As the city's largest homeless shelter, Knox Area Rescue Mission is a world unto itself, striving to feed the hungry and convert souls.
by Joe Tarr
Checking In
The best known of Knoxville's shelters for the homeless, Knox Area Rescue Ministries (or, KARM, as it's called), has grown massively since it opened in 1960. Today, it includes three shelters: the Union Rescue Mission for men, the Serenity Shelter for victims of domestic violence, and New Life Inn, for single women and homeless families.
With an annual budget of $3.1 million, KARM is nearing the end of a $6.2 million fund raiser which will pay for a new shelter building on Broadway. Monroe Free, president and CEO for the past 15 years, says the money will allow KARM to provide more beds for families and single women, along with play space for children. It will also help build a recovery center to help treat alcoholics and drug addicts, and provide vocational training. The center will also serve those at risk of becoming homeless. Finally, the money will help upgrade all of KARM's current facilities, providing more shelter beds.
Each day, the Rescue Mission serves 600 to 700 meals. Dinner is served around 5:30 p.m., and people line out the cafeteria door waiting for a meal. Food generally consists of a salad or cole slaw, a vegetable, entree, bread and milk. Large boxes of slightly bruised apples or darkening bananas sit out for people to pick through.
Check-in time for a bed at the Rescue Mission is 6:15 p.m. Chapel service used to be required in order to stay, but they recently made it voluntary.
To sleep there, you must have had a TB test from the health department, although a four-day grace period is given. At check-in, David Smith, one of the second-shift supervisors, walks around with a breathalyzer giving everyone a straw. They blow into the machine, and if they hit .07 or higher, they cannot sleep here. One evening, a man so drunk he can barely talk staggers in after dinner to try to get a room. Smith tells him he can't stay but says he'll call the police to take him to detox. But the bleary eyed man stares at him grinning, as Smith tries to get his name. After a few minutes, he leads the man over to sit on the window ledge.
"I know the ones that drink a lot. I can pretty much tell," says Smith, who has been working here only since April, but is already an old hand. "Sometimes drunks will get in my face and cuss me out and then several days later they'll come back and put their arm around my neck and apologize."
After chapel services, bed assignments are given out through a glass window shielding the locked front counter. To check in after 10 p.m., you must have a notice from work or something like a bus ticket to prove you just arrived in town. Those who stay here regularly can usually get the same bed every night.
After chapel, the men trickle upstairs to get clean sheets and a blanket, and make up their cots. Showers are required to spend the night, but enforcement seems lax. Still, the place is clean, if cramped. There are some 120 bunk beds, most of them in one large room. The Army-style bunks are spaced about 2 feet apart. Several of the mattresses have holes and slashes down the middle. Bars cover the windows.
"It ain't bad at all," says James Rorex, a middle-aged man with kinky, slicked-back hair, as he sits outside smoking a cigarette after dinner. Suffering from a variety of health problems, including high blood pressure and thyroid cancer, Rorex does day labor two or three days a week, mainly landscaping and yard work. He hopes to buy a low-income house soon. "It's a good place to stay. It's not like the House of Pain, the mission in Nashville. There you get robbed, people piss on the floor, smoke dope—that's what I hear at least. You know I ain't going to go there."
John Statton, or Big John, as he's known, has stayed at the mission off and on since 1990. Some of the workers there used to be bad, but KARM has done a good job of weeding them out, he says. "The people working there now are pretty understanding," he says. "They used to have fights up there and drugs and drinking but now that they've weeded the bad people out, it's okay."
Some of the men meticulously shave and shower, and neatly make up their beds, while others indifferently sprawl across their bunks in their soiled jeans and shirts. Several of the men staying at the mission do have jobs. A few are passing through town and are working to save up money so they can continue on their journey, which may or may not have a destination. "A lot of guys use this as a transition. A lot of them come in here and work their way out of here," Smith says.
Lights are turned out at 9 p.m., although the night lights make it bright enough to read in spots. Everyone must be in bed by 10 p.m., unless you're out working.
Just before lights out, Linnie White, a former resident who now volunteers, does a walk through the dorm, teasing the men good-naturedly. "No eatin', no drinkin', no smokin', no gamblin', one man to a bunk," he yells. —"Can you masturbate?" someone asks. —"No."
But breaking the rules can be serious. Get caught doing one of the above, and you could be banned from the mission for 90 days. Even so, it's not too difficult to break the regulations—a couple people smoke during the evening.
It isn't easy to sleep at the mission because there is a good deal of snoring, coughing and farting. There are many different types of snores tonight. There are your traditional log-cutting snorers, whose rugged snorts build in volume and intensity before cutting off abruptly and then slowly climbing once more. One snore is particularly disturbing—that of a fat man whose snore sounds like the last gasps of a baby's tantrum, long, whiny and exhausted.
Throughout the night, the supervisors pay wake-up visits to those with jobs.
At 6:30 a.m., they turn on the lights and walk through, shouting, "Time to get up guys."
Some shower. Sheets are tossed in pile near the door and everyone shuffles downstairs for a morning smoke. Breakfast is served at 7:15 a.m. After breakfast, they must leave. They go to any number of places, including temp labor agencies, the Volunteer Ministry Center (a daytime shelter), or the sidewalks of downtown.
On the Program
Rob wasn't planning to stay in Knoxville long. The Air Force veteran was passing through in June 1998 on his way from Johnson City to Nashville, where he hoped to pursue his music ambitions. "But I came here and cocaine addiction took hold," says Rob, who doesn't want his last name printed. He has a thin, well-groomed mustache, and is dressed neatly. As he speaks, he takes long, ponderous drags on his cigarettes, which he occasionally snuffs out after just a few puffs, only to relight moments later.
He tells his story on the mission's second floor balcony, where the residents smoke cigarettes and read. At a folding table beside us, four men play cards. The conversation is interrupted at one point by a woman screaming just down the street—an apparent argument with her boyfriend who tried to drive home drunk. After a few minutes, the police come.
Rob is on the "program," as it's called—a drug and alcohol treatment program that blends 12-step methodology, counseling and Bible study. Those on the program are called "residents," and they advance through a series of six phases—getting more responsibility and freedom as they progress. They must quit their jobs or school and are given work at the mission, for which they're paid $5 a month to start. They sleep in a separate dorm room, apart from the non-residents.
Rob had been using cocaine off and on since 1991. He had tried various treatment and 12-step programs to break his addiction, but each ultimately failed. With a strong Christian faith, Rob decided to join KARM's treatment program in May.
"After coming here, I discovered it's only an intense concentration of spirit and knowledge of Christ that will pull anybody out of it," he says. "While you're here, you only have to do an hour or two of work a day. The rest of the time you're in Narcotics Anonymous and spiritual meetings. That's ideal."
"Nothing starts to help until you admit you're powerless and along with that you make the realization that God can help you," he adds.
Drawing on the Bible and various self-help books and tapes for inspiration, Rob has a studious attitude, trying to learn from whomever he can. "Everybody you meet here has some talent or other."
According to Jerry Constance, director of client services, about 24 percent of the people who start the program graduate. But Dr. James Ferrell, a psychiatrist at KARM, says success can be measured in many ways and sometimes might not be noticeable. That could mean a schizophrenic starts taking his medicine, or someone gets their G.E.D., or a loner starts talking to you during lunch. "Even if someone leaves us, that hope seed might be planted," he says. "It's not over because he left us."
"Big John" Statton went on the program, but didn't complete it. "I thought I was ready [to get off the program] but I wasn't," he says.
"It's an all right place. To get off of drugs, that's a bad place to be because of the area around it," he says, referring to the 5th Ave Motel and the corner of 5th and Broadway avenues, where drugs are readily available. He says he drinks less than he used to, but he wouldn't go back on the program because its structure doesn't suit him.
One man—who didn't want his name used—went on the program in the mid-'90s after a nervous breakdown. He says it did little to help him. He was referred there after a few weeks' stay at Lakeshore. He didn't like the forced religious services or the fact that residents worked for very little pay. It's a criticism common of all Rescue Missions—that they survive by exploiting the cheap labor of those they want to help.
"We were like prisoners. You had to get permission to go everywhere," the man says. "Under the guise of trying to help us, we were like slaves."
But Linnie White, a volunteer who lived at the mission for 2-1/2 years, says the strict rules were just what he needed to stop using drugs and alcohol.
"It's like being at home with your parents. They say they want you to do this and that...They give you rules and regulations," White says. "At first it was like a prison to me—living in this big dorm with a bunch of guys. But the guys weren't the problem. My drinking and drugging was the problem."
Hell and Back
Central to the Mission's approach is the Bible. Many of the homeless people respond well to it. The Mission used to require all those staying over night to attend chapel services. However, it recently stopped requiring it as an experiment, Constance says. "Jesus didn't beat anybody over the head," he says. "We're trying to make sure our chapel service is not like that. We try to make it interesting."
But evangelical Christianity—the belief that only those who have accepted Christ into their hearts will avoid hell—is strong. One morning before breakfast, a volunteer goes into a rapid-fire spiel about the dangers of hell and how accepting Christ is the only important decision in life.
Others are more low-key in their religious beliefs.
Ferrell, a psychiatrist who worked with various state and private hospitals, has worked at the Mission for about six years. He says the state's mental health system frustrated him because as funding became scarce, the philosophy was to simply medicate people. "I wanted to spend time with people instead of calling insurance companies," he says.
He uses a theo-centric approach in counseling people. "I'm not saying people can't reach success without [Christianity]. But God gives people hope. The folks here, they're really desperate for hope," Ferrell says.
He says he tries to show his patients that people in the Bible were real people who struggled with problems just like they do. During a group counseling session with about 10 men, Ferrell outlines the phases of grief and their effects on people. At various times, he points to Scriptures to illustrate his points.
"These people were real," he tells the group. "They made mistakes, got drunk, went to jail...It's real easy to say, 'Oh, Moses was a big prophet, he had it easy.' But this guy had it rough. And he didn't listen to God most of the time."
Free, too, believes that belief in Jesus is just the thing for those who have lost hope. The three big problems that KARM's clients face—drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness and domestic violence—he says are often symptomatic of something vague and more complex: loneliness.
"I'm always struck by the fact that our people are the loneliest people I know. You ask them if they have any family or friends and they say, 'No.' They may in fact have family somewhere. But the fact is they think of themselves as alone," Free says.
"If I'm right about this, what God says is, 'You'll never be alone again and you'll never be powerless again. I'm going to give you power.'"
Free says that God is the only way for someone like a prostitute to overcome shame. "There's an overwhelming sense of shame that therapy can't heal. God says, 'I love you, I forgive you.'"
But KARM's religious doctrine is obviously not something that everyone is at ease with.
One woman, who asked not to be named, stayed at the Serenity Shelter in the mid-'90s with her two children.
"I was in a very bad situation. I quite possibly could be dead right now if I was unable to go there," she says. "I'm extremely grateful. Anyone in the situation I was in—I would encourage them to stay there."
Still, the woman says she has mixed feelings about the way she was treated at Serenity. "One of the difficulties I had was they have groups and Bible studies. A lot of their activities are based around fundamentalist Christianity. I was in school at the time. They told me it was more important to be at Bible study than to be at my classes," the woman says.
"They should be encouraging people to do what they need to do to get on their feet. ...The message that came across was we were in the situation we were in because we were not good Christians and weren't right with God."
Keith Richardson, former director of the Volunteer Ministry Center (which is supported by several Christian denominations and community groups, but doesn't actively proselytize), says the evangelistic approach works for some, and definitely has a place in Knoxville. "That's a personal thing. In any community there is a place for a service provider like that because there are folks out there who are hungry for that or are accustomed to that. If in the process they get a meal and bed, I think that's a small price. I would never want to be a part of that, because I was brought up not to commodify faith. And I think it's more important people show faith through action.
"A lot of times people who have a lot problems happen...[are] easy pickings in some ways."
But Big John Statton says he can feel God at work at KARM. "I think that's what's holding the place together. I can feel it in certain people," he says.
Is Bigger Better?
When Monroe Free was a boy, he remembers a woman with five children—including a newborn—begging his parents for food. "The woman said, 'If you'll feed my other four children, I'll give you my baby,'" he says. "I thought, 'No one ought to live like that.'"
Decades later, Free is following the example of his parents and helping those in need. But not everyone agrees his methods are the best.
With Free's name and face plastered throughout the Rescue Ministries' fundraising ads and pamphlets, it's difficult to separate the Knox Area Rescue Ministries from its leader. With a $67,000 salary and a $32,000 expense account, it's hard to overstate his role and importance to KARM.
"He does an excellent PR campaign...He's a celebrity in charitable work," says Calvin Taylor, of the Community Action Center and former head of the Knoxville Coalition for the Homeless—a group of agencies that works to coordinate services. "Monroe's been able to market himself in Knoxville. You can't fault somebody for that. That's good strategy."
Free says he was raised with the idea that you must help those in need.
Before Free was born, his father was an alcoholic liquor store owner. His dad eventually changed his ways, giving up drinking to become a Baptist preacher. However, he never forgot who he used to be and was forever helping the down and out, Free says.
Free answered the calling to help others, first as a hospital chaplain and then at a mission in Pensacola, Fla. He moved to Knoxville in 1985 to take over the Mission.
"I don't know how to describe it, but I feel in love with the people we serve. I love to hear their stories, I love to try to help them," Free says.
Although he lives very differently from the people he serves, he says he nevertheless sees similarities and can relate to them.
"I'm one of these lucky guys—my pathology is work. It could have just as easily been alcohol or drugs...It's just that mine is socially productive, theirs is not," Free says.
Sitting in his plush office on Broadway just down the road from the Rescue Mission, it sounds like a story he's told many times in his life, and Free sounds genuine.
But not everyone is enamored with his ways. Many people refuse to talk on the record about Free or KARM.
One of the bigger criticisms is that Free doesn't work with the other agencies in town. Taylor, who has been involved with the Coalition for the Homeless for 10 years, says Free has attended about three out of more than 40 coalition meetings during that time. A staff person attended another seven, he says. KARM has also been reluctant to share statistics the coalition seeks in gathering data, he says. "It shows that being a team player is not a high priority [for KARM]," Taylor says.
Angelia Moon, administrative director of Volunteers of America, a single-women and family shelter, echoes Taylor's comments. "Most all of the service providers in this community work very well together...There are some agencies that don't participate. KARM is one of those."
Ultimately, the poor people suffer when groups don't work together, she says. "Say an agency wants to plan new services—for homeless veterans, for example. If they think they're the only one doing that, they plan differently than they would if they think they're augmenting someone else's services," Moon says. "It truly impacts the quality of our services."
Studies done every other year by University of Tennessee sociology professor Roger Nooe for the Knoxville Coalition for the Homeless (of which KARM is a member) show that there are plenty of emergency shelter beds in Knoxville. What's lacking is services such as substance abuse programs, mental health care, transportation, education, and job skills programs. "Our shelter beds are adequate, as long as we continue to move people out of homelessness," Nooe says.
KARM hopes to provide more of those needed services with its expansion, but it also claims that more beds are needed.
Taylor fears that KARM may be getting too big. Ideally, he says, you'd want smaller shelters specializing in needs of specific populations—the mentally ill, elderly, the working poor, the drunk. But because of its size, the mission mixes all of these populations together, increasing the odds for trouble and decreasing the chances those who stay there will find help.
"If you had a shelter that housed 40 people instead of 200, you'd have a lot less problems and you could manage better. There's not a lot to be said for getting big, and I think that's where the Mission is heading," Taylor says.
The men look out of place and fidget in their seats at rear of the Knoxville Civic Coliseum. This is a West Knox crowd, affluent and young. Several church youth groups are here, and the kids start a football-style chant across the coliseum—"We Love Jesus, Yes We Do, We Love Jesus, How 'Bout You?"
Required to attend, the KARM residents were bused over to the Coliseum on this rainy night to listen to the words of Scott Dawson and the music of Larnelle Harris and Charles Billingsley. The music is a bland mixture of soul and jazz, and despite the lavish production sounds fairly rote. Some of the men are clearly moved as they clap along and sing, others just sit there and take it all in.
"I see the value in saving people's souls. I'm not entirely comfortable with the packaging—it comes in like a big rock show," Rob says later. "I'm not too crazy for the newer music."
The show is a stark difference to chapel services at KARM, which are hosted by different visiting ministers.
Jack Cate, chaplain of the county jail, leads one once a month. Relying heavily on his acoustic guitar, Cate leads an encouraging, hopeful service. Some of his congregation sleep, but others raise their hands or respond to the preaching.
Cate asks the congregation if there's anything they want to pray for. One man says for his wife. Another for safe passage to where he's traveling. A third for his health. "All my brothers here," says a fourth.
Cate tells them that Jesus loves everyone. "Love—out in the streets and in the world, we don't hear that a lot," Cate tells them. "Fellows, we love you and that's why we're here tonight."
He then strums a rendition of "Amazing Grace," and the congregation joins in:
"Amazing grace,
how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost,
but now am found,
was blind, but now I see."
The harmonizing is raw, accentuated by coughs and sneezes of chronic bronchitis, but hard to top for visceral power.
After a few verses, Cate stops strumming and lets the men carry the tune. Their voices float out above them, and for a moment it seems as though they've found a place to call home.
August 3, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 31
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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