Community Family Life Services ("Third & Eats")
Rev. Thomas Knoll
305 E. Third St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 347-0511

Check out the stylish green awnings and then step down into the bright, modern coffee shop on the busy corner of Third and E in Washington's Judiciary Square district, just a few blocks from the Capitol. Lawyers and lobbyists bustle past, and many of them slip in for an oversize cup of steaming coffee and a fresh muffin on their way to work. Green and white tile, shiny green tables, brass chairs, attractive framed art and baskets of flowers make clear that this is no mere diner but a classy deli and coffee shop, where attentive workers in trim green uniforms smile as they work in a shipshape kitchen behind large glass windows in full view of the dining public.

The first restaurant in the neighborhood and still one of its most popular, "Third & Eats" is a standard, competitive restaurant in every way but one: Owned and operated by a non-profit organization, Community Family Life Services, it exists primarily to provide real-world training for homeless people, offering them saleable job skills in the food-service industry and a firm, respectable employment reference on their resumes.

"We pride ourselves on doing the weird and the unusual," Executive Director Tom Knoll once said, only half-joking; and Third & Eats is certainly evidence of that. It joins Milwaukee's outstanding Esperanza Unida job-training program as one of the nation's few creative non-profits that operates a real business in a competitive situation as a way to move unemployed and homeless people into the labor market.

It's hardly a money-maker, Knoll acknowledges; by traditional business standards, the restaurant will probably "lose" some $80,000 this year (1994). The money goes to cover expenses and a $45 weekly stipend for the workers. Unable to persuade traditional banks to underwrite such a risky venture, the organization turned to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod's Church Extension Fund, normally reserved for new CHURCH construction, to provide its $400,000 startup costs. But restaurant revenues of $240,000 in sales will offset three-fourths of its $320,000 in expenses, and the difference will take the form -- if all goes well -- of another 20 or more individuals trained in its 16-week program and moved on into good jobs in the food-service industry. (Since the restaurant opened in 1991, it has placed 95 percent of its 35 graduates in jobs.)

If this were Community Family Life Services' only program, it would be enough to rank it as one of the top grass-roots initiatives against hunger and poverty in America. But it's only one of many first-rate activities here.

CLFS, founded in 1969 as an outreach effort of nearby First Trinity Lutheran Church (where Knoll is one of the pastors with a particular ministry to the neighborhood's street people) focused initially on serving families whose breadwinner was in jail or prison. As the 1980s passed, however, the church -- like many other urban institutions -- began serving more and more homeless people, and eventually its focus changed to homelessness and then to jobs. It has opened two transitional-housing programs (Trinity Arms, in the same building as Third & Eats, and Partner Arms, so-called because it's in partnership with several other church groups and Manna Inc., Washington's non-profit housing developer.)

During the late '80s, it innovated a truly creative "reverse commuting" program, providing daily van service for 150 inner-city residents who worked at or around Dulles International Airport, a $10 weekly service subsidized by the employers in competition with private transportation services that charged four times as much. The program died two years ago when the Bush-era recession eliminated most low-income jobs at Dulles; but its concept lives, Knoll said, in a reverse-commuting program under the U.S. Department of Transportation that provides grants for similar initiatives around the country and that has survived the change of administrations from Bush to Clinton.

And that's still not all. CFLS runs an employment-counseling program that includes such basics as resume preparation and employment-seeking counseling and such high-tech innovations as a free voice-mail service that homeless people can use to leave a telephone number for prospective employers to call, and can access their messages from any public phone booth. It offers a clothes closet, a comprehensive children's services program including mentoring and tutoring services and much more; and it has received McKinney Act money and a District of Columbia grant to open a large, quality SRO housing complex for 150 people on the district's north side next year.

And to top it all off, CFLS and Manna Inc. recently collaborated on an affordable housing venture, reclaiming a block in Washington's Anacostia neighborhood that had been all but abandoned to crack dealers. The Trinity Housing at Galveston Place project completely rehabilitated 10 buildings and converted them into rent-to-purchase units. The first three families have already taken over the houses, purchasing them for $45,000 under financing arrangements that yield $450 monthly payments; and neighbors say the once-blasted block has been reclaimed from drugs and crime.

All this, and more, from a church-based group with a staff of 22 and a $1 million annual budget. "We take extreme risks here," Knoll says. "We're a faith-based organization, and our faith kind of leads us to take greater risks than we might otherwise." Here in D.C., the risks they take are paying off.

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.

Send him E-mail.

Back to the @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG Home Page