Tucked away in west Jackson is a former nursing home with ties to the Junior League of Jackson that provides a new lease on life for its residents.
The Jackson Resource Center REACH (Resource Empowerment Activates Change & Hope) Langley Campus offers permanent housing for chronically homeless individuals and support services at the site where Community Place Nursing Home once cared for senior adults.
Located near Battlefield Park, the center at 1129 Langley Ave. delivers dorm-style living for 22 individuals, who must pay a percentage of their income toward their rent and provides services to help them live on their own.
“The Lord gave me the vision for the center years ago,” said Putalamus “Tala” White, age 48, the executive director and CEO of the resource center.
“I’ve been working on it for years. John Gomez with Downtown Jackson Partners told me about Haven for Hope in San Antonio, Texas. He told me, ‘Your vision sounds like Haven for Hope.’”
Learning about Haven for Hope, which provides housing and multiple service providers on its 22-acre campus for individuals who have been homeless, validated White’s belief that people could move beyond the hand life might have dealt them if they had an affordable place to live and access to help they might need.
Jill Buckley, former associate pastor for community ministry at Northminster Baptist Church who became executive director at Stewpot Community Services in 2017, credits “the work of the holy spirit” with the establishment of the resource center.
“It was meant to be,” she said “All the pieces finally came together. Tala had the vision and passion to do it and do it well.”
The focus of the resource center differs from that of Stewpot Community Services, which provides services for people in need such as lunch 365 days a year, a clothing closet and a food pantry and operates three overnight shelters, and Gateway Rescue Ministry, the Salvation Army, Lizzie’s House and the Wingard Home, which also offer help in numerous ways, Buckley said.
“You might think of Stewpot as a triage of emergency care, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing,” Buckley said. “There are many people who have been homeless for a long time who struggle to become stable and places like the resource center provide all the wrap-around services that can help people slowly get back to a place of stability.
“It’s really difficult to help people move from the street to a shelter to an apartment setting who have multiple struggles and need support. It’s more than one agency can do alone.”
White’s vision for a center like Haven for Hope moved closer to reality after Community Place Nursing Home, chartered as a nonprofit in 1934, moved to a new facility at 116 Lake Vista Place at the reservoir. The Junior League of Jackson donated the house, which initially housed 20 residents and was later renovated for 43 residents and then 60 residents, to Community Place Nursing Home in 1938 and then the land in 1996.
“After they (Community Place Nursing Home) vacated the building, they started reaching out to people who were serving the homeless,” Buckley said. “They weren’t just looking to sell to another nursing home operator. The vision was, ‘I wonder if this could be used in another way?’”
In December 2021, the resource center secured a $450,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas to purchase the nursing home, pay off half of the mortage and fund improvements such as asbestos removal, install new flooring, add walls and windows and make other updates.
“We started in January and by March we were able to house individuals on one wing,” said White, who has volunteered with street ministries and tried to help people for years.
Residents live in dorm-style rooms, each equipped with a bed, a couch, a desk, a television and a refrigerator. There are 30 rooms, each of which can house one or two occupants.
“We serve lunch and dinner Monday through Friday and there are microwaves and air fryers in the dining hall so they can cook on the weekends,” White said. “We have a full-service style shop so residents can get their hair done once a week.”
Rent is $640 a month, and an individual must pay 30 percent of his or her income toward rent, White said.
“Someone on Social Security or a fixed income may receive on average about $800 a month,” White said. “Their rent is about $252 a month, which allows them to pay their rent and still have money left over. We’re not a shelter. You have to buy into your own success. We’re all about a hand up not a handout.”
The Mississippi Center for Police and Sheriffs operates a rapid rehousing program through the Mississippi Home Corp. that serves counties in central Mississippi and that program has supplemented the rent for more than half of the tenants at the resource center, White said.
The Jackson Resource Center is “very cutting edge for Jackson, Mississippi,” Steven Pickett, executive director of the Mississippi Center for Police and Sheriffs and retired chairman of the Mississippi State Parole Board. “The demand for affordable, safe housing is great.”
Pickett, who characterizes White as someone “with big goals and a big heart,” considers it important that the resource center requires residents pay a portion of their rent.
“If you don’t pay anything, there’s no value to it,” he said. “There’s some pride from being able to invest in yourself.”
White doesn’t want to take away anything from the city of Jackson and other programs with supportive housing programs that place people in need in houses, apartments or hotels and assign a caseworker, White said. The problem is caseworkers often carry heavy caseloads and are unable to interact daily to remind people about their appointments or make sure they have transportation to get to them, she said.
At the resource center, residents are nudged every day to handle tasks whether it’s seeking rental assistance, going to counseling or applying for a job, all of which can be done on site with help and without having to find transportation, she said.
“Most of our residents don’t have a car,” White said. “A lot of them don’t know what to do and where to go to seek services.”
A workforce development program that is on site has educated three individuals in business office skills, and a class that leads to a high school diploma will soon graduate seven individuals, she said.
It costs $19,000 a month to run the resource center, which has just three full-time employees and does not receive funding from the city of Jackson or the state for its operation, White said. Pinelake Church, Sweet Rock Church and Milwaukee Tools have donated funds, she said.
There’s one thing White would like the powers-that-be in Mississippi to understand and it’s this:
“We can do this,” she said. “We can see major change in people. Do we continue to house people in hotels and provide resources hit or miss or do more campuses like this? What’s spent on a hotel room for one month for a person would carry someone for almost six months with us.”
White’s vision extends beyond the Langley campus.
Using funds from a $250,000 federal grant, White is working to renovate what she calls the Yellow House, a seven-bedroom home on Deer Park Street in west Jackson, into a home for pregnant women ages 16-22 and their children. Former Jackson city council member Marcia Weaver once operated the home as a bed and breakfast and donated it to the resource center.
“This will be the start of getting you girls who would be trafficked off the street,” said White, who hopes to have the Yellow House ready for occupancy by February. “They can stay up to three years at the Yellow House.
Seeing lives improve coupled with a sense of purpose motivate White, who does not receive a salary for her work at the resource center.
One couple, residents of the resource center, once lived in a cardboard box, she said.
“When they came to the campus, we did our intake and began our supportive services,” White said. “Our case managers are success coaches. We put them with a success coach and our coach began to put together a plan for them based on their needs.”
Another resident is a former physician who lost his license and everything else due to a drug addition, she said. Another resident is a former lawyer, who went through a divorce, suffered a stroke and other difficulties that led to homelessness, she said.
Homelessness can result from many experiences, including addiction, mental health issues, jobs loss and lack of family support, said White, who believes individuals who are truly homeless don’t want to be seen but are tucked away in wooded areas and other out of the way places.
“When you make things easier for individuals who have been frustrated in the system, you can see change,” White said.
The issue of homelessness has reached a new level of awareness in the metro area since the covid pandemic, said Buckley, who considers the resource center a bright spot.
“It’s nice to find a place where there’s a really visible solution,” Buckley said of the resource center. “It’s refreshing and gives us hope and energy.”
