BATESVILLE — In the tucked-away White-Rodgers Wastewater Recycling Plant warehouse, Autumn Hunter and Misty Lee-Black stand among racks of winter coats, stacked trash bags filled with donated items, and bins waiting to be packed with sorted materials. The space lacks electricity and air conditioning, but it’s a perfect spot to help achieve their goal.
A Step Forward, a Batesville-based nonprofit, aims to provide transitional assistance to homeless families. The organization, which is still seeking a house to use as a shelter, will provide housing for four families for up to six months, and will assist people with career skills and landing an entry-level job. The organization has been gathering donated items from the community for months.
“Basically, we’re just trying to find an avenue for self-sufficiency,” said Hunter, the nonprofit’s director.
Lee-Black, who volunteers as the warehouse manager, said she sort of fell into her role with the organization.
“I’m happy that I’m able to help the community,” said Lee-Black, who arrives at the warehouse at 6 a.m. to sort items before it gets too hot. FutureFuel donated the warehouse space to A Step Forward.
A Step Forward got its start in 2014, when Hunter was asked to join the nonprofit, which is under Batesville’s Community
Enrichment Organization, as a part-time director. For a year, Hunter toured various facilities around the state and researched procedures and operating plans, along with spearheading fundraisers to raise awareness of the nonprofit.
“We know that we have a high percentage of poverty in Batesville,” she said. “It’s been known for a while that we are having a homeless problem.”
Area businesses such as FutureFuel, White River Medical Center and local banks have partnered with A Step Forward to provide career opportunities for the parents in the families, Hunter said. She said Community Enrichment Organization leaders are also businessmen in the Batesville area.
“If they do not already have jobs, the adults that come into the house will be provided with entry-level positions into the organizations that these businessmen are over,” she said.
Hunter added that the adults will be assisted with soft skills and financial literacy so that they can work toward saving for deposits and utilities to one day move out on their own.
In fall 2015, A Step Forward found a house large enough to fit four families in need. Early this year, after an application process and various meetings, the organization was denied the home. Hunter said many residents spoke at the public meetings and expressed their opposition to the shelter opening. Hunter cites “fear of the unknown” as the reason why.
“Almost all of the families that we’ll take in will be suggested to us by the Batesville School District, and the Batesville School District already has a relationship with these families. It’s not like we’re just taking strangers off the street and putting them up in a room altogether,” she said, noting that the application process will also include drug tests and background checks.
At other similar facilities that Hunter has studied and visited, at least two families share one bathroom, a setup that also concerned locals who were present at the public meetings for the house. Ideally, the home that A Step Forward will one day open will have a large kitchen with four refrigerators, an industrial-size stove and a large living area, along with four large bedrooms for each family.
“It looks like a house, and it doesn’t look like an industrial area,” she said. “It looks like a house with a playground and a yard in the back and a fenced-in yard for children to play safely.”
The number of children who can be housed in A Step Forward’s future shelter will depend on the size of the rooms, Hunter said.
“We don’t have the facility yet, but I would imagine if you had four small children, [you would have a] two-per-bunk-bed kind of thing, and a mom and dad in a full-size bed,” she said. “For free accommodations and setup, that would be good for six months until you can get on your own on your feet.”
Hunter said homelessness in rural areas and urban areas doesn’t always look the same. Just because someone may be living with another family, she said, doesn’t mean they aren’t homeless. And just because there aren’t people sleeping on the street doesn’t mean an area doesn’t have a homeless problem, she added.
Many of the families A Step Forward will assist, she said, will be the working poor.
“They try hard to blend in and not to be seen as different or homeless because they don’t want that all the time,” Hunter explained.
Lee-Black assisted A Step Forward with its first fundraiser, a Cajun dinner. At the dinner, she saw a video that showed families living with others, which struck a chord with her.
“I’ve been homeless before, and I didn’t realize that I was homeless because I was staying with family or friends …,” said Hunter, who is no longer homeless. “I never looked at myself as homeless until I saw that, then I realized, ‘Oh, my goodness, I know a lot of people that are in the same situation. I was there, and I still didn’t have the same mindset that this organization had. And I’m happy that they’re here.”
For now, A Step Forward is focusing its efforts in Batesville, but the organization will soon reach out to the county.
“We are inviting the superintendents from all of Independence County and the school districts to come to a meeting in September, so we’ll be working to reach out and see,” Hunter said. “The Batesville School District assures us that they can keep the house full all the time.”
Hunter said the communal shelter will hopefully open sometime next year, and the organization is still in need of items such as camping equipment, personal-care products, first-aid and hygiene products, clothing and warehouse items.
“I believe that we have a very good avenue for transitioning people from homeless situations to being self-sufficient, self-reliant,” Hunter said.
For more information on A Step Forward, contact Lee-Black at mlee_astepforward@yahoo.com.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.