Community Bridges supports people experiencing homelessness

Community Bridges, Inc., (CBI) provides assistance to unhoused populations by offering outreach to them and helping with the next steps of moving into shelters with the best outcome ultimately being permanent housing.

Their navigation teams conduct street outreach for persons experiencing homelessness and operate emergency shelters and Healing Centers using the closed-campus model. CBI provides housing resources such as Rapid Rehousing and Permanent Supportive Housing. They also have programs for substance abuse and provide mental health services.

Anne Marie Johnston, Senior Director of Housing and Community Integration at Community Bridges, Inc., joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the impact CBI is making on the community.

“My department works with the unsheltered folks; we are out in the streets, we are doing outreach, we are connecting them to PCPs to doctors and counseling,” Johnston said.

“Walking someone through their apartment with their keys, and it’s been ten years since they’ve had their own place to live, those are the moments that really hit you [in your heart],” Johnston said.

As Johnston described it, CBI is a “peer-based” organization. Many of its employees were previously in recovery, rehab, etc.

“We know what it’s like to be homeless, to go through substance abuse, mental health issues, and so when we are speaking to a client, it’s really about building that rapport with them,” Johnston said. “When they say, ‘You don’t understand what I’m going through,’ we do understand what you’re going through. Maybe not exactly at this moment, but it is something that we can relate to.”

Johnston added, “Sometimes when we engage with an individual, they don’t want help, but we keep coming back. Maybe on that 10th time that we come back, they say, ‘Hey, you really care about me.’ Yeah, we care about you. We want you to have a better life.”