Helping our most vulnerable neighbors with Northwest Assistance Ministries

Brian Carr is the chief advancement officer for Northwest Assistance Ministries. They currently have a record number of people in need of their services. Homelessness and hunger have become much bigger problems in the past few years. They help people with rent and mortgage assistance and offer learning and vocational training. They also serve over 900 meals a day to our elderly neighbors through their Meals on Wheels program. You can help them serve even more people by donating and volunteering: www.NAMonline.org

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome to Houston, PA, Houston'spublic affairs show, an iHeartMedia broadcast.
Our disclaimer says that the opinions expressedon this show do not necessarily reflect those
hell by this radio station, itsmanagement staff, or any of its advertisers.
My name is Lawalt, I amthe Texan from France, and my

(00:26):
guest today is Brian Carr. Heis the Chief Advancement Officer for Northwest Assistance
Ministries their online at NAM online dotorg n AN dot org. I told
Brian before we started recording that Ican't believe it's been over two years since
I've had this organization on the show, because I feel like I talk about

(00:47):
them all the time, and Iguess it is a matter of strange broadcasting
timeline. But Brian, welcome back, and well, let's talk about everything
that has had to change since thepandemic happened, and many of your services
had to be changed updated, andyou also figured out how to do some
things better because of the new needs. And we should start by saying that

(01:08):
no matter what you hear, youshould trust your lying eyes when it comes
to the problem of homelessness in Houston. If you feel like you're seeing more
people under bridges. It's because you'reseeing more people under bridges. If you're
seeing it the way I do,and that is that the number of homeless
people increases in every corner of yourlife, wherever you go there's more of

(01:30):
them, then it's because there's morehomeless on the streets. And we have
several organizations in town that are doinga lot to help these people directly.
They're literally putting their money where theirmouth is when it comes to helping people,
and the Northwest Assistance of Ministries isone of them. And Brian,
the need was bad before the pandemic, but the pandemic, of course,

(01:53):
absolutely exploded the problems. We shutdown all those restaurants, and that was
a lot of people that were instantlyout of all income. A lot of
these people have several jobs at severalrestaurants and if they all closed down,
they don't have any money left.So I guess the first thing that y'all
had to deal with was the factthat people couldn't pay their rent. Absolutely

(02:14):
thanks for having us, We missedyou. Likewise, we went from serving
maybe twenty twenty five families of monthswas rental assistance and our housing program before
the pandemic hit, and then wedecided to shut down, and we all

(02:36):
of us together. Yes, wewere all in favor of it. And
I never thought I would ever haveto sign letters documenting that my staff were
essential in case they got pulled overon the road coming or going home from
work. That was crazy. Thatthat was amazing. But at least we
had that freedom. Yes, itwas worse than as you had to sign

(03:00):
an affidavit in an app You couldnot walk out of a twenty kilometer radius
around your home. If you werewalking to dog you had to sign that
affidavit saying at what time you leftthe house and at what time you were
expected to come home from your dogwalk. Can you imagine Texans being asked
to do that? Can you?Can you hear the gunfire? Can you

(03:20):
hear the gunfire? Would not haveOh my gosh, thank goodness for that,
not the gunfire, but the factthat we remained more free than most
places, Thank goodness. But whatwe did see was the pain. Yeah,
the pain that that happened. Thezip code where Nam's office is sitting
was the highest rate of the pandemicof COVID in the state of Texas,

(03:46):
seven seven zero nine zero was thehighest one of the highest rates of of
COVID now is one of the highrates for evictions. It seems they would
follow and it follows we went,as I was saying, from twenty to

(04:10):
twenty five families some months getting rentalassistance and housing assistance to one day a
Monday when we were taking rental applicationsafter everything was shut down. They're having
over three hundred families circling our buildingto wait in line to apply for rent
assistance. So how long did theyhave to wait? Hours? Because it's

(04:31):
a it's a process. Yeah,And so we at NAM we're looking for
ways to better serve the client,to better serve our donors and the community.
We learned and upgraded our website wherewe were able to do it all
online so they wouldn't have to waitout in the summer heat in Houston to
apply for rent assistance that they hadto then wait to see if they got.

(04:57):
So, since we did that,we've had over eleven thousand families apply
for rent assistance and housing assistance.How many of them can you actually help?
Because we're talking about millions of dollarswe're helping about them and it's luckily
for us, it isn't a matterof the finances being the limit. It's

(05:18):
just logistically, how many of theseapplications can you process, how many checks
can you cut, how many peoplecan you meet with? And can you
vetting? Can you get all theirdocumentation in? And that's what we're working
with. So we're working with aboutone hundred and fifty to two hundred families
every month. Wow, so howdo you help them? Like, what's

(05:39):
what does the process look like?They write in this application, they click
send, and how long do theyhave to wait before they hear back from
you. We do a random drawing. It's like a big hand comes into
all the applications every two weeks andit pulls out one hundred or so applications

(05:59):
are afting, goes through them,contacts every applicant one. Do they still
need help, what is their situation? What documentation do we need? And
if they are chosen in that randomselection, we can usually get assistance to
them within a week. Really,that seems like it's pretty fast, but

(06:20):
most of the time with these peopleis what they need is helped to pay
the rent right right, So ittakes about a week for them to possibly
get some assistance from you, butit's the wait for that pull that happens.
So if you were applied today,it may be two weeks before your
name got pulled. If your namewasn't pulled, you have to then wait

(06:43):
another two weeks. And so thisdoes sheer numbers, makes it a process
where a lot of people had towait a long time. And so no
matter what you're doing, you're basicallyworking at capacity and you're having to turn
down more people than you can helpevery week. That's the reality. Right,
we leave everybody in right, andbecause at one point we said it's

(07:06):
not going to be this bad forever, well now we're not sure it could
be. Who knows. But wewent from funders who have very little restrictions,
just get the funding out. Thatwas, but now a lot more
of the funding, of course,is coming from the government or from other
agencies, and so there's restrictions,there's red tape, there's red tape,

(07:30):
there's bureaucracy involved, and so wehave to match each client up to whatever
bucket of funding that we can makeit fit. And while there are those
clients that are trying to be proactiveand say I'm going to be late this
month. We actually can't do anythinguntil they are physically and technically late on

(07:54):
their rent. But you used tobe able to help them before the calamity
would actually hit them. To acertain degree. We could could anticipate and
help them with utilities, helped themwith food and groceries, and we can
still do that part. We canstill help them with whatever some of their
most immediate needs are, particularly food, where we're helping now fifty to sixty

(08:15):
families a day through our food pantry. Well, and you're you're also operating
a meals on wheels program, andyou told me you're serving nine hundred meals
per day, per day, ninehundred meals to homebound seniors every day.
I want to talk a little bitmore about in depth, so we'll come
back to it. But I aminterested in this administrative cluster that you're describing

(08:37):
because I recognize in it from theFrench government, which is extremely socialist and
everything has to be under the thumbof the government, which means that just
as you describe, system could benimble and work fast and help people within
a very short amount of time.You have been compelled to join bigger administrations

(09:03):
which are a slowing you way downb costing you a bunch of money because
now people who want their dollar togo to you, they can't really look
at your financial report to know howmany of that dollar is actually going to
go to services, because it's firstgoing to drop into someone else's bucket.
They're going to take some out.So if you give a dollar to the

(09:26):
to one of these parent organizations,by the time that dollar gets to Northwest
Assistance Ministries, it's what is itworth sixty cents now less? But it's
a catastrophic loss. I don't knowwhere you're operating if you was just you,
but I'm guessing it's closer eighty percentof the amount that you donate to

(09:46):
NAM go straight to go straight topeople. And so it's something that is
worth watching for. It's a verycomplicated subject and it's also political, so
I don't want to I want tobe shied by treating on my a political
show. But it's something that wedon't think about when we vote, and
it's actually where our vote affects mostof our lives. If we don't pay

(10:07):
attention to how they legislate our lives, we're going to keep losing dollar amounts.
Every every time a new administration comesin and sets a new rule,
every dollar you give becomes a wholelot less to the person you're trying to
help. We one thing that Iremind a lot of our donors, and

(10:28):
our board of trustees, and someof our leadership and management, way back
just before nine to eleven hit,if you can remember that far back there,
there was a controversial decision made bythe Bush administration to allow non government

(10:50):
agencies why ministries, churches, andnon nonprofits no offense to receive government money
to help their community. And itwas controversial because, wow, you know

(11:11):
the money the government needs to keeptrack of this and that is what allows
a NAM in Northwest assistance ministries nowto help so many people. Is the
ability for the government. Yes,their grants are cumbersome, their grants are
hundreds of pages, and but thatdecision way back then, now we saw

(11:41):
it working the way it was supposedto. At the very beginning of the
pandemic, the government was yes,it was pumping a lot of money out,
and think about that how you will, But here are new rules that
come with this money. But atthe beginning, it was just money.
It was just money. Because peoplewere hurting, and I think the government

(12:01):
didn't have time to think about,well, what rules could we put on
it. As we've gotten farther awayfrom the pandemic and a lot of us
now feel like the pandemic is behindus, but the hurt and the effect
is still there. Now we're seeingrules. Now, we're seeing more demographic

(12:22):
sensitive materials, more of the chosentype of earmarks that do drag the process
down, and it makes it difficultfor non prominence because a client comes in
and they're just hungry, they're justhurting, they're they're they're got an eviction

(12:46):
notice and they have three days andwe're here to help them and we're trying
to fit them into a bucket andthey don't quite fit in any bucket.
I gotta call the boss man beforeI can release this money. And he's
playing golf this afternoon. He's goingto be out of town tomorrow. That's
how it works. And I'm notspeaking for Brian here. I'm speaking from

(13:07):
myself in my experience. When youtalk to these people at the city level,
they're out to golf very often.It's absolutely extraordinary. And the rule
that the that the government could sendmoney to churches and faith based organization was
a recognition that the gross majority ofthe direct help communities received is from faith

(13:31):
based organizations. So I guess thatit was a logical decision. And to
go back to a point, youwere making. Every dollar, whether it
comes from the public or when ithits NAM, between eighty five and ninety
cents of that dollar goes to programsand services. So it's better than what
I mentioned. And when I mentionedearlier there was eighty percent of your dollar

(13:54):
that you give to NAM actually goesto services. It's high and they should
have jumped on me for that.So I was a bit insulted, But
it's all right, It's okay,we got it right. After all.
You're listening to Houston, PA,Houston's Public Affairs Show. My name is
Laurent, my guest is Brian Carr. He is the Chief Advancement Officer of
Northwest Assistance Ministries. They're online atNAM online dot org. NAM online dot

(14:20):
org. Now people can donate directlyto NAM though you can you can actually
participate in the programs. The websitemakes it very easy for you to do
so, uh and then NAM canjust send the money directly to the to
their clients. Absolutely. Absolutely,And that's about half of our budget still
comes from direct public support. Yeah. Has that support grown during the pandemic

(14:46):
where people along? Okay, ithas And that is the one thing that
I over the years, have reallylearned to appreciate about an organization like NAM
that the community expects us to takethe lead. They expected us to step
forward after Harvey. They expected usto step forward during the pandemic. But
they stepped forward with us. Thesupport was there. I tell a story

(15:11):
the first day after the rain stoppedafter Harvey. We're in our building,
we have clients coming in the youknow, everybody, we were in shock.
The third phone call the day wasone of the major oil companies in
the area. In this case,they're doing something good, they're doing something
good, but there are calling usthat we need your banking information when we're

(15:35):
going to transfer one hundred thousand dollarsto you today so you can start helping
people. Tell us who it was. It was Southwestern Energy. Southwestern Energy.
Well, we can be proud ofthat, we can there. They're
a wonderful, wonderful group. Instantreaction. They the minute the rain stop,
as you described, and for sixmonths later. We would see volunteers

(15:56):
from x on Mobile. We wouldsee Max on from we would see Vold
here from Anadarko. We would seeHaliburton and they would wear shirts and it
was all different colored shirts, andso it was this competition who had the
most shirts there. Yeah, butit was amazing to see the corporate world
coming to an organization like NAM tohelp people that they didn't know. Well,

(16:19):
we've we vilify the corporate world.You're not gonna hear me defend the
government, but I will defend thecorporate world because they're not always guilty of
bad things. I'm in favor ofpunishing them when they do bad things too.
Let's not hesitate. But the factis that in my capacity as the
host of Houston PA, I knowwhere a lot most of the money comes

(16:41):
from for these nonprofits. And thenumber of times somebody at XM, for
instance, that decides to do afront raiser and then the company comes in
behind says, well, whatever youraise, we're going to match it,
and then that's something that happens commonly. In fact, that's why nonprofit organizations
like to courage companies to do fundraisers, because you know, that there's a

(17:03):
lot of money that could be unlockedout of there. There's also we were
talking beforehand. They'll even match hoursthat you volunteer. Oh yeah, so
that's right. You mentioned this beforewe started recording. This is kind of
new, right, it's because ofthe new laws about retirement and all that.
It's you know, several generations beforeours, whether it was a pension

(17:32):
plan or you know, whatever retirementplan was in house was you know,
the property of the organization company.They owned that money and it was their
assets, and but it was agreat benefit. It was much stronger than
it is now. And so asthe stock market has risen and grown in

(17:55):
these companies, their resources are growing. They're seeing these accounts just grow like
crazy. And so if they're whentheir retirees come to them and volunteer X
OnMobile for one and several others,will match that time with a dollar donation,

(18:17):
with a financial donation to them.That's really cool if you think about
it. It's very encouraging because weoften think of corporate America as the last
place you would look for help,and then that's just a complete misnomer.
And I'm afraid that our media andI work for the media we're guilty of
make of giving people that impression.Now again, we don't want we have

(18:38):
to be vigilant too, because bigcorporations do tend to do evil things.
That's true. Look at the censorshipthat's going on online, for example,
and we need to keep a severeeye on this stuff, and they should
be severely punished for censoring people.By the way, censorship being the foundation
of tyranny, right right. Butthe vilification of the people who work for

(19:00):
these corporate corporations is where we justtake it too far. It's like,
sometimes a directorship is really evil andbad and they're doing stupid things, but
the employees are not necessarily in favorof these things, and they don't necessarily
have the freedom to quit and moveon, especially not in this economy.
When you when you come to namduring November and December is we're preparing for

(19:21):
our great holiday distribution of toys tofive thousand kids. Every single day,
there's a group of at least twentyto thirty that are coming from a major
oil company in the area. Yeah, whether it's Exomobile or some of the
others. There's also banks, there'sthere's all kinds of corporate support for what

(19:42):
is going on. And that isbecause what is a company, people exactly,
and so the people of the companyare who's coming to NAM and making
a difference. But let me tellyou something fun that we're doing. You're
doing self fundraisers. You're self fundraising. Let me do a quick idea before
we talk about that. Folks,you're listening to Houston, PA, Houston's

(20:04):
Public Affairs Show. My name isLaurent and my guest is Brian Carr.
He is a Chief Advancement Officer forNorthwest Assistance Ministries. You can donate to
them directly online NAM online dot organd AAM online dot org. This also
is where you would go if youwant to volunteer. Hey, listen,
you want to spend an afternoon meetinglike minded people and actually doing something good,

(20:29):
A place like the Northwest Assistance Ministriesis a good place to start.
But Brian tell us a little bitabout these do it yourself fundraising you you're
really just encouraging the American spirit here. Absolutely, the pandemic is starting to
be behind us. We're getting out, we're socializing again. As much as
I you know, don't go forthat sort of thing, but others do

(20:52):
other people like people, and sothat's fine. I myself liked it when
nobody was around, but that's aperson. That's a whole other issue.
And my dog against the war,it wasn't even against this world. It's
just without the world. But sowe're this is our fortieth anniversary, so
to help celebrate forty years of service, we're really promoting the neighbor helping neighbor

(21:18):
philosophy part of our mission statement.And so what we're encouraging is families or
groups, fratern of these sororities,rotary clubs, corporate groups, whoever to
they're passionate about, do what theyenjoy and raise some money doing it.

(21:40):
We had a gentleman who started offthe process. He rode the distance of
the border around our Meals on Wheelsprogram one hundred and fifty one miles.
If you drew a circle around allof our Meals on wheels, it's one
hundred and fifty one miles. Sohe rode to that on his bike during
April. So, whether you wantto do a lemonade stand, whether you

(22:00):
want to do anything that you like, do a garage sale. So nine
hundred meals delivered every day. That'swhat your Meals on Wheels program means to
the community. And you're not theonly one I know. The YWCA also
operates a big Meals on Wheels program. Do you get most of your food

(22:22):
from the Houston Food Bank? Isthat? How does that work? The
Meals on Wheels is a national program. Yeah, and locally it is administrated
by the Area Agency on Aging andso there is a government entity that controls
it, and different nonprofits bid onterritory and routes, and so our service

(22:47):
area encompasses you know, about thesize of Austin. Wow. And so
we serve nine hundred meals a day, including a Saturday. And where are
they cooked. There is a vendorthat has bid with Triple A that prepares

(23:07):
all the meals. They then deliverthem to each of the nonprofits who distribute
them. So it comes in abouteight thirty in the morning and we have
two hours then to deliver those mealsto the clients. We also have added
a portion where if they have pets, we will deliver dog and cat food.
If they need nutritional supplements, wedeliver that. And on Saturdays,

(23:30):
we have a small group of ourhomebound seniors that we actually deliver groceries to
Wow, and that most of thesepeople were elderly is that they are their
homebound seniors. They're usually signed upby their families because their families are concerned
about them. And so the benefitsthey're not only that they get a meal
every day, but they get avisit from somebody who can see that they're

(23:53):
okay, that they're still walking,they're talking okay. If they don't answer
the door, staff will then callthe family and say, hey, your
father didn't answer the door today.You may want to check on them,
and we can always do a wellcheck as well. Wow. That's that's
just so useful and in a demonstrationof actual compassion. And again the Northwest

(24:18):
Assistant Ministries are putting out nine hundredof those meals, but they're not the
only organization in town who do it. This should give us hope in human
nature, because it is our natureto do this too. And every one
of those meals is delivered by avolunteer. So these meals are they're actually
really nice. There are pictures youcan this is something you can easily look

(24:38):
online. But so they're delivered toyour to your center and then you have
to have a fleet of vans orwe have a volunteer. We have volunte
it out right in the morning,right away. We have actually three locations
that we distribute out of so thatit's more efficient. They can come into
whichever um distribution centers closest to them, and we have a total of forty

(25:03):
four routes that cover nine hundred seniorsand so you may have anywhere from ten
clients delivered two up to maybe twentyand it's mapped out. It's it's it's
you go to this house first inthis house, and then this house and
this house, and their name ison it. Any special instructions are involved,
and they have about an hour anda half to two hours to deliver

(25:26):
those meals and they get a goodmeal, they get milk, they get
nutritional based meals, and so it'sagain it's healthy. This is not all
they eat. We hope during timesof the pandemic and during time it's like
after Harvey, we may deliver shelfstable meals or frozen meals that can last

(25:51):
them a week. But right nowwe are delivering daily meals, so once
a day, one to day,which means that they're getting one meal a
day, but as you mentioned,it could be the only meal they get
for many of them, we doknow that's the only meal that they probably
have. We work with the basichuman needs. And when you talk about

(26:11):
employment though, one thing that wedo offer is our adult literacy and vocational
training courses and we just had andwe've started within the last six months a
really neat program where we're training peopleto be electrician apprentice. Yeah. So

(26:32):
they take a course for seven weeks. It's free of charge, that come
Monday through Friday. It's just likegoing to work. They'll come in nine
to three Monday through Friday, they'lltake their course. After seven weeks they
graduate. They are a licensed electrician'sapprentice and we have Trio electric waiting there

(26:52):
with jobs that pay over forty thousanda year. You just need to give
people an opportunity to get into agood job. It is our nature to
just do well once we have that. Brian, do you believe like I
do? There's a leading question,But I feel like what is really lacking
as far as helping everyone and deliveringmeals to everyone who needs them, is

(27:15):
to increase the political will to doso. We're being distracted by the media,
of which I am a part.We're being distracted by all these issues
that are kind of non issues orjust don't don't really addressed of the basic
needs of so many, and thosemany are forgotten. But it feels like
if we could change the political discourseand actually make good on our intentions of

(27:37):
helping people, we'd have more storiesthat are a little sadder on TV.
It wouldn't be as you know,disinfected, so to speak, and you'd
have more people volunteering. We're alarge city and the number of people who
volunteer is probably below thirty percent atleast if you if you go like people
who volunteer regularly every I bet youit's under twenty percent. And it is.

(28:03):
I feel like there should be achange in culture, a change in
education, and to try to erasesome of the ridiculous political veneer that is
on top of everything and just talkabout the simple services that you provide.
Because what we've been talking about today, all these meals on wheels programs,
nobody's against them. Nobody. Aswe said to our food pantry, we

(28:29):
serve fifty to sixty families every day, and then in adition to that,
once every quarter we do a communitydistribution where we're handing food out to four
to five hundred families. I haveyet to hear a client ask a volunte
here who's giving them food? Areyou a Republican or a Democrat? Of
course not. Yeah, they don'tcare. Hungry is hungry. And the

(28:53):
clients we don't know. Maybe they'remaybe they're Republicans, baby their Democrats.
Maybe they don't care. Maybe they'rejust hungry. And that's what NAM is
there for. And that's why wetake funding from all sources because as it

(29:14):
filters through the mission statement of NAM, through that neighbor's helping neighbors, it
gets cleansed, it gets honored,and it goes to the goodwill, it
goes to the good service that wedo. And that's what matters. If
you're hungry, do you really carewhere the funding came from. They got
you to food. You just wantfood. Yeah, And we the people

(29:37):
want that funding to go directly toservices as much as humanly possible. With
the understand that you've got to paypeople to administer these these programs, but
we want we want most of ourdollars to actually go feed people or fund
to the education programs. The problemis that once you start talking about these
things, you're getting a little complicatedand you lose a lot of the audience.
And so it's time for us togo. Folks these I mean,

(30:00):
if you have any questions related toHouston, PA the organizations that have on
the show, just send me anemail. Texan from France at gmail dot
com. Texan from France at gmaildot com. I'm happy to just send
you a link. So if you'rewondering where the Northwest Assistants Ministries is online
you were in the car you can'tremember nam NAM online dot org or I'll

(30:22):
just send it to you in anemail. And I want to thank you
for carrying keeps up put on thisshow folks. I'll be here at the
same time next week. My nameis Laurent I am the Texan from France
and this has been Houston PA,Houston's public affairs show, Houston Strong