Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio. It is 8.40 and we're at 73. And I'd like to welcome my guest, Shannon Brown, joining us on the phone this morning. Shannon, good morning. How are you today?
Shannon Brown: I'm great. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Doing well. Doing well. Thank you.
So to start things off, could you tell me a little bit about your position and where you work and what you do?
Shannon Brown: I work for Finger Lakes Community Action and I am a program director for what we call the Success Center Campus. The campus includes a food pantry, a 16-bed transitional house, and six studio apartments where we try to transition people into sustainable lifestyles from being down and out to being able to getting back up on their feet and on their own and living their best life.
Paul Szmal: How many people do you think you service during the course of a year with these programs?
Shannon Brown: Through the transitional house, around 50 people every year. Through the apartments, generally right around 18 to 22. They're much more permanent than the transitional house.
Paul Szmal: Correct. The transitional house, how did that come about and how long has it been in operation?
Shannon Brown: Well, they've been here for 18 years and it was a resource center. And at the time, my current supervisor actually, she and another woman had an idea that this would be a great area for people in a rural community that just needed some sort of sustainability to get off the streets, get out of the woods, out of campers that they were living in. So they scoured every like program across the state of New York and put this together and it's pretty much been thriving ever since. And of course, across the years, they added additional services like we are a veterans approved facility and just we keep adding to it every year.
Paul Szmal: And for people who are unfamiliar with the concept of what a transitional house does, can you kind of explain that for us?
Shannon Brown: So a transitional house is a place where if you lost your apartment or lost your home due to finances or maybe due to domestic violence or anything that might look like that would land you in homelessness, you certainly would go through the proper channels to see where you could get assistance and help if you qualified for that. And then you would be referred to this type of programming. Of course, that's based on our availability, which I'm sad but true, we very rarely have open spaces.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. And then how big of an issue is the need for people to have a transitional system like this to be in place for them?
Shannon Brown: Oh, it's tremendous. I could have tenfold of what I have here and still have it full to full capacity.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Shannon Brown from Finger Lakes Community Action and what they call the Success Center. We've talked a little bit about the transitional house. Let's talk a little bit about the food pantry because that's another key service for people that may be in need of a little helping hand.
Shannon Brown: Well, and the food pantry in itself is open to the community. So if you need assistance with food, delivery possibly can be scheduled. Our food pantry has grown every year by 60% in the last five years that I've been here.
Paul Szmal: Wow. So food insecurities are very high and a lot of rural areas are considered what they call food deserts where you can't necessarily get to a grocery store. And that's mainly because they don't exist or you have no transportation to get there or the bus system doesn't run in a timely fashion for you to get to food. So we've upped our game and a few years back said, well, let's start delivering. Let's see if that makes a difference and assist people. And that has been probably one of the key components to the growth of our food pantry is offering that delivery service.
Shannon Brown: You know, I think the whole concept of food insecurity is extremely underreported, shall we say, in this region. I know it's something that I've talked about with our friends from the Boys and Girls Club of Geneva here in the city of Geneva where they do a similar food pantry type of program to what you have. And that's one of the big topics that always comes up is that, yeah, there is a lot of food insecurity. Just because people are making enough money to live and pay their bills doesn't mean that they're getting food on the table.
Paul Szmal: Exactly. And as we all know, the price of groceries are exorbitant. And I see people in the food pantry that are, I mean, generally working, you know, 40 hours a week and just can't make that last step to kind of close that loop. And it gets really tough when school's out. And so now that school's out, I'm sure we'll be seeing an uptick in new customers and possible deliveries. And again, food is one of those things, for me, it's very personal. Even running the transitional house, I'm kind of that person, we will not waste food, we will freeze it, we will can it, we will not waste it. But on the other hand of that, you know, you're always having to offer some creative services for food pantry customers because the food we can get is limited. And we're always outsourcing to try to get more fresh produce and work with local farmers, work with, we work with some local restaurants that at the end of their week, you know, they bring us what they have left that they can't sell. So nothing's getting, so the waste is lessening.
Paul Szmal: And that's an important point to factor in is that there is actually a lot of food waste. And it sounds like you've found some resourceful ways of taking food that normally might just get thrown out and repurposing it for a good cause.
Shannon Brown: Exactly. Now, I can't give out repurposed food in the pantry, but I can use it in the transitional house and I can use it in the apartment. And everybody here, if you come here and you are in need of food, Food Link has some requirements for your income level. However, we don't turn you away because we get food from other places. So we can definitely use some of that other food to make sure that you get what you need.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. At a time when I lived in Chicago, I actually had to rely on a similar food program, even though I was working and the bills were getting paid. So I know exactly how important that kind of a program is.
We haven't talked about the studio apartments yet, Shannon. How does that whole system work? Is that kind of an intermediary step between the transitional house and going back out into the world? Or is it something a little bit different concept-wise?
Shannon Brown: Well, in the beginning, that's what it was supposed to be, kind of a step-up idea. However, the wheelhouse turned on that. So sadly, even in the transitional house, I'm seeing more and more people that need the services that, again, have jobs. They're working. So they're not eligible for assistance. So a lot of people are self-paying. And when I started moving people out of the transitional house into the apartments, it's no different than you or I renting an apartment. You sign a lease. You make your monthly payments on your own. So I'm seeing a lot of senior citizens utilizing the apartments, which is great because everything here is maintained. So they don't have to plow. They don't have to worry about their garbage being picked up. They don't have to worry about maintenance. So that has been kind of the demographic I am seeing transitioning out of the house or my seniors into the studio apartments.
Paul Szmal: And those studio apartments, I'll bet the availability of those is probably scarce at this point.
Shannon Brown: Very. If I have an opening, it is because somebody is definitely getting ready to purchase their own home or there was a need for a bigger apartment. So these are small, but they're manageable.
Paul Szmal: That's one of the great things about a program like this is that what we're talking about all sounds like bad situations where people are, even if they're working, just not able to kind of get over the hump, so to speak. But you do have those success stories where people go through the program and they do get back out into the world and they're able to buy their own food. They're able to have their own place.
Shannon Brown: Absolutely. And those, we love those. I mean, that's why we're here. And it just, you know, sometimes it just takes a little bit of time, a little bit of effort. We offer a lot of financial resources where people can build their credit and save the money that they need to make that last step happen so that they've secured a down payment. We've worked with first time home buyers. I've worked with people that received the Habitat for Humanity home. So all of those successes are not easy to achieve. There's so much work involved in doing any of that. I don't even know if I have the due diligence to do that type of work, but when somebody wants something bad enough, they really put their nose to the grind and make it happen.
Paul Szmal: And tell me a little bit about how some of the staff and the people that help make this whole project continue to function and flow smoothly.
Shannon Brown: So my staff is fabulous. This is 24 hours, seven days a week. We don't get holidays. We don't get lunch breaks. You know, we are here. We eat at our desk. The place has to have staff at all times. So without them, like I could never do this program by myself. I've recently hired a co-director. He's working out great. I'm loving having the opportunity to grow the program more with some of that weight lifted off of myself and staff. So without Finger Lakes Community Action, I mean, they are the backbone to this program and they're supportive. And every time there's a dream, we're told if you can dream it, you can make it happen. So we're allowed to just kind of take a ball and run with it as long as it's advantageous for programming.
Paul Szmal: Sounds like it's been a very successful partnership. If people want to find out more information about the Success Center and what it offers, how can they do that, Shannon?
Shannon Brown: Certainly use the website, FingerLakesCommunityAction.org. All of our programs are listed under programs and there's brochures for every program. And they can certainly call my direct line, which is 315-333-4155, and I'm an extension 3314. All right. And we were working with a lot of outside people coming in for help for SSDI, SSI. We're assisting with all that type of paperwork, even if you are not currently part of this program.
Paul Szmal: Excellent. Well, Shannon, thank you for giving us the information this morning and having a chat with us. We certainly appreciate it. And thank you for all of the work that you and your staff are doing at the Success Center.
Shannon Brown: Oh, thank you. It's always a pleasure. I look forward to it.
