A champion of the poor and homeless shifts gears

CEDAR RAPIDS - Homelessness, hunger and poverty don't always make for the prettiest of pictures, and Martin Dwyer admits the Mission of Hope, which he came to run two years ago, was uglier then than it should have been.

He has worked to change that.

Now Dwyer, 53, an affable Baptist minister and former banker who can fill a doorway with the best, is stepping down, never having intended that his post as the Mission's executive director would find a place in the headlines.

It did.

His leave-taking comes at a time when homelessness has jumped back into the news in Cedar Rapids.

In September, before the nights turned cold again, two homeless people were murdered on different days at different spots in the city. A homeless acquaintance of both is now in jail, charged with both murders.

Then last month, some in the local homeless community protested at City Hall after the city closed down a riverside homeless encampment. Local leaders subsequently announced a new expanded winter shelter program, the cost of which is being paid by a $15,000 donation from 100+ Men Who Care and another $5,800 from the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation and Linn County.

In leaving his post as the day-to-day director of the Mission of Hope, Dwyer said he is not abandoning anything. His move is a shift away from program administration, he said, so he can more directly work with those with addictions, criminal records and penchants for wrong-thinking, all of which he said often are tickets to a life on the street.

Dwyer said the Mission - he will remain on its board of directors - is in healthy shape financially and will be in good hands with its new executive director, Monique Clark.

The picture wasn't always so.

The Mission operated for some years out of a storefront in a highly visible spot in the 1500 block of busy First Avenue SE where crowds of people lingered outside, waiting to eat at the Mission's free lunch or to hang on afterward at what at the time was an active spot for small time drug dealing and drug use.

In 2014, Dwyer became the Mission's executive director to bolster the not-for-profit's fundraising and budgetary bottom line and to help change its image. He wanted to make the Mission a better neighbor in the commercial spot on the boundary between two of the city's core neighborhoods, Wellington Heights and Mound View.

Dwyer said his request of the Cedar Rapids Police Department to walk its drug dogs through the Mission at lunch one day helped to get matters under control.

'As soon as the dogs arrived, there was a stampede to the back door,” he said. 'People were very supportive of cleaning it up.”

‘They come with a reputation'

Even so, the mission couldn't change what Dwyer said was at the time drug selling and drug use in the alleys and in nooks and crannies around the Mission.

So he and the Mission's board of directors began to look at a little-used church nearby, at 1700 B Ave. NE, which was away from the bustle and street life of First Avenue E in a quiet spot in the Mound View neighborhood. But the Mission was not readily embraced.

'They come with a reputation,” Carol Sindelar, Mound View Neighborhood Association president, said in the summer 2014.

Neighbors turned out at a public meeting, with many telling Dwyer to look elsewhere.

'Ultimately I made the decision that time would bear out, would bear witness, that we could do this and meet the requests and expectations of the neighborhood,” Dwyer said.

By and large, he said he said he thinks the Mission, 15 months after its move, has accomplished that.

From a neighborhood perspective, though, the verdict is mixed.

Sindelar said the Mission is working on how to be part of a neighborhood, something it didn't really have to do when it was on a busy commercial strip on First Avenue SE. There haven't been any conflicts, she said.

'It's a lot like having a new neighbor,” Sindelar added. 'They are making positive adjustments as they encounter issues.”

Clark Rieke, a neighborhood association board member who occasionally eats lunch at the Mission, said a year ago that the Mission might become a lemon for the neighborhood.

'Martin has done well minimizing the sourness of the lemon,” Rieke said. Even so, he said it now remains to be seen what the mission's new executive director does.

Karen Guse, a landlord who attends Mound View neighborhood meetings and has family living in the neighborhood, said city leaders should not have allowed the mission to move into the residential neighborhood. She said, too, that she continues to worry that a lack of funds, for one, might make the mission a bad neighbor in the future.

'Martin's done the best he can with an organization that never should be in a residential neighborhood,” Guse said. 'His desire to help the mission's clients with their needs beyond a free meal is good. His move is good for him and eventually will benefit Cedar Rapids.”

The Mission provides a free lunch, food pantry and clothes closet six days a week and offers a Saturday evening church service. The church building also has tenants, a parole and probation office, which predated the Mission's arrival; the Equipping Youth Ministry; and Riders Club of America, which provides low-cost rides to residents without transportation.

In addition, the Mission has assumed ownership of the CrossRoads Mission, at 1006 Second St. SW; operates a shelter for men at 211 Park Ct. SE; and is renovating a house next door at 209 Park Ct. SE into a shelter for women.

‘choices'

In August, the Mission closed its six-day-a-week free lunch program and pantry on Saturdays when Aug. 1 arrived and Dwyer said the Mission's bank account had $128 in it. A new stream of donations quickly allowed the Mission to resume Saturday meals.

'The Mission of Hope's commitment to a positive neighborhood impact will not only continue, but will grow in the future,” he said.

The Mission's new executive director, Monique Clark, is 'uniquely suited for the job” with an extensive background in non-profit management and correctional institutions and as a licensed addiction counselor, Dwyer said. She is a former resident of the Mound View Neighborhood.

In the bigger picture, Dwyer said Cedar Rapids's homeless population includes those who have substance-abuse problems, mental illness and/or criminal records as well as people who simply make bad decisions. A group of '30 to 40 strong” at any given time choose to live outside, and he said this is a collection of 'really tragic stories,” those who are 'drifters” and others who 'have landed there because it's the only place they think they can be.”

'There are choices out there,” he said. 'We give them options. But some people won't choose it. Sometimes the addictions, the psychoses for those with mental illness, are very strong.”

Dwyer said he especially likes the Mission's name because there is hope for those who seek out the Mission. Time and again, he has seen people change.

Every workday, Dwyer is at the Mission's free lunch program in the church's basement where, on average, 128 people a day come to eat. He knows many of the stories. He knows just where people are on their trajectories of life.

'I see hope for everybody,” he said. 'Maybe I wouldn't have once upon a time when I was a corporate banker. But I can't remember feeling like that anymore.”

Dwyer said he hopes his new Cedar Rapids effort, which he is calling the Lighthouse Church, will mean fewer people need the Mission in the future.

At the same time, he said he has stopped puzzling about why homeless people choose to live outside in Cedar Rapids when there are warmer cities to seek out.

'These are real people who have families and loved ones,” he said. 'If you're next to a river in Iowa, there's got to be something going on, some reason you might want to get your life back together for.”