By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer

At Church Under the Bridge, it’s not just about bringing people from all walks of life closer to Christ. Co-founder Jimmy Dorrell fights hard to end stigmas and empower people who are homeless.

Jimmy Dorrell, alongside his wife Janet, is the co-founder of Mission Waco and the co-founder and pastor of Church Under the Bridge. Mission Waco began in 1992, and as its outreach expanded, Church Under the Bridge took form. What began as a Bible study with a few homeless men beneath Interstate-35 is now a bustling ministry with a unique worship style and diverse membership.

“We have about 225-250 [attendees], depending on the week,” Dorrell said. “We probably have a third that are homeless or in a shelter, a third that are poor people and a third that are middle-class people.”

Through Church Under the Bridge, Dorrell said he has seen a number of misconceptions about homelessness.

For example, Dorrell said since people who are homeless are not necessarily in the streets or at a shelter every night, the total population can be underestimated. According to data from the City of Waco, a point-in-time estimate from a night in January 2021 found there were 143 people in Waco sleeping either in the streets or at a homeless shelter. However, Dorrell said this estimate is low, as it only captures one type of homelessness.

“There’s a difference between chronically homeless and homeless,” Dorrell said. “The definition [of chronic homelessness] is when someone has been on the streets for a year or more and is disabled, or when someone has been in and out of homelessness for three or more years.”

Dorrell said the problem with the point-in-time method is that it mostly captures those who are chronically homeless.

“A lot of our members are in and out of homelessness,” Dorrell said. “They might have enough money to spend two or three nights in a low-income motel or apartment.”

However, because of the collection method, when these people are spending a night in a motel or apartment, they are not counted as homeless — even though much of their time is spent on the streets or at a shelter. While Dorrell said it would be hard to pinpoint exactly how many homeless people are in Waco, he said the estimate of 143 does not tell the whole story.

Dorrell said another thing many don’t understand about homelessness is that when a city grows, it can actually harm those with very low incomes, despite the fact that most people benefit from the development.

One example is Oak Lodge Apartments. According to Dorrell, it was the cheapest housing option in Waco, and over a third of the members of Church Under the Bridge stayed there at some point.

Two years ago, Oak Lodge Apartments was bought and torn down to make way for a middle- and upper-class condominium. It left low-income tenants scrambling for other housing options, which were often either the streets or a shelter.

The City of Waco has listed some goals on its homelessness webpage. The site stresses the importance of “supportive housing,” which is defined as “affordable housing linked to accessible mental health, substance addiction, employment and other support services.”

Dorrell said he also understands the importance of supportive housing, and he and his wife even have plans to create some of their own. After visiting a compound of 150-square-foot tiny homes in Austin meant to house low-income residents, Mission Waco began a similar project in Waco.

“We’ve already bought 67 acres of land that will have 346 homes on it,” Dorrell said.

The site is about a mile east of the Ferrell Center, and Dorrell said Mission Waco hopes to break ground this summer.

While Dorrell and the City of Waco are working to strategically eliminate homelessness with research-backed methods, Dorrell said the average person’s perception of help for the homeless is not efficient.

“There’s a whole misunderstanding of help,” Dorrell said. “The temptation for middle-class people is to go give [people who are homeless] stuff, but real help is not just another handout.”

In his sermon, Dorrell said “real help” comes not from donations but from relationships. For those interested in how real help looks, Dorrell said he recommends the book, “When Helping Hurts.”

Dorrell said when handouts don’t go as far as expected, people tend to infer that homelessness is self-inflicted.

“We don’t have a good methodology for helping, so we blame the victims for their problems instead of understanding their problems,” Dorrell said.

However, Dale Rodriguez’s story shows homelessness is not merely the result of a person’s decisions. Rodriguez, who has been a member of Church Under the Bridge for three years, was born in Waco and has been homeless since 2021. He was living with his brother and his brother’s wife until his brother died. Rodriguez then moved into a homeless shelter, as he said he didn’t feel comfortable living alone with his brother’s widow.

Rodriguez, although reformed and now Christian, has been incarcerated multiple times in his life. He said he knows he made wrong decisions, but his childhood did not support a healthy lifestyle.

“I just grew up hanging around people who were getting in trouble, breaking into buildings, stealing cars,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is also disabled and unable to work. He said he lost most of his eyesight in 1999 from diabetic retinopathy, and he had his leg amputated in 2019 due to a bone infection caused by stepping on a nail at a work site. He said he receives disability checks from the government, but they aren’t enough to live on.

Rodriguez’s criminal history, disabilities and limited income have all been factors in his homelessness.

“[My disability] has played its own role, but my criminal charges and the amount that the government has been able to pay me have been more,” Rodriguez said.

According to Dorrell, this multi-factor cause of homelessness is a common occurrence, and it’s the reason the issue cannot be solved simply through donations or better decision-making. Ultimately, homelessness likely won’t be eliminated in any of our lifetimes, but he said it’s clear that the path toward the goal is neither throwing money at the problem nor dismissing the homeless.

“It’s about empowerment over relief,” Dorrell said.