A key and a name

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 3rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Next up on The WORLD and Everything in It, homelessness in America.

As of 2024, nearly 800,000 people are homeless, driven by a mix of factors: massive migration, high housing and rental costs, family instability, the sudden loss of income, not to mention untreated mental illness and substance abuse.

MAST: One solution for the chronically homeless is found in Springfield, Missouri. It’s not a government program. It’s privately supported and local. It’s called “Eden Village,” one of two such projects in town, and WORLD’s Mary Reichard paid a visit.

MARY REICHARD: I’ve driven past this drab area on the old industrial side of Springfield, Missouri for years. It’s a mish-mash of strip mall buildings and concrete by the train tracks.

But then there’s this 4.5 acre stretch with cheery houses painted red, blue, green, orange, or yellow on each side of a neatly paved road.

Eden Village is a gated neighborhood for chronically homeless people. Estimates are that this town with a population around 170,000 has up to 2,700 homeless people.

Heather Cole used to be one of them, until she landed here.

HEATHER: I ain’t really ever had a place of my own ..

She recalls the day she unlocked the door to her brand new home.

HEATHER: When you’ve been on the streets so long and you walk in the door, it’s very special. It’s overwhelming, it’s breathtaking. I cried like a baby.

This is what Eden Village provides for people. Linda Brown founded it with her husband David.

DAVID BROWN: The longer they're on the street, the longer it takes to read, to acclimate, yeah, you know, they can't live beyond the hour they're in. They can't even think about tonight. They can't think about tomorrow. They're incapable of, they've gotten so used to just surviving in the moment that they can't project out. “Well if I do this, I can do this.” So they’ve got to relearn all that.

The Browns saw the problem up close after they moved downtown in 2010. Linda explains:

LINDA BROWN: I’ve always had a passion, a curiosity—what is their story? Why are they homeless? What happened to them? So we started with a small space one evening a week…

….someplace to serve meals and get to know people.

LINDA: It came to me after a while, after several years, that what we're doing is basically a band aid.

The Browns got to go home and sleep in warm beds. Their friends walked back to the woods and alleys to sleep, exposed to the elements. So Linda got an idea:

LINDA: Tiny home craze was starting at that point, and I said, why? Let's check out some tiny homes and see. And so we researched that on real estate. And so we found this vacant mobile home park here, and we thought this would be a perfect place.

The infrastructure for building was already there. But there was a lot more involved:

DAVID: Our idea is, let’s give some dignity to our friends. They don't have it on the street. You know, nobody pays attention to them. And so what we said, we're going to put them in something we would live in, not something in between, which would be better than living on the street, but we still wouldn't live in it. What does that say to that person?

So, they decided on a 400 square foot fully furnished home. To fund the project, the couple spoke to any group that would listen, like local Rotary Clubs. Soon, others caught the vision, too. Community support led to a $3 million plus development of 31 tiny homes.

The residents also have skin in the game. They pay about 300 dollars a month in rent, usually out of welfare or disability checks. Eligibility requires a person to be homeless in Springfield for at least a year and have a diagnosed mental or physical disability.

Once housed, the rules are simple: be a good neighbor and keep drugs off the property.

LINDA: If we find out that there are drugs in the home, we give them a choice: you either move out, or if you go for treatment, we’ll save your home. And when you come out, you’ll have your home. And then it’s their choice.

A disaster relief organization in Springfield provides common household items.

LINDA: We have a store, a little store, here on the property, so the residents know what's in the store and how many points it takes for toilet paper, whatever. And so they earn points by, you know, either mowing someone's yard. And we keep track of all that. So they accumulate their points, and that's how they purchase. So we're having to acclimate them into living as we do, and so it, that's a transition for them.

One man who repeatedly wins the “Home of the Month” award for mowing lots of yards and keeping his tiny house and yard tidy? His street name was “Dirty.”

Now they just call him “Kevin.”

The Browns see Eden Village as an expression of their Christian faith.

LINDA: We call it God’s project. Because we couldn’t have done it on our own Our prayer at the beginning was, God, if this is not what You want us to do, close the doors—well, you can see He’s opened them.

As for Heather who lives at Eden village, she’s got a job and her life is stable. Does she plan to stay here forever?

HEATHER: I’m 48 years old, and it is designed for single people, and I don’t know that I want to stay single for the rest of my life. I’m not leaving my home for anything less than what I think God wants me to have, which is a godly man that works and doesn’t do drugs. You know, I set my standards a little higher.

And in part because of the opportunities a home brings, she’s got higher standards for herself, too.

HEATHER: It was love. It was somebody showing me I was worthy enough for them to care about.

After nearly a decade on the streets, that’s allowed Heather to go beyond surviving to learning how to really live.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Reichard in Springfield, Missouri.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.