unquestionable record of success, with 84 percent of its participants moved into what it considers self-sufficient status: in their own adequate housing and holding a full-time job. One, an animal lover, had hoped to find work as a veterinary technician but, learning that this trade pays just $5 an hour in the Phoenix area, got a job as a dog groomer instead, and with growing skills based on experience, she has a reasonable hope of earning $30,000 next year. Another Bridge graduate is an electronics technician with the FAA. Others are working well above minimum wage as respiratory technicians, practical nurses, even house cleaners -- a line of work that some might consider menial but that in Phoenix's more affluent suburbs pays an attractive $15 an hour or more.

The concept is outstanding, but it's no assembly-line process. The small number of churches and civic organizations willing to take on the long-term responsibility for giving a homeless family financial and moral support imposes a structural limit: With about a dozen sponsors in the picture and just nine apartment units available in the La Mirada complex, they've been able to move just 28 families off the street since 1991.

(Last visit: Summer 1995)

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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