Matthew’s Hope loses major support

No child ever says, “When I grow up, I want to be homeless” or “I want to be a drug addict.” Shannon Diaz certainly never said that, but life has a way of getting in the way, and at the age of 29, that is exactly where she found herself. And she had three young children to take care of — before they were sent to their grandparents’ house to live.

A failed suicide attempt was rock bottom for Diaz, but it also marked a turning point in her life.

Diaz discovered Matthew’s Hope in 2018, put in the hard work to earn her gray T-shirt and then her purple shirt and, finally, the black shirt that signifies she is a Matthew’s Hope employee.

Diaz, now director of the Orange County campus in Winter Garden, believes in Matthew’s Hope, she believes in its programs, and she knows these programs work.

Some of the programs are in danger of being eliminated or scaled back, though, because financial donations are down. Just last week, founder and CEO Scott Billue announced his largest donor had to reduce its annual giving by $50,000 for the organization’s Orange County and Brevard County campuses — $25,000 less per location.

“What people are saying, due to this uncertain economy, there’s a lot of confusion, there’s a lot of chaos in the economy, the uncertainty of what’s next,” Billue said. “We’ve had funders who said, ‘We’re not leaving you, we’re just pulling back on what we can give you.’ I’m not losing donors, I’m losing the level of support from some of our donors.”

This, in turn, means a lower level of services Matthew’s Hope can provide.

“I’m not in fear of closing down, although it could happen, but it’s a significant loss to us, and we need to make changes,” Billue said.

The annual budget is roughly $15 million for both locations. Only about 6% of the Matthew’s Hope budget is taxpayer-funded grants, Billue said. About half the donations are cash. The other half is in-kind services, medications, medical and dental care, mental health care, eye care and more.

LESS MONEY, MORE PEOPLE

The funding cuts are coming at a critical time for Matthew’s Hope, as the organization sees more new homeless individuals and families every week.

“Forty-one percent of every new first-time homeless person that walks in our door is either a Baby Boomer or they’re a child under the age of 18,” Billue said. “That number has jumped significantly really over the last year or so. What’s happening is your Baby Boomers are dying and they’re leaving a spouse, and typically it’s a female who didn’t work or they worked part-time and didn’t make as much as men. A lot of those pensions … were not designed for this economy, and they were already under pressure, and when he dies, she’s screwed.”

He said he sees it every day.

With less money and more people, Billue is having to make difficult decisions.

In the last six months, the organization already has cut in half the amount of food it has given away.

“We just couldn’t afford to buy more,” Billue said. “We’ve stopped all purchasing. If we don’t have it, you don’t get it. The food pantry and the clothes shelves are getting peaked.”

Last week he held a video meeting with nearly 50 employees at the two locations to let them know $25,000 in services must be cut at each location.

“I just wanted to tell them (not to) freak out; we’re just going to have to shave off a lot of things we’ve done in the past,” he said. “We’re going to have to pull back on that across the board until things level out again, until we gain additional donors or another large donor, but until that happens, we will have to pull back. In Orange County so far, we have taken our mobile teams down to one day a week instead of two. We are looking at possible pulling back our regular outreach days on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Billue said this puts him in the position to make even tougher decisions on who gets a roof over their head or who gets their medications.

“Who’s more worthy than the other?” he asked. “You have to look at what’s the best possible outcome for the individual. If I have two people fighting cancer, if one has a better chance of beating it, even though the other person is more sick, how do you make that decision?

“Is it my responsibility to make sure someone gets cancer care?” he asked. “No, but at the same time, in my position, if I can make sure they get that instead of dying on the streets in misery, if we can get them in hospice, we’re going to do that.”

In looking at ways to cut expenses, the organization also is considering giving up some of its housing in Winter Garden, either by selling the houses it owns or giving up the leases on others.

“We don’t have reserves,” Billue said. “We used to have reserves before the pandemic that we could sit on for times like this. We’re still trying to recover from the pandemic, and then the cold weather set us back. We had 13 days of meals, showers and medical.

“I don’t think most people in West Orange County understand the level of homelessness in West Orange County,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of the people we serve have a direct connect in the community, people who grew up here, they’re homegrown, they went to West Orange, Ocoee, Olympia, Lakeview high schools. They had successful marriages and homes, and then some kind of trauma took place. The person who lost a child, lost a spouse, was in the military and has PTSD — sometimes that’s enough to rock someone off their foundation. There’s so much baggage that people carry.”

“IF I CAN MESS UP MY LIFE THIS MUCH, 

I CAN TURN IT AROUND, TOO”

After Diaz hit rock bottom, she started a 12-step program, which she continues to this day, and began her journey with Matthew’s Hope.

“When I was in the program it was very challenging,” she said. “There were times when I really wrestled with my old ways of thinking and was thinking maybe not being here would be easier.”

But she stuck with it and gained employment in the deli at Publix — even after being transparent on her application that she was arrested on felony charges for having Xanax without a prescription.

“It was a Monday and I was off, and they called me in,” she said. “I thought they were calling me for more hours, and they actually fired me.”

Her application apparently went through a different set of hands, she said, and that person didn’t like what he saw.

“Something like that can take a person out,” Diaz said. “I was doing everything I could to turn my life around, and then for someone to hold your past against you, even though I had been sober for a while, others had accepted it. … It really felt like my world was coming apart, but little did I know it was actually coming together.

“God’s plan for me is so much bigger than the plan I had for myself,” she said. “I have a purpose. I didn’t succeed in killing myself. When people come in, I can share my story with them. … I never thought I would go from being a receptionist to being an advocate to now being director. I know my journey is just going to continue to grow.”

Diaz has worked hard to get her children back in her life. They have been living with their paternal grandparents and are thriving there, and Diaz doesn’t want to uproot them from the life they have built there.

“My kids are amazing; they’re coming over this weekend,” she said. “I’m actually taking my son to get his permit today. It’s really nice to be able to be there for them in their milestone moments, as well as rebuilt the relationship.

“I can see how God’s worked in my life all throughout it, and when you’re in (the difficult times), it’s hard to see,” she said.

Now 34, Diaz was able to save her money and buy a new house in Sumterville two years ago.

“It’s just crazy to think that five years ago I was worried about where I was going to sleep and doing God-awful things for a place to sleep, and now I’m thinking about what kind of backsplash tile I want,” she said. “No one in my immediate family owns a house. I’m hoping to break some of those generational issues.”