VETVoices – New Visions Homeless Services

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Vet Voices, a podcast produced by Warner Enterprises, where average is for other people. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard. Let your voice be heard on Warner's veteran podcast. Now buckle up and get ready for the host of Vet Voices, Greg, Johnny, and Adam. Welcome, Werner, to our next edition of Veteran Voices, our podcast for everything veteran at Werner. In the room with me today, I have Brandy Waller, president and CEO of New Visions Homeless Services, alongside Ally John, our senior manager of culture, wellness and community engagement, which I think is a new title for you. So congrats on that, Ali. [00:00:52] Speaker B: It is. [00:00:52] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. So, Brandy, welcome to Warner. I think this is your first time here. [00:00:59] Speaker C: Yeah. It's an awesome, awesome facility. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us today and preemptively thank you for all the good work that you do in the Omaha and Council Bluffs community. It's impressive. Allie and I had the chance to come tour one of your facilities, and the work that you and your team do is awesome. [00:01:17] Speaker C: Yeah, we're very fortunate. We have an amazing community and that we could meet the needs of our veterans experiencing homelessness. Not all communities really put veterans needs first, and Omaha is a great community that recognizes the importance of doing that. [00:01:33] Speaker A: It's awesome. So let's just walk through new visions. Walk us through how long nuvisions have been around. What new visions does. It's not one thing. You guys have a lot of different things in the community. Walk us through. Give us the elevator pitch on nuvisions. [00:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah. So Nuvision Homeless Services is a grassroots organization. Our founder, Harry Waller, was actually a service connected disabled marine. So his whole life he was going to go be a marine. His dad was a marine in the korean war. His grandpa served as a marine, and so he went off to serve our country, ended up blowing out his knee, so which ended his services, came back to the Omaha area. His dad, who fought in the korean war, actually ended up getting shot and came back to the Omaha area. He healed physically, but not mentally or over the PTSD that happened there. And, you know, 40 years ago, veterans didn't talk about PTSD. They didn't really know what it was. And so he came back. He became an Omaha police officer. And so our founder, Harry Waller, within a year of him ending his marine career, his dad ended up taking his own life with his service pistol. And our founder found him, which just led to a spiral of trauma, which led to making higher choices around drugs and alcohol. So he was an alcoholic by his mid twenties, in and out of treatment facilities, in and out of jail, and then he just really struggled. He came to a point where his wife was going to leave him. He got connected with a local body of faith, ended up getting clean and sober, and really just started the trajectory that put new visions where we are today. He started a small church in council Bluffs, Iowa, with six members. And one day he was on his way to church, and a woman with children stopped him and said, sir, we're hungry. We don't have any money to feed our children. Can you help me? And so he emptied his wallet and he went on to go to church. And he was talking and he stopped and he said, we're going to start feeding people that are hungry in the community. And this was before you had access to food stamps, food pantries. It was in the mid nineties. And so his wife's like, you are crazy. We don't have enough money to feed our kids. How are we going to start feeding the whole community? And I always tell people to make an impact. Don't wait for you to get something. But what do you have? Do you have talent? Do you have treasure? And so what he had was he was able to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And so that's how we started. He took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, put it in a bag with an apple and a bottle of water, and drove around council bluffs asking if people were hungry. And what he found out is there was a lot of people that were hungry. So what started out as a weekly thing ended up becoming a daily thing because hunger never goes away. And so women and families would be out there in the cold, in the heat, asking for several sack lunches. And so, you know, he did this for almost close to a year. And then he then went to his church that grown, and he said, I got an idea. He's like, we could get people out from the cold if we get a bus, and we can make it into, like, a mobile soup kitchen. And so within one week, he had an old school bus donated to him. And that's where a lot of people in the council bus community know us as mom's place because there was an elderly lady in the church that really took on the mantle of driving the van every day. And so when the community seen her, they said, mom's coming. And so we took that. And so I always. We were the first. We were the og of food trucks in the council Bluffs Omaha area because the health department didn't even know how to label us because there was no food trucks. And so we did that for about six years, and then the city took notice and gave us an old hardware building under the Vidoc and council bluffs, and we became a community meal site. That's where I came on the scene in 2003. What we found out was that there was no homeless shelter for single men in western Iowa. So a lot of people experiencing homelessness started kind of congregating by the mill site. And so Pastor Waller kind of took the experience he learned and decided pulling the same thing. He's like, I'm going to build a homeless shelter. And the community came and supported them. So we built our first campus in 2008. And that has a low barrier homeless men's shelter. All of our programs are low barrier, which means we meet people right where they're at. It is hard for them to tackle complexities of life if they don't have the basic needs of food, safety, security. And so we have a homeless men's shelter. We have a community meal site, mom's place. We haven't missed serving a meal in the 31 years since we started with the first peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We actually serve about 220,000 meals a year between our council plus campus and our Omaha. And then we have 26 apartments that are permanent supportive. I always say we go after the individuals that have been on the streets the longest. You know, the ones that are chronically homeless have severe barriers from getting into housing in the community. We also have a street outreach team. We serve about 400 people a year living on the streets, and we have a prevention team. If we could prevent homelessness, that's what we want to do. In 2009, after we opened that facility, Nebraska was coined as a state that was performing really poorly and providing services for our veterans experiencing homelessness. And with Pastor Waller's being a marine himself, his whole family served. Actually, two of his nephews fly the b two flyer out of Missouri. So my cousin flew over the Super bowl two years ago. [00:07:23] Speaker A: That's awesome. I used to be stationed at that base with the b two. I was on the other side of. I was on the a ten side of the base, but it's a pretty impressive plane. It sounds like new visions. Does a ton of. How many facilities do you have? Council bluffs, Omaha. I think it's just council bluffs in Omaha, correct? [00:07:41] Speaker C: Yes. So right now it's just council bluffs in Omaha, but we have a wide reach. So again, in council Bluffs, the next closest shelter in Iowa is about two and a half hours away. So we serve a lot of people in the rural areas, in Omaha. In 2009, we did go after a grant to build our veterans facility, just because, like I said, Nebraska had a lot of veterans that were experiencing homelessness and nowhere that was specifically for them. And so we were fortunate enough to write a grant, and we got awarded the largest capital grant in 2011 that allowed us to build our Omaha campus. And so that is off of 18th and Paul in Omaha, Nebraska. And so every night between council Bluffs, Iowa, and Lincoln, Nebraska, there's about 120 veterans experiencing homelessness, which still blows my mind. In 2024, we have the words veterans and homelessness together, but our campus has up to 60 of those veterans, so we operate four different programs out of that campus. So we have non congregate shelter where the veteran will live up to six months completely rent free. They get wraparound services, but instead of them having to stay in mass shelters, in their cars, on the streets, they're placed with another veteran in an apartment. We have a low demand program, which means kind of like the low barrier veterans just get it, come in as they are. Of course, they can't bring alcohol or drugs on our campus, but if they're struggling with that, we're not going to turn them away. And then we started a new program. When we started our street outreach program in Council Bluffs, we started finding female veterans that were living in tents, in their cars. And our federal grant wouldn't let us serve female veterans. Cause back in 2009, there wasn't a lot of them in our community. We had none identified. And so we petitioned the government, and they said, unfortunately, we can't change the scope of services. And so I kind of went around that, because how are we gonna leave these women that have served our country out on the streets? And so I was able to get ten beds that was reserved for female veterans, and then also, like National Guard and veterans that might not qualify for traditional services. So we're super proud of that. And then we are one of 16 programs in the whole entire United States that has a special needs grant, and then those are our veterans that are suffering from severe, like, mental health or substance abuse, that just haven't been very successful in community programs. And so we are ranked the highest one in the nation for being able to have them come. They could stay for two years, but then also have them successfully discharged into permanent housing. And then those programs, the most that they could stay is between six and twelve months at no cost to them. But we know a lot of times some veterans need additional support. So we have 14 units of permanent supportive housing, and once they move into there. There's no time limit. And the most a veteran will pay for a one bedroom apartment is 30% of their income, never to exceed 359 a month. [00:10:42] Speaker A: So let's talk about the scope of homelessness in our community real quick. So you mentioned 120 veterans a night between Omaha and Lincoln that are homeless, that don't have a place to stay. Up to 60 of those are in new visions facilities, removing the veteran from that. How big of a concern is homelessness in our community? How many are unsheltered in Omaha, in council Bluffs, in Lincoln? Every night? [00:11:09] Speaker C: Yep. So on an average night in the metro area. So council bluffs in Omaha, there's about 1500 people experiencing homelessness. The United States has been tracking this data since 2007. In 2023, we had the highest increase in people experiencing homelessness in our nation. It increased 12%. And unfortunately, veterans experiencing homelessness increased 7%. And the veterans experiencing homelessness. So that's 120 veterans. We kind of know of a lot of times veterans, when they experience homelessness, they do not tell people, I have people in my shelter that are honorably discharged veterans, and they are not telling me that they're a veteran because there's a lot of shame, a lot of guilt that comes along with experiencing homelessness. So I think that amount is way under counted for the amount of veterans that are experiencing homelessness are hardships. So Omaha and council has seen a dramatic increase. Just because I was at a conference and they said any community that has less than a 5% rental vacancy rate, they're going to experience high numbers of homelessness. And I just happened to be with the chief of staff from our community and I said, what's Omaha Council Bluffs? And they said, Omaha Council Bluffs has a 2% rental vacancy rate. So there's just not a lot of housing out there. And during the pandemic, when you had the housing prices, housing prices were booming. 2% interest rate. One out of every two mom and pop landlords that had the second 3rd property that they used for investment income ended up selling because they can now sell their property for 50,000, $100,000 more. Well, who came in and bottom up was corporations, and corporations bought them at a higher rate. And so the first thing they did was increase rent. So rents have went up in the metro area by 36%. Also, corporations streamlined a lot of things, and so now they're doing background checks. So if you have bad credit, an eviction, maybe a criminal history, you are just out. And so that's what's kind of caused this. I mean, homelessness has been on the rise, but that's why we're seeing a dramatic increase and spike in homelessness, just because, like I said, throughout the pandemic really broke the housing system and especially the affordable housing. [00:13:32] Speaker A: So that sort of covers into the next rural direction of this conversation. What leads to veteran homelessness? I'm an 18 year air force vet. In our community, what do you see? What are the step one, step two, step three? Is it lack of support system? Is it a few bad decisions tied to not having money in the bank, and then all of a sudden, you don't have anywhere to go? What are the common things that you see, veteran and non veteran alike, in our community? What's happening to cause this in Omaha? [00:14:06] Speaker C: Yeah. So I always like in homelessness because a lot of people ask me that question, and it would be easy. If it's one thing, then we could have a solution for that one thing. But I always say homelessness is like an interstate. There's so many different on ramps to why an individual experiences homelessness or a family. The problem is we have to have equally as many off ramps, and we don't right now. And so we're having a backup because, again, there's not a lot of access to affordable housing. There's not a lot of access to treatment. Nebraska and Iowa ranked in the last in the United States for being able to provide mental health care for somebody experiencing a mental health crisis. And so what we're seeing right now, the number one thing is affordability. There's just not a lot of places where individuals can afford to live. And so, especially what we're seeing with our veterans is an aging veteran population. Is our Vietnam veterans the ones that serve their country, might have got a small pension, might be going into retirement, supposed to live off of $1,300 a month when a one veteran, your apartment is going for $1,100. So we're seeing an increase in that. Also an increase in mental health. The pandemic, again, broke the mental health system. And so with our veterans, what we have found out, so we do something called the ace score. It's a ten question questionnaire, and as simple as have you ever went to bed hungry? Were you raised in a one parent household? Have you ever been physically sexually abused? Have you ever been shot at? So ten questions, pretty easy, because we know that trauma from your childhood just doesn't go away. So when you turn 18, you just aren't magically healed. Now you're going into the service and your life is gonna be amazing. And so we do this with all of our veterans. And what we're finding out is our veterans has a pretty high ace score. So for our mer of those ace questions, if you answered yes, your quality of life decreases from anywhere from ten to 20 years. Cause we know that stress affects your body. And so what we actually found out with our veterans is a lot of them come from a very traumatic childhood, and then they go and join the service. And, Adam, you could speak to it. What do you get when you join the service? [00:16:25] Speaker A: An exit from a traumatic environment, potentially, right? Yep. I have a good friend that he was given the ultimatum of, hey, you're going to go to jail, or you can go join the Marine Corps or the army, and that he has a very particular story, but it's a great way to escape. But then also, you can easily wind up in situations that are more traumatic as well. Combat is, by definition, traumatic. So if you're a child that has some of that traumatic experience in your background, whatever it be, sexual or abusive, physically abusive, etcetera, and then you tie that to some combat, and you tie that to veterans not wanting to talk about their feelings, it compounds really quickly, I would have to imagine. [00:17:16] Speaker C: Yep. And what else you get when you join the service is you get accountability. You get a playbook. You go through basic training. You get a built in family. I mean, Adam, you could speak to that. [00:17:28] Speaker A: I went an entirely different direction with that question than she was meaning for me to. [00:17:31] Speaker C: No, but it was the end of the question, because that is what we're finding out, is when you take trauma and then you take a veteran, and for the first time, they are feeling a little bit of worth. Again, they might not have had the best family upbringing. They're getting a playbook for the first time. These are your expectations. But then you put them in very traumatic situations, and that compounds, and then they are just released to being back to a civilian where they didn't have a lot of support systems going in for the service, and now they come back, and that's kind of ripped away from them. And now with compounded trauma, like you said. And so, again, a lot of veterans in the way that the VA system, and they're changing it now, even, you know, since we've had this contract since 2012, kind of seeing how they're changing mental health, but you're coming back from active combat, and they're like, are you okay? And what veterans have told me is, like, if I told them I wasn't, I was going to be detained, held, you know, and so they just like, yeah, everything's fine. So they didn't feel like they had the opportunity to really speak without consequences, you know, and so very true. [00:18:43] Speaker A: I answered one question honestly on my way home from Afghanistan, and the question was as simple as, do you feel like your life was at risk while in theater? And I answered yes. Cause I'm in a combat theater. Right. It was completely normal for the base to get attacked. Answered honestly, and I mean, shoot, within 24 hours of being home. Hey, talk to us about your traumatic experience. And it was a phone call, and then it was an office. It was hounding of, what do we have to do to make you answer this question to where we think you're okay? And it was very eye opening for me of, man, this is really checklist driven and not necessarily holistic health driven. Sorry, off on a tangent there for a second, but yes, it's can be. We, the US military and the VA, although good intentions and although we have gotten much better, especially as a nation that just ended our longest duration of combat, arguably just ended our longest duration of combat in a war zone, we have learned some things, but I think there's some more things to continue to learn from that generation. All right, Brandy, so you have one veteran facility currently, and I think I just read a news article about a second facility, potentially. Talk to us about the second location that you purchased or you're in the process of purchasing and building for. [00:20:07] Speaker C: So we know that the only solution to homelessness is housing. That is the only solution. That's how we're going to get out of this as a nation. And so, talking to our veterans, I very much believe that you can't have conversations about them without them, that they are the experts in their lives, know what they need. And so kind of talking because the majority of our beds are transitional living. We're great partners with victory apartments and council bus and Lincoln. So we're kind of a feeding program for them because they're permanent supportive housing. They are operated by a for profit company, but they do have va services in there. The problem is we have filled up their beds, their apartment, so there's not a lot of turnover there. And so talking to our veterans, asking them, what do you want when your time is up at new visions? Because our 14 units of permanent supportive housing, there's no movement because they found the community that they needed. And especially with single veterans, cause a lot of times, like the family veteran unit, they travel. So it's not so much attached to a facility or whatnot because their support system goes with them, but for whatever reason it is, and that's not for us to put judgment in. They had not even a couch to stay on. And so they come into a facility like ours. They make the relationships, they build the bond. There is accountability for them is. So I'm asking them, when you leave, do you want to go into, like, scatter site, just go back into market rate apartments in the community? Do you want to go into home ownership? Do you like the veteran specific feel of it? And so 84% of our veterans said they like the veteran feel of it. A question that Adam was asking was, you know, we are low barrier, which it means that, you know, if somebody is struggling with addiction, we're not going to kick them out. But again, we don't want drugs or alcohol. So how do you monitor that? Well, a lot of times the veterans will monitor themselves. You know, they'll see somebody that might be struggling, and instead of just being in a market rate apartment where you don't know who your neighbor is, these guys have trust and a bond, and they're able to say, hey, man, you're struggling. How can I help you? What do we need to get for services? So my staff don't even really have to monitor that. They kind of monitor themselves. And so that's a cool thing you get when it's veteran specific. And so a lot of the veterans said they wanted that. Something that was also heartbreaking when talking to our veterans is because we provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I always say, and we started around food security, if you are hungry, you cannot start with anything. And so many great things happen around the table. We know with family development, with relationships, it happens with sharing food. And so we have a meal site where breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But like I said, I had a veteran that was eating crackers and ketchup before he came in, because, again, as a senior veteran, as living on a fixed income, the prices of food, you're generally not cooking a well balanced meal. And I know Allie could speak to that, how important it is for nutrition. And so they wanted food, and then the third thing they want is the supportive services. And so being a nonprofit, we provide the supportive services. I have mental health therapists on staff, I have substance abuse therapists on staff, I have transportation on staff. And so, really, we're able to wrap around those services. And so that got us thinking. And so we did purchase some land off of 96 and Blondo in Omaha, and so we're building a 41 unit permanent supportive housing for veterans. So we're teaming up with oha. So we'll have project based vouchers. And that's huge because that means that the most a veteran will pay is 30% of their income. [00:23:49] Speaker A: Real quick. Oha. [00:23:51] Speaker C: Omaha housing Authority. [00:23:52] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. And then low demand, low barrier. Understood. On both of those, walk us through permanent supportive housing. What's that defined as, just to be clear? [00:24:01] Speaker C: Yep. So the big thing that's different from, like, market rate is the supportive services. So again, with some of these veterans coming with some trauma, some of them coming with some are barriers, we're gonna have staff on site to help them out with that. So if they do start struggling, we could have it. Some of these veterans, their families are very negative. You know, I have families that take veterans pensions, you know, literally drop them off to our shelter, come and pick them up at the beginning of the month, utilize all of their money, and then bring them back to our shelter. So how do you say no to your mom from coming and seeing you? We can do that because it's a locked facility, you know, when we're talking to them and it's like, do you think this relationship is good for you or harmful for you? And sometimes they'll say, it's harmful for us. And we've all had toxic people in our family, and it's hard to put up those boundaries. So that supportive services is really letting the veteran lead the way and feel filling in the gaps from them. 20% of people experiencing homelessness have transportation, you know, so that's huge. How are they going to get their prescriptions? How are they going to get their food? And so the supportive services part is that, you know, it's not, you make a mistake, you get kicked out. It's, let's work through this, you know, what do you need to be successful in housing? And that what makes us different as a nonprofit, because we could go out and raise the funds to provide those services. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Awesome. So 96 and Blondo. So 41 units? [00:25:30] Speaker C: Yes. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Each unit, one veteran or two. [00:25:33] Speaker C: So each unit is for, because it's permanent. It's a one bedroom. But we will be able to take couples. We'll be able to if they need a caregiver. And this facility will also be preference for veterans 55 and older. So in the next ten years, it is estimated that homelessness among senior veterans is going to triple. And it makes sense because a lot of them are going into retirement. When the Social Security system was set up, it was supposed to be a three prong approach to people having a pension plus their own savings and plus, you know, Social Security. And it's becoming a one leg approach where a lot of people are retiring just on Social Security, and that is not enough to survive. And so giving a veteran a place to not only live, but also die in dignity. We've had a lot of veterans that have passed away, you know, so that the. This facility will have several other community offices. So if an individual does need in home health care, they could meet with them right on site if they need budgeting and stuff like that. If they are on hospice right now, hospice won't come into our congregate shelters. It's very traumatic for a veteran to be bunked next to another veteran or in an apartment with someone going through a hospice. So them having their own apartment and bringing those services to them because it is their home, is very important. So aging in place is a new thing that a lot of our country is going to because we do have such an aging population. [00:27:02] Speaker B: What is the average age of your current new visions resident? [00:27:07] Speaker C: Yep. So the average age is 54. [00:27:11] Speaker B: All right. Since you started as a meal kind of security service, I have to ask about food because it's my thing. What is the resident's favorite meal that you serve? And what was. I know, peanut butter and jelly sandwich was the first meal, and then it turned into a soup kitchen. What's the favorite meal at mom's place, which is still an operating shelter. [00:27:36] Speaker C: So I would say when we do breakfast for dinner, they are pretty excited about that. I think a lot of times, anytime you have, like, the stews or the casseroles, really, individuals are just thankful. That is one thing that I have experienced working in this population for 20 years. I get at that a lot. Like, do you feel safe being the only female there? Because I have been the only female in a low barrier shelter with 150 men. They're like, you know, are you afraid? And I've never felt afraid for my safety, because it goes to the basic thing, if you treat somebody with respect, they're gonna treat you back with respect. And so what I have found out is a lot of times, people are just thinking, thankful. They're thankful that we see them not as homeless, but we see them as a person. They're thankful that they get to come in and just take a breath, you know, living on the streets are dealing with trauma, and never being able to talk to somebody without judgment placed on them are without fear of retaliation. That's huge, you know, and just meeting them right where they're at and not pressuring them. I've also found in 20 years of doing this, too, it is hard work, but people are pretty resilient. They're pretty resilient. I always say people survived 100% of their bad days, and so being able to give them some of these tools and really giving them confidence that you are pretty awesome. And especially veterans like, you know, I always don't get their stories. I get told, you know, my job's to protect you and not to have you kind of come and so. But sometimes I get to sit in on some of the group therapies and hear some of these stories, and it breaks my heart because I can't even imagine what they've seen. And they're just supposed to come back and be okay and just supposed to come back and be that engaged father and the awesome husband and the best employee and can never have a problem. And so when you allow people to be vulnerable and there's no judgment attached to it, you get a lot of gratitude. [00:29:43] Speaker B: I love that. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Yeah. It speaks to the mental health needs, and I think that's veteran related, for sure. That overarching entire nation, I think that there's a lot that ties into the pandemic there, but I think that was a issue before pre pandemic as well. That has only gotten worse since. Yeah. It's certainly without the solid support system that allows you to be vulnerable and work through those things. It's tough. [00:30:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And until us as a nation, because, again, a lot of those on ramps are mental health, and then it equals into substance abuse. We know that substance abuse increases the longer you are homeless, which makes sense, you know, because you are out in the woods. You are like, again, at my congregate shelter, I don't even have enough beds for these gentlemen. They are laying on mats on the ground. I've ran out of mats. They're sitting in chairs, you know, so they've never had time to really process. Cause they're living out of survival mode. And until we start really taking it serious with mental health and substance abuse, that they are a disease. They are a disease just like heart disease, just like diabetes. So right now, if I googled, I could probably find about 15 to 20 medical facilities around here, from an ENT to a podiatrist to a vision specialist to a dentist. There are so many places that you could go and get specialized care, but you can't when it comes to substance abuse and when it comes to mental health. And so until we start putting those in the fabric of our everyday in healthcare, we are going to struggle with it. And until we start saying, because I promise you, the people I'm serving that. And again, not everybody experiencing homelessness has an addiction or mental health that is, number one, false. But there is a fraction of them. Until we're able to properly provide treatment for that, it is going to get worse. And because people that are experiencing addiction are not having fun, they are not living their best life. People experiencing mental health, it is not great. And until we're able to go in there and take it seriously as a nation and provide those services and take away the stigma, it's going to get worse. [00:32:00] Speaker B: I think mental health is so interesting because it's just like the highway. There's so many on ramps on how you got there. But with diabetes, those answers are already made. We know usually what the root cause of that is. With mental health, there's so many avenues or on ramps that can be causing the issues and challenges that we're seeing. [00:32:20] Speaker C: Yep. [00:32:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think culture plays a huge part into it, too. I was talking to my wife the other night about just alcohol and about our alcohol driven culture of alcohol is a drug by definition, right. Um, a depressant. And it's something that you have to justify in our culture of not using. Right. Hey, let's go for a beer. No, I'm not going to have one. And then, well, why not? And you have to justified not drinking. That's a really funny thing. Funny is not the right word in that sentence. That's a really terrible thing. Especially when you look at the rates of addiction, of which, again, on ramp to mental health issues, on ramp to homelessness down the line, et cetera. But yet, we, as a culture, require that not using it has to be justified. [00:33:09] Speaker B: It's completely normalized. [00:33:11] Speaker C: But don't, do not develop alcoholism, because then there's something wrong with you. And we know that alcohol. So each and every one of us have what's called a trigger point for alcoholism. And so biology plays a factor in that. So if you have a parent, a grandparent, biological grandparent, that has alcoholism, your trigger level is lower. And so biology, you do need to know biology, which means if me and Allie were college roommates, we're making the same drinking choices. And so your tolerance goes up every time you drink to intoxication. And so we're roommates, we're going out, we're drinking the same amount. So Allie has no parents that have alcoholism. I have two. My trigger level's lower. So I keep drinking to intoxication. Intoxication. My tolerance goes up and up and up. Well, you hit a point where now your brain changes. Your body becomes addicted to it. And then again, like I said, if you have a parent with addiction, you're four times more likely to develop an addiction. But I was just having fun, you know, I was just coping. Well, at the point that your body becomes addicted to it, it is no longer. Now, what's wrong with you? Why can't you control it? You know, I'm making the same decision as Brandi, and I'm fine. Well, your biology is different with that. And then that's what's hard, is because, like, we have a detox facility in Omaha, and to go to detox, you have to have alcohol in your system, but you can't have too much alcohol in your system. And if you've never seen somebody detox, it is the saddest thing with the shakes and the tremors and literally, sometimes with some drugs to detox, that they can't just quit cold turkey because they'll die. It's like your body going 100 miles an hour, and you put on the brakes, you're going to go through the windshield if you don't have a seatbelt on. And so that's the sad part, is because nobody looks at their beautiful baby and says, you know what would be amazing? If you become an addict or, hey, have some mental health sprinkled in there or a little bit of homelessness, and I'm going to be so proud of you. Nobody ever wants to experience it, but we don't talk about this. So when I start talking about how alcoholism is formed, people are like. Like, oh, holy crap, you know? And so, again, like I said, you need to know if you have family. And that's how we get, like, generational people that struggle with addiction is, you know, it goes, and it is just like heart disease could go through the family, diabetes. So does addiction. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Brandi has no idea. But I have a college roommate who is five years sober, struggled with alcoholism. One of four of us all live together. [00:35:46] Speaker A: It's just. It's heartbreaking, the entire thing. And I think going back to the generational point, Brandi, if you're not talking about it, how the heck do you know what's generational or not, right. If, you know, you had a crazy uncle, but it's just he's always been the crazy uncle, but in all reality, he was battling demons his entire time. And you don't share those family stories because nobody wants to talk about the depressing family stories. You don't know what you're at risk for. So on that Rosie note, share some success stories. Talk to us about your favorite stories about the work that you do, that you've seen since you joined. New visions. [00:36:28] Speaker C: Oh, this will take me days and days and people again, going back to the how were you able to do what you do for 20 years? I see the good part of it. A lot of times, the community and emergency responses just see the bad part. You know, the people living in encampments, the people that are at their worst, I get to see the good. So in our council Bluffs location, we have served, over 13,000 men have come through our shelter. There's not 13,000 men experiencing homelessness. And so some of the stories I have, and I'll share one from kind of each campus, but in Council Bluffs, we had this younger gentleman come in. He was probably about 25. He came in, and you could smell the alcohol on him. And at dinner time, we have a community meal, and then we have to take the community meal site, and we have to flip it to sleep, the additional men on mats. And so that first night we did that, he became very suicidal again. We just met him a couple hours ago. I want to kill myself. I'm going to go and hang myself on the tree. And so we had a plan. So again, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not any of those. So I do lean on emergency services. So I called 911. They came out, they took him. He went away for two days. They brought him back again. I don't know him. I don't have relationship with him. I'm like, are you okay? What kind of services? He's like, I'm fine. The next day, he came back in intoxicated. Same thing. After dinner time, we're laying down the mats. He's like, I don't want to live anymore. Called again. This time, they kept him for seven days. Came back. Can we talk to you about it? Is there any support that we need? He's like, no, I'm fine. He's like, I'm going to be sober now. Well, are you going to go to treatment? He's like, no, I'm just going to do it by myself. Okay. Three days later, same time, dinner time, mats are down. I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna go run in front of a car. My shelter director was there and followed him, called 911. And again, it's very frustrating. Very frustrating. And again, I always say, you know, systems fella not people. But it was the same emts coming third time. And so they're frustrated at this point. They're like, why aren't they keeping them at the hospital? I'm like, why aren't they keeping them at the hospital? The hospital's like, we have no beds for them, so it's just a cycle. And so the EMT had a frustration. Looked at my shelter director and said, why don't you ban and bar him already and make him Omaha's problem? And my shelter director said, well, he's a person and not a problem, so I'm not going to do that. And so they took him, and this time he stayed for a little bit longer, but he got discharged straight back to us. This time I sat in. We do what's called safety planning, because, again, he's not safe at our facility. But he had nowhere else he could go. And so I talked to him. I said, I said, buddy, I said, what's going on? I said, if we let you back in here, you're gonna have to be safe and come up with a plan. And he was looking at his shoes, and he looked up at my shelter director, and he said, do you believe that? That I'm a person and not a problem? My shelter director said, 100%, bud, but I need you to believe it. I need you to believe. And something changed that day. He started looking at us in our eyes, and there was a trust that started to happen. So he decided that he would meet with a mental health counselor that came on site and, well, a week and a half into it, counselor came, said, brandy, you won't believe it how I told you guys that it happened at the same time at night. This man, at the age of eight, started getting perpetrated on by his uncle. His mom struggled with addiction and wasn't able to keep him safe. So he was pulled out of the household and put into foster care and then was never adopted out. So at eight years old, he lost his innocence to a family member, and then he aged out of foster care, and he is all alone in this world. And then at nighttime, we again put down Matt. So now he's going to sleep six inches next to another man and told, just get better. Just get sober. And as soon as we found that out, we're like, holy crap. And so we had a corner in our dining hall, and we put up kind of a partition, and from there, he started getting better. He got a job at Tyson, and within a month, he was back in the community. And now he's in AA and is a mentor to other individuals. So that is a huge story of. Of remembering that he had a whole story. And if we would have kept looking at him as. He's just a problem as opposed to building the trust. And especially with men, they just don't come out. It's like, hey, my name's Jeff. I was molested at eight years old. I have a whole bunch of trauma. I have no family. I'm scared because anger is a secondary emotion. A lot of times it's fear, it's shame, it's guilt. And so that's one of my favorite stories because that shows if we take a little bit of time and when they push back at us, if we don't run, if we don't ban them, if we don't kick them out, they will start letting us in, letting us know a little bit about their story. So that is one of my favorite ones in Omaha is we had a veteran, kind of the same thing. Went through four different veteran programs in Minneapolis. He ended up getting a divorce due to his drinking, was an absentee father. No treatment places were working for him. He came and actually, he was asked to leave within three months because of his temperature. You know, he was very challenging other veterans. We didn't feel safe. He left for a while, then he came back one day and he said, I'm sorry. He's like, I don't know what to do with this anger. I don't know what to do with this pain. I don't know. And he's like, you guys, I was starting to feel safe, and I felt scared, you know? And so we let him back in our program, and he took it seriously. He became one of our floor captains. He started driving for us. He ended up getting a job, and he ended up getting reunited with his wife and his children. And so he is actually a financial supporter of new visions right now. And so I love that, too, because I always say, life's not a nine a game we play till we win. And I can't say that to our veterans and then not have new visions be a part of that, too. You know, he wasn't ready for it when he came through the first time, but he was able to come back and realize I was scared. I didn't want to fail again. I don't want to let more people down. And he came back and he just knocked it out of the park. [00:42:40] Speaker A: That's awesome. Both of those stories are impactful. It's just good to focus on the success stories. It's all too easy to focus on how terrible of a thing this is. But you're doing good work. And the fact that you have the success stories to share that go with it on the human level, it's important to remember that it's the end goal. Right. Okay. So we love our military at Werner. We love our veterans. We also love just serving our community. Talk to us about the volunteer need. If somebody that is listening to this is in the Omaha area and has a need to serve, how can they get in touch with you? How can they reach out and cook or serve? In what capacity? What are some of your needs? [00:43:31] Speaker C: Yeah, so we love our volunteers. We love people coming because homelessness is very isolating, and it's cool when a volunteer comes because they're not getting paid. They don't have to be there. They are just showing up and saying, you guys matter. I care about you. You know, I say that all the time. You know, our team, and they're like, you get paid? I'm like, well, not that much, you know, but when a volunteer walks through the door, because everything is done on donation, you know, every single shirt that they get, every single towel that they get, shower curtain is because somebody cares about them. So there's always an opportunity. And just like, like I said at the beginning is, what do you have? What can you do right now? Maybe you don't have the time, but you have some old towels, you know, because, again, majority of our veterans are going to go in the community. We want to make sure they have a pillow and a blanket and a can opener. So always giving, you know, we need boots, we need coats. A lot of veterans just come with what they have on. Also your time. So we do serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We have volunteers that come in at lunch and dinner. But even if you don't want to volunteer, come and have a meal with the veteran. You know, I always encourage that. We have great food. Come and have a meal. We do bigger projects. Like we just acquired the alley right north of our building, and we're building some outdoor space to do. We do Tai Chi, a whole bunch of things. So we need help kind of developing that space as we do big projects where you come in and everybody paints. And again, like I said, what talents do you have? We have some barbers that come in and cut the veterans hair. So if that's a skill set you have, ideally, we could use a little bit of everything. So we want to make sure. And the same thing in Council Bluffs, you know, we have about 1400 volunteers a year that comes and helps us serve this community. So we are very open to that welcome. We couldn't do what we do without volunteers and donors, and again, it's all at different levels, and so whatever you're able to do, we would definitely accept it and be very appreciative of it. [00:45:33] Speaker A: Sounds like we just got an invite to tater cast. [00:45:36] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:45:36] Speaker B: I can't wait. [00:45:38] Speaker A: I'm sure that is a wellness approved meal. [00:45:42] Speaker B: I think you can have all the food groups in it. [00:45:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:47] Speaker A: Yep. [00:45:47] Speaker C: We're covered. [00:45:48] Speaker A: Good stuff. Allie, what do you have? [00:45:51] Speaker B: I think I love the whole person conversation. The low barrier. The whole person. I really think that the thing I took away from our tour at new visions was, man, they're really talking about the whole person. They're not just talking about, how do we get rid of, like, okay, we have a person there in front of us. [00:46:09] Speaker C: Let's get them out of here. [00:46:10] Speaker B: And I think your success story mirrored that thought that I had as well. I just was impacted greatly by that whole person piece. And, of course, low barrier. I think we gotta meet someone where they are, and if that's not the coin of a wellness program, then I don't know what can be. But we have to meet people where they are. Whether we're, you know, running a wellness campaign within a corporate environment or managing being the president and CEO of a homeless shelter. The mission is the same. Let's look at the person for who they are and where they are right now, not what we think they should be. [00:46:45] Speaker C: Yep. I likened it to, you know, because people are like, why? Low barrier. You know, you're just enabling them. And I always liken it to say that you have the best hospital in your community, and you're diagnosed with leukemia. That's like me telling you, hey, heal yourself first by yourself with no support. And then you could come into my hospitals. And that's where we're kind of at in our nation, is we make systems that make us as providers comfortable, us as elected officials comfortable, and we leave out the population we're supposed to be serving. If we want to end homelessness among veterans, that's all veterans. I know, Adam, you could speak to it. Nobody's left behind, and so we can't cherry pick who deserves it and who doesn't deserve it. And so, you know, as new visions. And it's so important to me under my leadership, because my mom did. She had four kids by the time she was 20. There was so much judgment people could give to her. I am so thankful she had four kids by the time she was 20, because we are all doing great things because we did see a mom that struggled, but we also see a community that came and helped us and what it was like to show generosity and kindness and to have a champion. And now all of us are champions in our own ways. My brother is VP of a Fortune 500 company. My sister's a clinical director over a whole nursing facility. My brother, other brother, is an IT director at UNMC. And then I run a nonprofit. So, you know, like I said, why did she have all those babies by the time she was 20? And she deserved to be in poverty and, you know, homelessness and stuff like that. But, you know, we had a champion that's seen her as a person and seen us as people. So that's really, really, you know, not pointing out what's wrong with you, but knowing what's happened to you and how. [00:48:29] Speaker B: Can we help you succeed and no one does. [00:48:32] Speaker C: Yes, housing is a human right, and that will make people mad. When I say that, they're like, no, you have to deserve it. And I'm like, but again, if you've never been given tools, if you were molested at eight years old, he didn't deserve that. He deserves a place where he can feel safe and continue to grow. [00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Going back to the no one left behind comment, I think we've talked not here, but about functional zero in the past. Walk us through that concept real quick and how we're trying. I think we're trying as a community to get to functional zero. Anything to share on that. [00:49:10] Speaker C: Yeah. To have impact in your community. It just doesn't happen. You have to be very intentional about it. So the United States Veteran Administration has really put out a challenge to communities that you guys work together as a community to achieve functional zero. And what that means is we know that there will always be veterans, there will always be people entering into homelessness, but we have a track for them to exit it. And so what that means is that we do have affordable housing. We do have veteran services. We are working with landlords that say, hey, I will take a veteran to make sure, again, that if a veteran does enter into homelessness, they are just not left there. That there is a community that has a strategic plan to say when a veteran enters in, they have option a, b, c, and then they have option DEA for permanent housing. And so there's some communities around us that have already achieved it. So Lincoln has, Des Moines has, the whole state of Minnesota has. So Omaha has not. But we're so close to it, you know, bringing on 41 units of permanent supportive housing. I know Adam's working with another nonprofit, again, doing landlord engagement, where they will give preference of a veterans. We are so close to that. So that is a goal of new visions, is to help achieve that, but we can't do it by ourselves. So really bringing the right players, bringing legislation in, working with the city of Omaha, that will dedicate specific funding for veterans experiencing homelessness. So, again, that's a low hanging fruit in our community, and I think that I know it can be attained if we all get together and have that goal. Yeah. [00:50:45] Speaker A: And I think that's the important part, is it's not just a new visions thing to solve. It is a community effort, and it will take the community to get us there. Elected officials, nonprofits, citizens, everybody involved in that solution. Okay, Brandy, I think we've been talking now for an hour ish. [00:51:06] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [00:51:06] Speaker A: Which is sort of crazy. What else do you want to make sure we cover today? [00:51:13] Speaker C: I think we did a great job. Again, my job as leading the organization, and again, somebody was with lived experience with it, just put the human back in homelessness. You know, if we have compassion, I think whenever societies go wrong is when they view a person less than, you know, we have learned through it throughout, you know, viewing people because of their race, because of their sexuality, when we ever do that, it ends horribly. But when we see people for who they are, then are unable to lift them up, that's when the brilliance of the United States shine. And we are a generous, compassionate community. So just remembering again that that's somebody's son or daughter. And so don't call them crazy or they're just a tweaker. They're just a throwaway, or they'll never change. You're not giving them hope to be able to do that. So that's just my big number one story, is that there's a human behind this and nobody really wants it. And I talk to leaders all the time, is when you believe the lie that these people want to be homeless as a community and as leader, it releases us a responsibility to do anything about it. You know, they're just living the best life that they want to. They are not. They have barriers. They need a champion. They need to be taught a little bit different. Nobody has ever taught them. Nobody has ever showed them their scars and be like, hey, brother, I was there, too. You know, there is hope for you. So that's just the one takeaway I want is that there is a human behind. Everybody experiencing homelessness. [00:52:41] Speaker A: We were leaving a restaurant Sunday afternoon, and there was somebody homeless on side of the street asking for as cars drove past. And I have a giant of a seven year old. So he gets to sit in the front seat of the truck, and he. So he gets to see everything that's going on. He's like, dad, why? Why is that person asking for money? And I said, well, they're. They're likely homeless. They're likely down their luck. Yeah, no, but, dad, why? Well, they probably don't have a solid job. And he chewed on that. He's like, okay, dad, let me know if you can get him a job at ward. I'm like, okay, so that's huge, dad. Lesson of, yeah, assume the best. Put the human back in it. Yeah. It was an impactful moment. [00:53:25] Speaker C: He's a problem solver. [00:53:27] Speaker A: He is a problem solver, without a doubt. So. Okay, Brandy, thanks for coming out today. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. We've talked a couple of times now. I appreciate everything you do in the community, and thanks for spending your afternoon with us. [00:53:41] Speaker C: Yes, thank you guys for having me, and thank you for all the work that Werner does in the community to support us. [00:53:46] Speaker A: Heck, yeah. Looking forward to volunteering with you. Awesome. [00:53:48] Speaker C: Thanks. [00:53:50] Speaker A: So that should wrap up our here, our vet voices podcast here for Warner Enterprises team. Thanks so much for listening. Today, the brave men and women of the United States armed forces and our allies all over the world, we salute you. Make sure to buckle up and drive safe out there.