Crescimento Limpo, Supportive Housing for Homeless

As we help individuals transition off the streets, we see a lot of signs, including the cardboard ones being held up on street corners. This morning, one such sign caught my eye. The sign asked for help to complete his documentation process. Since I am always looking for the individuals on the street who want something more, I figured that was a good sign! After an untimely green light and a flip around the block, I met Michael. He is from out of state, lives with a degenerative disease, and is working to reconstitute his life while sleeping on the streets. He was interested in our services so he hopped in my car, and we took a tour- first to our farm and then to the halfway house.

When we arrived at the farm, Michael stepped out and took a deep lung-filling breath. I affirmed him, letting him know that that was one of the great benefits of the farm- fresh air. Bruno, who is a new member coming into our halfway house, came to meet him and offered great words of inspiration. He told Michael, "The word of the day is perseverance. God's put a seed in you and I see it! You are supposed to be here! Enough suffering, look ahead, and step into the good that He has for you!" These were words that Bruno held onto from our morning devotional today. I don't know how it affected Michael, but I was inspired vicariously!

We then got back into the car and went to the halfway house. Eric, our monitor received us and gave Michael an explanation of life at CL as I stepped out for a scheduled call. When I was done with the call, I came back to find the two still chatting in our kitchen. I needed to leave to purchase seedlings for our farm and offered Michael a ride back to where I had met him. He replied, "No, I'm good here." I figured that was another good sign. 

I don't know much of Michael's story, and I don't know what he will decide to do with our services. But I do know that today he has a choice, and I am very glad for that. I am thankful to get to accompany stories like this one and to see friends in recovery cheering on friends towards recovery. 

Thank you for your help in maintaining this work!

In 2008, my wife Ali and I (Mark Kaiser) developed a habit of opening our home on Fridays for lunch. We invited the homeless population of our small town (Itu, Brazil) to come and quickly formed a strong bond with our disenfranchised friends. Upon requests, we found ways to support a few individuals to take part in residential drug rehab treatments. But to our dismay, we saw our friends return from treatment centers without a place to live while they rebuilt their lives, so they returned to the streets.

It crushed me to think that the support I was offering to my friends had become a ´dead end street.´ I figured that anyone who would do the work of maintaining sobriety and pursuing employment should have the opportunity to rebuild their lives. So in 2011, we began our organization under the name Associação Crescimento Limpo, (CL), also now supported by our American 501c3 named CL- Changing Lives. 

With the support of our local community members, friends, and church, we were able to open three small housing units where we could house eight single men and a monitor and support them as they restructured their lives. The need for this intervention quickly outgrew our resources, and in 2014 we transitioned to a larger downtown residential space and developed a more complete support staff. 

In our new downtown location, we were (are) able to house up to twenty five individuals, including men, women, and families. We maintain a licensed social worker and psychologist on staff as well as four monitors to assist house residents in their ongoing needs.

CL provides each resident with a bed, a locking closet, all meals, hygiene products, and access to wrap-around social services. We assist in continuing education, resume preparation, and financial planning with our residents. Our residents take part in a financial re-education where they ´pay rent' to themselves while at CL. Each resident is asked to open a savings account in their own name where they will deposit 30% of their income on a monthly basis for the duration of their stay at CL. This helps our residents to learn to live on less than what they earn and to accrue a savings that will facilitate their eventual departure towards independence.

While CL had its beginnings working with individuals coming to us from backgrounds of homelessness closely tied to chemical abuse, as soon as our housing services became available, we found our client base broadening. We have served victims of domestic violence, political refugees, individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities, and many families with children.

During the early years of CL´s existence, we realized that just sitting down to talk alone wasn't getting at the deeper issues that often needed to be worked through in the lives of our friends. We need to work shoulder to shoulder with residents. So, I identified an empty lot, found the owner, and asked for permission to use the lot to build a therapeutic garden. Learning of our story and progress, the landowner agreed and made the space available to us free of charge!  We found gardening to be an area in which any of our prospective residents could come alongside us and embrace a working rhythm. Having this structure in place, we were able to work on skills like punctuality, respect in the workplace, authority, work ethic, honesty, etc. This allowed for much deeper therapeutic conversations and gave us access to areas of our friends lives that often caused derailments so that those areas could receive the needed attention. The garden space developed over time into our garden café, the Caféla, which has employed many of our house residents and currently maintains a staff of 12 individuals. The land owner worked in our favor this last year to help us purchase the property which had become so essential to our mission, giving more permanence to this place of dignified work and recovery! 

Today, our work projects have been further developed, and they include a garden café, a carpentry shop, and a small farm. We work towards sustainability in each of these ventures; our farm provides produce for use at our café and for purchase by local grocers, our café operates based on sales to the general public, and our carpentry shop is sustained via custom-built projects for clients. 

We have had the privilege of seeing our friends rebuild their lives as they embrace a dignified partnership with us, and we are very thankful to say that the road to recovery which once appeared to be a dead-end street is now full of new life and opportunity!