St. Isidore Offers Shelter, Support to Men of MCREST

This is another installment of “Dispatches: The Changing American Dream.” Dispatches is an ongoing series that explores tales of challenge and opportunity in our communities so we can better understand how our neighbors are working toward their own American Dream.

For the last 15 years, Ligaya Lanni, of Macomb Township, has helped her parish provide shelter to homeless and displaced individuals in Macomb County. 

It’s a volunteer post this longtime member of truly enjoys and looks forward to each year. 

“It’s a wonderful program and people are very appreciative of everything you do for them,” Lanni said.

Thirty male clients from the Macomb County Emergency Rotating Shelter Team (MCREST) will be guests at St. Isidore Church this week.

Founded in 1988, MCREST works with more than 88 partner churches throughout Macomb County to provide food and shelter to individuals and families throughout the year on a rotating basis. In 2009, MCREST provided more than 19,000 shelter nights to almost 900 people.

Chris Kasperek, pastoral minister at St. Isidore, said the church hosts the program once a year, usually the last week in August. Clients are housed for the week in the church’s social hall, which is lined with foam mattresses for sleeping quarters and includes a sitting area with two televisions. The front of the hall is used as the dining room.

“MCREST provides the mattresses, sheets and towels and we have two temporary showers of our own that we set up in the main bathroom,” Kasperek said. “And we are very fortunate to have those things run quite nicely.”

Clients leave the church during the day and then return at dinner time. Kasperek said many actually have jobs and are just trying to get back on their feet.

“Maybe the economy hit and they lost their house and some even have their own transportation to work so we give them gas money,” he said, noting that volunteers take the other clients to the SMART bus stop on Gratiot.

St. Isidore has a membership of roughly 400 families and it takes more than 200 volunteers to host MCREST for the week. Many of the church groups simply sign on to purchase, prepare and serve a dinner on one of the nights the clients are there. Volunteers also serve up breakfast each morning and give each guest a brown-bag lunch.

Finding out the clients' lunch preferences, signing them in and out of the church for the day, providing name tags and a smiling face fill Lanni’s volunteer hours. 

She said she's always impressed with the men's desire to improve their situations, including finding work.

“They are really intent on getting their lives together and generally many of them are very honest with themselves about what they need to do and I like that,” Lanni said.

During the clients' stay at the church, there are representatives from MCREST on hand and a visiting nurse comes by one evening to help with any medical issues.

Kasperek said raising funds to cover costs for hosting MCREST hasn’t yet prompted special fundraising.

“We’ve been very blessed," he said. "We just have an extra envelope in our collection just one time and we get all the money we need for this. They (parishioners) respond quite generously.”

Having the opportunity to help those in need in this way is important to Kasperek who said it’s actually very interesting to see what type of circumstances bring the client to the program.

“These are really normal everyday people who have had a stroke of bad luck for some reason,” he said. “Maybe it was a messy divorce and the wife took everything, every year there are different stories but it touches you.”