A hand up after homelessness

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, January 13th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: getting a hand up.

Government assistance is designed to be a temporary safety net, but it often falls short, and the needs aren’t always small.

For Christians, the idea of government assistance—and the moments it fails—raises an important question: What can the church do?

REICHARD: WORLD associate correspondent Elizabeth Shenk recently met a young woman whose unexpected journey through homelessness gave a network of churches an opportunity to help her get back on her feet.

ELIZABETH SHENK: Nina Pulley woke up in the middle of the night and looked out of her car window.

NINA PULLEY: It was such a scary moment, but I woke up and there was a car parked across the parking lot.

After a long day of deliveries, she had parked in an empty lot behind a Chicago-area warehouse to sleep.

PULLEY: And there was a guy staring at me.  This was the middle of the night. And I drove away, I was so shaken by that.

Living in her car was supposed to be temporary. She was in her early twenties - a college graduate with a stable job. She was also newly heartbroken and had decided to pack up and move, thinking she could put the pieces back together.

PULLEY: I've heard about people who have lived in San Francisco and have been homeless and they've made it somehow, but they had like actual jobs. I was like, I have DoorDash—and I have a car. Maybe I can do it for a second…

That “second” turned into six months. She’d broken her lease, and that followed her. Then, she wrecked her car in a rainstorm.

PULLEY:  I was like, man, this is the culmination of all the bad decisions that I've made, and here we are and I can't escape it…

Her shelter was gone, her livelihood was gone, and her dad had co-signed for the car, so she’d wrecked his credit, too.

PULLEY: I remember praying outside one night and asking God, like, I need you to help me. I need you to help me see you again, because I feel like I'm not where I need to be.

When Pulley’s family discovered she’d been living in her car, they begged her to come back to North Carolina.

PULLEY: My dad was like "you can't stay here."

Her father knew the feeling. He had been homeless himself when Pulley was a baby.

But going back had its own challenges.

PULLEY: It was in the boondocks and there was no way for me to get to an interview or even get to a job if I got one…

So Pulley found a shelter in the town of Dunn. Amos Love is the director of the Beacon Rescue Mission. He connected with Pulley when she arrived.

AMOS LOVE: She wanted to be a teacher. But she didn't have the certifications or anything. That happened while she was staying with us…

The Mission gave her shelter while she worked on her teaching certifications and worked multiple jobs within walking distance. Then she discovered DUMA—the Dunn United Ministerial Association. It’s a food pantry offering financial assistance and medical care. She met with the director, Todd Snyder, the grant magnet. He wrote over 60 grants this past year.

TODD SNYDER:  I've got eight of them sitting in there on my desk to do in this next month.

And he helped her get her first apartment in Dunn.

PULLEY:  DUMA basically sustained me literally, and literally was the reason why I was able to live there…

DUMA and the Mission partnered to get her a car. Love sent out a line to volunteers detailing Pulley’s needs.

LOVE: And a friend of ours who's a doctor reached out and said, “We want to help with that.”

Today, two years later, Pulley is back at DUMA—one person in a sea of over 250.

SOUND: [Bustling crowd, shoppers]

She’s here as a volunteer and as a member of DUMA’s board of directors.

Pulley helps a woman navigate a grocery cart down a narrow aisle, calling her by name and carefully loading her cart with enough groceries for two weeks.

PULLEY: I started to really think about when people fall through the cracks and how difficult it is to get yourself out of that. A lot of people are a couple wrong moves away, a couple paychecks away, you know…

Pulley is also halfway through her first year as a middle-school English teacher. She’s still paying off that wrecked car, but she’s making it.

SNYDER: We like to give people a hand up, not a handout…

Todd Snyder is now teaching Pulley to write the same kinds of grants she once received.

PULLEY: I wanted to contribute to an organization in a meaningful way and get more involved in the community. I feel like as time has passed, I'm like, "use me," you know, "use me God."

And getting her footing means Pulley can offer a hand up to others now.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Elizabeth Shenk in Dunn, North Carolina.

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