Looking Beyond Homelessness: Brandan Thomas and Houston's Open Door Mission

Welcome to the Wayne Watson Podcast, where Grammy nominee and multiple dub award-winning artist Wayne Watson engages in lively conversation with remarkable people from every walk of life. Artists to help care professionals, athletes and leaders to everyday believers whose stories reflect the power of faith at work in the world. Join us as we go beyond the spotlight and into the heart of what it means to live with purpose and conviction, diving into real conversations about the moments that shape us, the faith that sustains us and the God who inspires it all. Now, here's your host, Wayne Watson. Well, hi, and thank you for continuing to support the podcast and for tuning in. I wanted to set this up a little bit today, it's a little different format because I went to interview my next guest and just shot it off my iPhone and it's a little different format, but I wanted you to know who you're about to listen to. His name is Brandon Thomas, he's the CEO of Open Door Mission, a rescue mission for men here in the Houston area. They house about 120 plus men and it's a fascinating world. The conversation starts off with Brandon talking with me about some of the government initiatives that have been addressing homelessness to really know a veil and it's actually gotten worse, but as you join the conversation, you will hear about some of the misconceptions from the government's point of view about how to fix it. What is wrong and you also hear us talking about us as individuals and how we perceive those who are homeless and some of the misconceptions we have about how we could engage with them and what might be a good thing or not a good thing. So I hope you enjoy his name as Brandon Thomas and I hope you'll enjoy listening to it. Thank you. Like you're talking about housing first and how it worked in Houston, but left a gap in that gap was people with mental illness. And so a good bit of people here in Houston, it's mental illness, unmedicated or medicated mental illness, primarily unmedicated. And so when I ask what do you do for the person who's on the street, because that's a question every once in a while, what do you do? Do you give them money? Do you not give them money in my enabling them? First of all, as a person of faith, I would say this, you've got to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Trust what the Holy Spirit says. But if you're not hearing clear direction or you're still not sure what to do, I often say don't give money. What I often say is give relationship. So what it means is you drive the same route every day and you roll your window down every day and you say, hey, what's your name? And they might tell you in unnice ways that they're not going to tell you their name. You say, hey, it's great. My name is Brandon and I hope you have a good day. And then you come back to next day and you make a habit of coming back and building a relationship over time. Personal. Because eventually they might say they might be willing to sit down with you over a coffee and tell you what's going on. They're not used to people building relationships. They're used to people. They see you as a dollar and you see them as a nuisance. And it's not until we see each other's humanity that we should actually begin to break through and have opportunity for change to happen. So probably get the heck out of here. I edited that because it takes time because they don't trust anybody. That'd be like somebody pulling up and walking in your house and saying, tell me your story. So they're not anxious to share. They're not anxious to talk about their guardied. Yeah, because will they see you just give me five bucks, dude. I just like they they don't see you as a human just like you don't see them as a human often. And so it really has to become a journey of learning to see each other's human. So it really is a it's a journey of time. It's a journey of I'm going to be consistent showing up until I've earned the right to be invited into their home, which is that street corner to have the conversation. So I couldn't show up to your house and say, Hey, man, tell me your story. I'd have to show up regularly until we were close enough that you would say, Hey, come in and let's sit down and I'll tell you my story. You know, unfortunately, I've heard a long time ago when people say, Hey, trust me. My my sometimes my verbal response and always my unspoken response is, I got to know you before I trust you exactly right. I don't know you all have to trust you. Yep. And you got to earn that. So that's what you exactly same thing, same deal here. I mean, they're human is just like us and humans who have a lot of trauma and humans who have voices in their head that are telling them don't trust this person or voices in their head that are telling them to run this person over the car. And so it is a very it has to be very intentional slow process of building those that relation relational equity so you can have the conversation. There's a lady out there where I live and she has a shopping car roller stuff and a little dog on top. And she has a sign chaplain. She said she said chaplain I've rolled the one down one day and she said, Hey, watch CBS tomorrow. I'm going to expose the Houston government and she believes that to her core that's the thing about the folks who are mentally ill and and unmedicated is they're not lying to you. They are telling the absolute 100% truth because their brain is sick and out of that sickness, their brain is telling them these things. What percentage of them would you say are fabricating the story just to get some cash? Honestly, the people who are chronically on the street. So these are the people that you'll see over the course of three or four years or things bought. I say 98% of them are honest and true with their mental illness, right? The people who are fresh on the street and it can appear to be more drug addicted, they're just going to tell you whatever. The problem now is now it's not just schizophrenia, bipolar schizoaffective disorder. Now it's fentanyl and meth and those things that can actually mimic schizophrenia, bipolar schizoaffective disorder. So now it takes time to figure out is this somebody who it's drug use or is it somebody who's got a mental illness? What you're seeing with this high number of youth, there's multiple facets. One of them is obviously drug use. That's a big one, but two, aging out of foster care system and things like that. There's nowhere affordable for them to go get a job in McDonald's that pays enough for you to be able to rent a one bedroom apart. So what happens is these guys start out maybe trying that. Just for the sake of conversation, they age out of foster care, nowhere to go. So they try to get a job that again for sake of conversation McDonald's doesn't pay enough. So they're on the street anyways and they eventually just give up and they just say, you know what? Why work so hard if I can't get myself out of this hole so they just just give up? How much do you think they collect on the street? It really depends on the location and part of the reason I have to ever advocate giving money is because they'll set these street corners up very much like the mafia. And so, yeah, I've seen, I've seen, you know, weighing this is your corner for the day, but I get a take of, oh, that's right because this is, this is usually my corner, but I'm going to let you have the corner. There's potential that the person at the corner is, is actually not the person getting the benefit of the money. I kind of pimped in the corner because they have they've been placed there by somebody. I mean, there's a lot of interesting dynamics that take place that would cause me to tell you to be very careful and not just give to anybody on the street that relationship is always the better way to go. And even there, you have to be careful because these are individuals who test you're not medicated and could be dangerous, so I tend to be cautious for that reason. Do you think some of them that are on the corners, do they live in an environment or they sleep in under a door, under a shelter somewhere, are they bringing an apartment together? What do you, I guess would be that, you know, 75 to 80% are probably living on the street somewhere. Sleepy. All of them. Yeah. I'm just going to give the outliers who are pretending there's always going to be, you know, those that, you know, do this job, so to speak, but the majority of folks probably are truly living on the street because you, I can't think of anything more degrading than standing on a street corner asking for money. So you've got to be a pretty desperate place to actually do that. How do people get to you? What's the process of people going from the street corner, the open door mission? You know what I think's fascinating about this work is, and one of the parts that I love about this work, probably more than anything I've ever done, is there's nothing more beautiful than seeing somebody who has nothing give to somebody who has even less. So we, this is my second ministry to get to run like this. And I've never had to advertise the services because when you find something that changes your life or find something that helps, the folks that are served here to a really good job of sharing where you can find services. So we have to advertise to raise money. We have to advertise to help the wealthier people in our community know about us. But the people actually need, they share. We just started in October, handing food out. And it was the staff benefits were going away. We wanted to help. We had some excess food. So we just decided we'll open our gate and hand out some food. We didn't advertise it. We just let a couple people in the community know. And the first day we had 30 families show up. Today we probably had close to 100 families show up for our food distribution. I saw one on Brooklyn. We have never, we've never had to market that. We never had to share. We just started giving away. And the people who have received have gone and shared with others. Where does the supply come from? Are you, are groceries selling supermarkets donating? Are you buying it with donations from your funds? All the above. OK, so we have a great relationship with the Houston Food Bank who helps us with food distribution. So that's a part of what they have actually with Starbucks. So we give a lot of Starbucks food away out here. We have a relationship like HB and a few others people show up and give us food donations that we're able to give away. So. I think about the food that's wasted and, you know, I grew up in a time where you clean your plate. I wonder food that may not be sellable in the supermarket is still really good. And I don't even when we're shipping food to countries that are in chaos, the distribution process is the challenge. So this distribution so so beauty is very short. Yeah, so I mean, the beauty here in Houston, so the food bank has already negotiated a lot of these relationships. So for instance, like an HB or Walmart, they're food that's at data about to be at date. They actually have systems in their in their stores where they're pulling it from the shelves and they're packaging it, giving it to the food bank to be distributed today. So we got picked up this morning and got brought here this afternoon for us to be able to give it away. It's still food that's really good and they can take and use it today immediately. The exploration they think is is entertaining. There's a side fill bit. Jerry side fill does was how do they know milk is? How do you know that the cows train around know to July 3rd? That's today. And if you're about to drink milk on July 4th, like, no, yeah, I can't do that. You know, you usually get to get the smell test, that's how to know. Milk is pretty obvious. Yeah. He's going to figure that out in the red, you see the mole. Well, talk about some of your, some of your residents. What I love about the folks that we get to serve is you really get to see how tough they are and gritty they own and their survivors. I think what's interesting about this job all the time is you come to serve here thinking that you're going to be able to help the people here. And instead they end up helping you. I think about one guy that I had the privilege of serving over the years who skis a friendly bipolar. He was my age and what's wild about him is he was actually court ordered to come live with us because we would, you know, make sure he was compliant on his meds and all those things. Part of me, the rub was a little bit knowing he and I were born the same year and because of the side effects of the meds, I know that he's going to die 10 years younger than me. I know that he's never going to have the family that I have because of the side effects of the meds. But what I do know is he has a quality of life that he wouldn't have if it wasn't for the work that we're doing here. And because of that, he got to know my kids and, you know, one of my favorite pictures I have is his name is Chris and Chris is a big dude, a big African-American guy. And it was my favorite picture. He's bent down and he's tying my kid's shoe. He'd always refer to himself to my kids as Uncle Chris. And my kids loved Chris and I thought I was here to help, you know, Chris and instead of Chris, he's helping me and helping me see a better way to live on a regular basis because he's so gracious and so caring to others. I really get to see the best in all of humanity and it's a pretty beautiful thing. Do you ever foresee this job being the strain on you and your family? You're a pastor, it is no secret that a lot of pastors burn out. Yeah. Why do you think they do that? Why do you think pastors in church positions burn out compared to what you're doing here? No, I think it's a great question because I watch it happen a lot. It's actually meeting with somebody the other day who is in this line of work who's family hates what they do, hates it because they feel like it's robbed them of their family member. My family, we've looked at this two ways. One is we call it family business and my family's always been involved. They don't know if Mr. Chris and Daddy's office is a billionaire in town who's going to give a lot of money because a scenario that happens or if Mr. Chris and Daddy's office is one of the residents, they just know him as Mr. Chris and love Mr. Chris. So I love that my family's always grown up in it, so how do you fight burnout? I think one, it's got to be a calling, can't just do this job and I think for pastors that I've experienced over years and burned out, it wasn't a calling, it was just a job. And two, for me, it's important to have my family involved. And also know where the line is. So for me, I'm not here on Saturdays, I'm not going to be here on Saturdays because my kid plays baseball, I'm going to leave early today and I'm going to get home in time because my oldest son plays baseball. He plays for the sophomore team and he's in the ninth grade and the high school coach who's going to watch him because they're going to pull him up potentially to play in the playoffs. So there's nowhere that I need to be tonight except that my son's game. And what might happen later today is an emergency, it will happen here. And I know that I'm not the savior of this place or anybody else. I'm not the white savior here to fix anybody or anything. My job here is a creative environment where the people who maybe once were living on the street or addicted can bump into Jesus, but it's not my job to fix them. And so if I've put myself in position where me staying here tonight and missing my son's game, Will or won't fix somebody, then A, I don't have the right team in place and B, I miss understanding what God's calling is on my life because He never called me to be him. He called me to just simply set the table. So he can show up and do what only he can do. So boundaries are important to you, obviously in your family, to set guidelines as to what you're just talking about, pastors do a job that somebody said, if you can find anything else to do, do it. But like you say, I think a lot of them are doing a job and they don't set boundaries. And the other thing is I've met so many of them over the decades I've done this. Many of them are so insecure and don't acknowledge how insecure they are. Just saying it, man. Yeah, right. Yeah. Just say it. Yeah. Quit pretending that you're not insecure and trust that you've got a good team like you just said. Yeah. Yeah. Get a good team. And quit trying to do everything. Yeah. And quit stroking your ego. That's it. I'm trying to serve and do everything. You're not supposed to do it. You're not supposed to people told, I got so and so saying, no, you didn't. You didn't introduce him to Christ and let the Holy Spirit do the work. Yeah. You're doing the work that you're supposed to do with boundaries and let God do what He does. I've been so blessed over the years to get to have some pretty amazing mentors who, you know, if I said their names, their names, people would recognize. And what I watched with them was this lack of ego and this willingness to, they were so open handed with their relationships and they were so open handed with trusting their teams. And so I feel like I got the privilege of learning from them. And I see how God grew their ministries because they were so open handed. I'm only where I am and have the relationships that I have because people were so open handed with me that I want to do the same for others. And so I'm grateful to have some men around me who won't let me get an ego about this. And I think that's why I've experienced some of the cool things I've got to experience. So dad was not a big factor in your life. If anything, the negative factor in life, how did you come to Christ? Well, grandparents, man, I had amazing grandparents. And they made sure me and my sister were in church every Sunday. We didn't have a choice, they made sure we were there. I give them a lot of credit and God gave me many men who I feel like I had the best dads in the world because I had multiple dads because I had guys that I knew were business-minded and I let them mentor me and be my dad in that status and others that were in ministry that mentored me and led me as a spiritual father in that sense. So I've got dads all over the United States in different ways. Did you ever go, did you ever experience a victim complex because of your dads? Oh, yeah. I think part of my success to this day was a grittiness that I had that was more of a victim complex. Like, I'm going to show somebody something. I definitely struggled with that for quite some time. I hope the older I've gotten the more smoothed out of it. But at the end of the day, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you begin to think that, you know, I'm a victim of everything because my dad wasn't there. Do you see that here in the mission all the time? Yeah. Is that a big nut to crack for these guys? Absolutely. You know, and that's where you look at your story and you go, man, so grateful God gave me my story because when the guys will assume that I don't understand in the end of what they've been through, and I'm able to point to the stories and the struggles I have with my dad, they don't expect that. They're kind of shocked by that. Oh, man. They say, well, if God can use my broken situation growing up and how can he not use your situation? Wow. Do you see, do you see guys, are there men and women here at Open Door? Right now, just mad. Just mad. Yeah. How many men are you? 126. Wow. 126. And I want to put on how people can contact you and how people can contribute. I'm assuming 501c3. Yes, sir. Yeah. 501c3. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have fun. Thank you. Thank you. I'm. Thank you. Thank you. We're pointing organizations like helping up in Baltimore. Helping up in Baltimore. The mission there. It's a combination of Johns Hopkins university and a faith based group, like helping up missions. And they're doing really great work together. The reasons why faith based organizations often get uninvited from the table is because oftentimes we're doing really good work We'll do the whole, we don't want the right hand to tell the left hand what to do. So if faith these organizations traditionally have done a really bad job of collecting data, and the language that DC speaks is data, so we've not been asked to not be at the table because of Jesus, we've actually been asked not to be at the table because we don't have the data. We don't have data. And so while we might be doing really good work, we can't prove it. Other than anecdotal stories, you know, we can tell stories to make you cry, but we're not showing up with really good, aggregated data to prove it. Well, and you know what, all the negatives about faith based were the churches, evangelists, anyone who's corrupted or abused the system, they get reported. The behind the singing things you're talking about, not only don't get reported, but don't have the data support what they're doing. Correct. Why do you think that is? It's just neglect, or you think it's some sort of hyper humility that we don't need to pass. Absolutely. Yeah. The hyper humility, the don't let your left hand know what you're right hand is doing. It's, I just, I love Jesus, and I'm doing this for Jesus. So I don't need to tell anybody what I'm doing because I'm just doing this for Jesus. Yeah. Which is not a bad, it got them it blessed with the opportunity to get to go to DC quite a bit and share the story in DC. What I sometimes will tell groups when I'm speaking that I get to translate the gospel into the language DC speaks. If you're familiar with Wycliffe translators, they go to remote areas and they learn the language that's spoken there, and then they translate the Bible into that. The work that we do here, you know, most politicians, they actually do care about what's happening in their communities, you know, but my experience is most of them care, but we've never done the work to translate the gospel, the Bible that's alive here at Open Door Mission and other organizations like here, we've not translated it into the language, the DC speech, which is data. Well, you're obviously an extraverted and like you say ADHD. So you may not want to talk, but how did you get an audience with these power brokers in Washington that you're going to be with next week? How did you get there? I have no idea. I just got God's favor on you. I mean, obviously very articulate and you've got it together and you represent well. So I mean, how did you get that audience? The only way I can figure it out is I'm very passionate about what God's called me to do. And 2019, I wrote a motorcycle from DC to LA and that trip gave me relationships that I would have had had I not done that and those relationships have all translated into me getting to be in rooms that are full people way smarter than me. When you've planned this trip, talk about the people with what we want to help you with that. Yeah. I got the idea to run a motorcycle across the country and ended up having, who's now become a dear friend, find out about it, say, man, I want to give you $25,000 to support this. So what I did was I rode from DC to LA and I spent the night in homeless shelters all along the way. When I presented this to the Harley shop, I really thought they would think I was crazy and in fact, when I left my assistant said, what do you think they fought? I said, I think they think I'm crazy. But instead of thinking I'm crazy, they actually sponsored my whole ride with a brand new motorcycle and a Harley gear and even dash cards to make it from DC to LA. Well, did you get to keep it after the trip? That's my question. I had to give back. How about it? They're smart. They're smart because I left, when I left on the trip, I owned a soft tail. When I returned, I bought a street glide. So, you know, I was well over to and it gave me the opportunity. Like I said, I got invited to the White House in 2019. I got to meet experts in this. I mean, everybody that I met was Dr. So-and-So from Princeton or Harvard or Yale and I was like, how do y'all, how do they respond to your faith and the presentation of? You know what's been so amazing is one time as anybody ever had any issue with my faith bend. Did not disrespect you. Not a bit. No, usually called me Reverend even if I knew they didn't believe in it. They would call me Reverend or Pastor. I'm actually often, you know, what I've learned is if you're just respectful and you actually care about people, people don't care what your faith is, they'll actually begin to ask more questions. And what you're saying is, these are just people. 100%. People that, when you respect them, they respect them. But you're actually doing good and you have the data to back up that you're doing good. They actually become very interested in why you're doing such good work because everything for somebody outside of faith, almost everything's transactional. And so when you're doing something that's faith motivated and there isn't a real clear reason why you should do what you're doing. Right. Because you don't make money doing this. When they see that your motivation truly is this faith thing, they actually become more endeared to. Well, they're vulnerable to it here. Yeah. Why do you do this? Right. Wow. Especially when there's no clear benefit for you doing this. Sure. Sure. Because their world is about how do I benefit again? Well, yeah. What works for me? Is there a network of missions? Yep. So I had the privilege of working for Citigate for a couple of years as well as Citigate is 300 plus shelters all across the country. Whoever's watched this for a city year in here in Houston, we have Star Ho, which is one of the largest shelters in the country and Open Door Mission are both members of Citigate. What's the website for Citigate? Citigate Network. Citigate Network. Citigate Network. Citigate Network. Okay. 300 plus shelters all across the country and doing some of the greatest work ever. You know, we're just most of the funding come from most of us are not currently eligible to get government funding because we don't subscribe to housing first. The majority, if not all of our money, is all private donations because that could that housing first issue change? It could. Absolutely. And that's one of our hopes, but at the end of the day, organizations like Open Door has been around for 70 years, Star Ho, over 100 years. You know, you go to Union Gospel Mission in LA, well over 100 years, New York City, you got the Bowery Mission, well over 100 years. And a lot of the reason we'll tell you we've been around for so long is because we've just been faithful to God's called us to do and we've never gotten tangled with government money. We're okay if the government says they want support while we're doing awesome, but if they don't, that's okay too because God's been faithful to provide all over the country what's needed, when it's needed, how it's needed, if we're faithful to what he's asked us to do. And so the risk of government money is in four years it can go away. Would you be one of the the voices though that if they tried to give you money or if they offered to give you money, but also we'd like to tell you, would you be one of those people that would say, well thank you, but you're not going to tell us how to do our business. Correct. And in a very loving way, I would say we'd better out and doing this well for 100 years. That most of our communities have turned to us when they actually need to tell whether it was at a time of crisis or whatever. You know, the term falling off the wagon was it came from Union Gospel Mission in LA. Wow. We've been around doing really great work for well over 100 years, coast to coast. And for people watching, one thing we could pray for is that their eyes would be open that if you want to redeem this country, not just spiritually, but culturally, and pull things back to a place where people have dignity, you better pay attention to what these people, this guy in front of me is saying because what we've been doing is not working. No, what are you? Well, I do love about the idea that I've been invited to the White House. I've been invited to the White House and the email that I got with the invitation said dear expert. I don't think that's funny, but but the point that is is for so long, the government would have looked at us and said, let us tell you what to do. Right. What they're recognizing. Well, I see that they're recognizing is we already experts in doing this in our community. And so we get to come to the table in a little bit different light, not so the government can tell us what to do. But instead, the government saying, hey, we've been doing this wrong for a while. We spent a lot of money and it's gotten worse. So help us figure this mess out. Well, if they would acknowledge that, then that would be a that would be a divide. That would be the game change. Absolutely. For them to just humble themselves and say, well, we don't know how we don't know what to do. Please help us change it. Yeah. That's what we will. That's what we would pray for. That's my hope and prayer for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll leave it at that for him. That sounds good. Bless you, man. Thanks for listening to the Wayne Watson podcast where stories of faith, purpose, and everyday life meet and continue to uplift hearts around the world. Be sure to follow. Leave us a review and share this episode with a friend to learn more about Wayne's music, ministry, and upcoming projects visit Wayne Watson dot com. Every journey of faith begins with a story, and every heart finds its rhythm in the Lord. Until next time, go well and may you keep walking in step with his song flowing through you.