Michelle Brown

TH: Where does Marie House fit in the needs of the community?
MB: Well, Marie House has filled a need that was unmet. Before Maria House opened, there was no transitional housing for women and children. And Maria House was first started to serve both emergency and transitional housing. Up until the time we opened, the only other shelters for that was the YWCA Domestic Violence Shelter, but that was only if you were abused. Then the Catholic Worker, Hope House, but they only have like four bedrooms, and so there were not enough shelters in Dubuque.

Michelle A. Brown Age: 52 Occupation: Executive director, Opening Doors (Maria House and Teresa Shelter). Family: Wife of Wayne. Mother of Ryan and Meghan Brown and Katie Tracy. Daughter of Darla and the late Cletus Pillard. Sister of Mark and Jeff Pillard and Lisa Decker. Hometown: Dubuque. Education: Bachelor's in sociology/social work, Loras College, 1975. Licensed practitioner in intensive psychiatric rehabilitation. Licensed bachelor social worker. Professional associations: Women's Leadership Network. Association of Fundraising Professionals. Tri-State Gift Planning Council/Leave a Legacy. Community leadership: Mississippi Valley's Promise. Envision 2010 Committee. Former chair, Dubuque Homeless Advisory Board. Former member, Resurrection School Board. Former Girl Scout leader. Hobbies: Walking, reading, "bargain shopping," travel and family activities.

TH: Could you define transitional housing?
MB: Transitional housing is a very structured type of housing facility where women have to be ready to make changes in their life in order to come and live here. You don't see a lot of women here this morning because they're either working or going to school or in some type of job-training program. They can live here up to two years while they're working on goals to get their lives back together again.

TH: Who are these women?
MB: These women are either homeless or near homeless. They've either come from the streets or they've received an eviction notice from their apartment. Some of them maybe have left a mental institution or a substance abuse treatment center. We see a lot of that, especially with the drug problems, especially meth use in Dubuque.

TH: How prevalent is the meth problem in the community overall, based on your observation through Maria House?
MB: Oh, it's very prevalent, unfortunately. We get a lot of cases from the Department of Human Services. It's kind of like oftentimes the children are in foster care and it's almost like the last-ditch effort for mom to get her kids back. So the kids are in foster care and if mom is compliant with her treatment program, it will start with our supervised visits here and then they'll progress to overnight visits, and then weekend visits. Oftentimes, we've been successful in reunifying the children with their mother. That's a great feeling to see that family reunited.

TH: But do you have a sense of the problem increasing, based on what you've seen in general and meth in particular?
MB: I don't know if we can speak for the whole drug problem, but we certainly see a lot of it here.

TH: Do the residents have any financial obligations? Do they pay rent or anything?
MB: If they have income, they will pay a small part of staying here. For example, a single woman will pay $25 a week to stay here, but then half of that is put into an escrow account so that when she's ready to move out, she gets half of that back to start a new life, to use for down payments on an apartment and utilities. Then a little cushion emergency fund.

TH: What do you consider the biggest challenges for Maria House?
MB: Meeting our operating budget. Our operating budget is around $400,000. We are a United Way agency, so we get about 7 percent of that from United Way. Another 1 percent is from program fees from the women themselves, so that leaves about 92 percent that has to be raised through donations and grants. So, constantly holding our hand out, looking for donations. We have an annual appeal. I'm always writing grants. We now have a full-time development person. It's constantly going with your hand out to people. The thing I'm so impressed with our community, though, is the generosity of people.

TH: Now, the Maria House itself had church-affiliated roots, in terms of Sister Helen and others were on the committee to get it started.
MB: Yes. Actually, it was with six orders of sisters in this area that provided the seed money to get Maria House up and going: The Franciscans, Sisters of the Presentation, Sisters of Charity, the Sinsinawa Dominicans, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of the Visitation. And what's nice about these sisters is that they have continued to stay involved. They volunteer here to make meals at night.

TH: You had these six orders that went together to get the seed money to get this started, but in terms of your operation today, you are not a "church-affiliated" organization.
MB: No, we're not. We're a non-profit charitable organization.

TH: Aside from the money part, because almost any non-profit is always fighting the money battle...
MB: Except most non-profits are usually tied to a larger organization, a parent organization, or they generate revenue from fees for services. We don't get any federal or state money; it's all competitive grants. I think homeless shelters or transitional housing facilities are different in that all their money has to be raised. I think that's where the misnomer is among the population. You know, most non-profits, when I look at them, they're getting revenue from their larger parent organizations; like, let's say the Boys and Girls Club, that's a national organization where they get revenue from their parent organization, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts. We're different in that we have to raise it all.

TH: OK. I don't want to minimize the money, but you have other challenges as well.
MB: The next big challenge is not having enough room, not being able to serve enough people. The demand outweighs the space that we have. And not being able to help everyone. Not everyone, we're not able to serve everyone and not everyone fits into our program.

TH: What happens to those folks? You don't have enough room right now, so you have to turn some people away?
MB: We have to turn some people away. And not everyone can abide by the rules that we have here. It's a very structured program.

TH: What would be some examples of a few of the rules that residents here have to follow?
MB: Well, there's a 10 p.m. curfew at night. They have to follow that. No use of alcohol or drugs and they can't come in under the influence of either. Sherry, our program director, has the authority to do drug testing, if she suspects that they're using and that's an automatic discharge from the program if they are using. Everyone eats supper together at 5:30. That's a rule, because a lot of them have had no structure in their life and we're trying to put that structure back in their life. There's programming every Wednesday evening that we want all the residents to go to, because we're trying to teach them the life skills that they've never had before. There's recreation offered every Thursday night where they actually go out into the community, we pay for it. They'll go to the plays at the Grand or bowling or miniature golf or anything that they would like to participate in. They get to decide what they want to do, because we feel that they need to have fun in their life, too. Then a lot of them, sinc e there is a lot of mental health issues or drug issues or alcohol issues, they have to go to their own programming, like NA meeting, an AA meeting, so they have to do that. So they're kept very busy.

TH: Someone reading this interview might say, "Hey, those are reasonable rules."
MB: They are reasonable, but for people who have come from the streets, for some of them, they're hard to follow.

TH: What's your success rate? How many people do you have to tell, "Sorry, this isn't working out here"? How many people do you have to exit because of violations of the rules?
MB: Some leave on their own accord. We very seldom have to tell someone to leave, put it that way. Some just know it's not going to work for them. I would say one out of 10 do we have to tell to leave. Most of them just leave on their own because they know. It's hard living ... although they each have their own bedroom, they have to share the kitchen and the community area, and that's hard. However, because now we're starting the emergency shelter, we're able to screen better and Sherry (McDonell, program director) is going to be able to decide who's going to better fit this program. Up until this point, we've been just taking anybody because we don't want them to live on the streets. So now that we're going to have this new shelter, she'll be able to screen better. And actually, the population we have here right now is the true transitional population. They've been here for a long time and we know they'll continue to be here a long time, because they're very motivated.

TH: I know you're dying to tell me about this, so I'm going to ask.
MB: The Teresa Shelter.

TH: You've had Maria House...
MB: It will six years in September.

TH: So tell me about the next project, Teresa Shelter.
MB: We don't have enough space here; we've had to turn people away. Sometimes to other communities, because there's not enough shelter here in Dubuque. We had gone to our board and said we need more space. Fortunately, the sisters, the six congregations have still continued to remain involved, and they had approached me a couple of years ago, "Michelle, what other need do you have besides Maria House?" I said, "Emergency housing." It just does not work having those populations under the same roof, because the emergency population, they're just after having their basic needs met: food, clothing, shelter. They're not ready to work on goals. They're not ready to get off their drugs or their alcohol or take treatment for their mental illness. You can't mix that population in with the group who are very motivated to make changes. It doesn't work. That's what we had been doing for the first four years, is mixing those two populations. It just doesn't work. So they, once again, took up our cause, again committe d seed money to hire a director so that we could get Teresa Shelter started. She's just a dynamo.

TH: And her name is?
MB: Her name is Sister Carol Karwoski. She actually came in. This is kind of a funny story. She had seen our ad in the paper for a program assistant here (Maria House) and came in to apply for that position. She, early in the interview, decided that wouldn't be the job for her because she used to teach and she said, "I can only take kids for about 10 minutes," and part of the job would be cooking and she said, "I'm not domestic in any way." She was very honest at the interview. But she had 10 years or 11 years experience running a men's shelter in Davenport. I was getting so excited in the interview. I said, "You know, I'm speaking prematurely right now, but please don't take another job yet because there's something coming down and I can't say exactly when it's going to be, but we're working on getting an emergency shelter here and I think you would be the perfect person for the job. Please call me before you take another job." We ended up hiring her like four months later.

TH: This was an ad in the Telegraph Herald, right?
MB: Yes, in the Telegraph Herald. Now, she loves asking people for money. If you can believe that, that's one of her strengths. She has a master's in St. Francis of Assisi. I didn't know you could get a master's in that. He was a beggar who went around asking for money, and she models him. So, it's just perfect.

TH: She isn't here today, is she?
MB: Yes, she is. She's only about 4 foot 8. I'll introduce you to her.

TH: Well, I didn't bring much money today.
MB: She'll get you some day.

TH: Teresa House is at 11th and Bluff.
MB: 1111 Bluff, right.

TH: In the former Food and Commercial Workers Union Hall.
MB: She's already asked people, generous people, in our community donated the first $100,000 so that we could open the doors to it.

TH: What's the timetable for remodeling and then actually being able to...
MB: The ribbon cutting is already April 25 and we hope to start serving clients two weeks after that.

TH: So that would be just about the time this interview will run.
MB: Yeah, isn't that perfect? That's great.

TH: Approximately how many can be served there?
MB: Thirty right now. If we have to, we could probably utilize the space down the road that is now our community room, if we have to, but we'll start out being able to serve 30. And that will just be overnight shelter.

TH: So someone receives only one night's stay?
MB: Right. They come at night, I think it's going to open at 6 at night, they'll eat at one of the meal sites that are down in the downtown center. Then they'll come at night. There will be pads on the floor. It will be very simple. They'll clean their pads before they leave in the morning. There will be showers there, they can shower. They'll get a light breakfast and then they'll have to be out by 8 a.m. If they're going to come back the next night, there will be bins where they can keep their belongings, but they'll have to be out during the day. It's going to start out as an overnight shelter just because of cost. A lot of communities have these.

TH: The clients for this facility...
MB: Will be women and children, again.

TH: So this would in some ways parallel what the Dubuque Rescue Mission does for men.
MB: Yes it is, right. And a sister site to Maria House. They'll serve the emergency piece. Then we hope we'll get referrals. We hope that Sister Carol will be able to screen and then send referrals to Sherry McDonell, our program director here.

TH: We've spoken about money. Maria House was in the news a few months ago when was at first it was going to accept money from the show of "The Vagina Monologues." Then the decision was made to not accept that money because of the content of the production. Talk to me some about the process that went into first agreeing to and then changing direction on that.
MB: We took it to our board and at first, we agreed to. I might add that no one on the board nor myself had ever seen it (the production). So it was probably a hasty decision. Looking back, we regret we made that decision maybe too hastily. Then, on further review, I got a copy of the transcript of the play and there was one scene in particular that was actually was sexual exploitation of a young person, which was really contrary to our mission. So I sent it to all the board members. Our board president was out of town at the time, so we did a vote via e-mail, which is the first time we've ever done that because it had to be done pretty quickly. By unanimous board vote, they decided to rescind that original decision. We had received quite a few calls from our donors, and, as an agency that relies on their donations, we owe it to our donors to be good stewards of their money and we have to look at the financial future of our organization. So we based it on that. We have to steward their money well.

TH: So, basically, money that you might derive from that one play was going to be offset by...
MB: ...our future donations.

TH: So you felt pretty confident that you'd see a drop-off.
MB: Definitely, yes, definitely. We received many calls about it.

TH: It's been a couple of months now. Have you seen any movement or feedback in terms of donations after this?
MB: We actually got a lot of donations and letters because we rescinded our original agreement.

TH: Affirmation.
MB: Yeah, we did. From people that we'd never gotten donations from. So that made me...and I started tracking it and it was around $1,000 that we got from people that had never donated to us before. That, based with people that might lose their donations further -- repeat donations -- just kind of affirmed that we made the right decision.

TH: Riverview Center just announced today that they got $25 grand out of that (event).
MB: Did they? They announced it today? Well, that's good. I respect Riverview. We work with Riverview a lot. I mean, our agency's mission is the empowerment of women. We have Riverview come, as well as the Domestic Violence Shelter and do regular programming for our women, so we work with those agencies a lot. They're great agencies. And Jen Hogue from Hogue Productions was a really neat lady. I know she was trying to help us, but we have to make a decision based on the best interest of our agency and that's what we thought we were doing, for the future of our agency.

TH: Let's talk a little more about you. How did it happen that you ended up in this, not just in this facility today, but in this line of work?
MB: You know, I was trying to think of that. I've always thought, "Why did I end up in social work?" But, you know, I think it started, my best friend growing up came from a very dysfunctional family. When I was younger, I used to envy her because she had no rules to follow, no curfews, no family commitments, she always had the charge card handed to her to go shopping. It's like, "Wow, how lucky she is." She had a car, when you never had a car 40 years ago, or 35 years ago. But then we got to high school and our paths just took totally opposite directions. She got married right after graduation, had a baby, got divorced, all within a year. Because she had no family support. She was looking for love and was looking anywhere to find it. I, on the other hand, went to college. And I knew from high school on, I always wanted to be a social worker. I never wavered in my decision. I think it was based, in part, on my friend. We never had a lot of money, but I came from a very loving, supportive family. I think what a lot of the people we work with are, if they were born into a different home with a different family, their lives would have turned out so much different.

TH: What line of work were your parents in?
MB: My dad was the assistant comptroller at Dubuque Packing Co. He was just the neatest man. Everyone loved my dad. He was just a sweetheart and he died at 58 of a heart attack. He just worked so hard. I miss him so much. And my mom is a very smart woman, but her parents... And my dad went to college in an era where a lot of men were lucky to finish eighth grade, so I respected him so much. My mom always wanted to go to college but her parents, a lot of people didn't go to college then. Especially women.

TH: You went to college right here at Loras. So you didn't stray too far then.
MB: No, I went to UNI for one year because I was very shy and I forced myself to go away for one year. It helped.

TH: Then it appears for awhile you were a stay-at-home mom.
MB: I was, by choice. Boy, we needed that money but I just was determined. I worked part-time. I did in-home typing. I just wanted to be at home to raise my kids, at least most of the time, and I think I made the right choice and I thank my husband every day for letting me do that because we needed the money, but I think my kids needed me more.

TH: Where did you and Wayne meet?
MB: I don't want to say where we met. Don't put it in the article. Actually, we met at work. Do you know where we met? In the hog kill at Dubuque Packing Co. Now, isn't that a terrible place to meet?

TH: No, that's fascinating. How did that happen?
MB: Because, at the time I was in college, Dubuque Packing Co. had these part-time jobs for college students and you made super money. Mr. Wahlert was a friend of my dad's and he got both my brothers jobs there. But my dad did not want me to work at the meatpacking company. Well, he saw how hard I was working at a nursing home, working 30 hours a week. And Mr. Wahlert would ask him, "Do you have any more kids that need jobs?" Dad did not want me working there.

TH: This is R.C. Wahlert?
MB: Yeah. My dad said, "I don't want my daughter working there." It's like, "Dad, I'm working three times more and making the same amount as they are." He finally relented going into my senior year of college. So I started working there my senior year of college. I wouldn't have had to have any loans had he gotten me a job there sooner, but I got stuck in the worst department. My brothers were in the Cut, where the meat was all dead already. I was in the Kill, which was disgusting.

TH: And that's where you met Wayne? MB: Yeah.

TH: Why wouldn't you want that in the paper? MB: It's kind of gross.

TH: Gee, I think it's sort of romantic. MB: Do you? It was a gross job. But I didn't have to take out a loan my senior year and I worked like 15 hours a week.

TH: Wayne was a student there? MB: No. He had just gotten back, he had just gotten out of the service. He was in Vietnam. He was in the Air Force.

TH: So that's when you met. Touching story. MB: Isn't that a touching story?

TH: I know you put in a lot of hours here, but I'm assuming you still have some spare time. What do you like to do in your free time?
MB: Well, one thing nice is my family is involved with me here, too. Wayne volunteers a lot here. I couldn't do it without him. Thank God. He is my huge support and I couldn't do it without him. He helps me out in so many ways and supports me in everything I do. He and the kids do help out here with all fundraising activities, because there are so many hours you put in here, outside of the regular 8 to 5. I want them involved so that I can see them. I could never do this job when the kids were younger. There's no way. Well, I think I put my hobbies, walking, reading. I couldn't just put shopping because I'm not a true shopper. I look for the most incredible deals that anybody can ever find. TH: So what would be an example? What would be a recent good deal you found?
MB: Well, I'm looking for another mother-of-the-bride dress. I go to the back, clearance rack where you take 70 percent off the lowest markdown price. I mean, I just revel in getting the biggest deal you can find. That's the kind of shopping I do. I love to shop, but I like to brag about it.

TH: You mentioned reading as another interest. Any particular genre?
MB: No. I just like fiction. I read a variety of things. I'm trying to get through "The Da Vinci Code." I don't know. I'm having a problem getting through the first 100 pages. They say it's better after that, but I don't know. I'm trying to read the "Automatic Millionaire." I think I'm too late for that, though.

TH: Well, social work is not very conducive to becoming a millionaire.
MB: No, it isn't. No, it isn't.

TH: For somebody reading this article, what's the headline to this story as it relates to Maria House and Teresa Shelter?
MB: Well, I think it's important to keep in mind that homelessness could happen really to anyone. We have had people living here that, most of it is because of mental illness or drugs or alcohol, but we've also had people live here because of living paycheck-to-paycheck. We've had people here with a master's degree. We've even had one person here with a doctorate. But you know, with all the corporate downsizing, they may be estranged from family; they don't have that family support. You know, a lot of us could end up in a situation like this some day. We're finding out when we go out and give talks, people come up to us and say they have a family member or they have a friend who's been there, too. Sometimes, they have been there themselves. I think that's the message: Don't think that about those homeless people, because that could be yourself. Or a close family member. I mean, it could be. So don't look down on them. They're not lazy. They're not dumb. Because they're not. They just need help. They need skills. They need empathy, not sympathy. I think that's the message I'd like to leave: It could be you or it could be me or it could be your friend or your neighbor.