Episode 8, “A Place at the Table,” explores food insecurity, recovery, and the power of collaboration among Portland nonprofits. Host Juliana speaks with Scott Kerman, Executive Director of Blanchet House and Farm, and David Hassenger, a former resident who now works with CCC’s Clean Start program. Together, they share how meeting people’s most basic needs with dignity—and working together to do so—can create real pathways to stability and lasting recovery.
Takeaways
JULIANA:
Welcome back to They Are Us, a podcast from Central City Concern. I'm your host, Juliana. Today we're talking about food insecurity, recovery, and the power of nonprofit collaboration here in Old Town Portland. Our guests are Scott Kerman, Executive Director of Blanchet House and Farm, and David Hassenger, a former Blanchet House resident who now works with CCC's Clean Start program.
Blanchet House has served Portland for over 70 years, providing meals, shelter, and a unique farm-based recovery program. You'll hear Scott speak about the realities of poverty and food insecurity and why collaboration across nonprofits matters more than ever. You'll also hear from David, who shares his powerful story of transformation from living on the streets to finding stability through Blanchet House and ultimately landing a job with Clean Start, where he gives back to the same community he once called home. Let's get started!
Scott Kerman is the executive director at Blanchet House and Farm, a nonprofit in Old Town Portland devoted to providing meals, clothing and supportive housing. Welcome to the podcast, Scott.
SCOTT KERMAN:
Thank you, Juliana. It's great to be here.
JULIANA:
So, give us an overview of the Blanchet House.
SCOTT KERMAN:
Well, the Blanchet House has been around for 73 years on the north side of Old Town. A few years after they started serving meals, they started providing some residential housing to folks who were coming for meals and said, hey, if you help us out in the kitchen and cleaning up the dining room, you can sleep upstairs. So that's how the residential program came about. The food service is breakfast, lunch, and dinner six days a week. So that's 18 meals. We're serving more meals every week than probably any other meal service program like it in the community. And we run it very much like a restaurant. And we have volunteers who are doing all of the service. And so as a house of hospitality, we just want folks to come in and enjoy their meal.
JULIANA:
Let's talk about why it's important that you do this work. Let's talk about food insecurity.
SCOTT KERMAN:
So a lot of focus on homelessness and certainly unsheltered homelessness, and that's what people see. I often want to bring the subject back to poverty because what we're really serving is poverty. And that poverty manifests itself in a lot of different ways. It may be that it manifests itself in that they are unsheltered and homeless. They have no place that is secure and safe to sleep at night. It may be that their housing insecure. They're in a shelter, they're in low-income housing. But there's a lot of vulnerability in their lives, including food insecurity, as well as other kinds of insecurities that threaten that housing. They may be sheltered today, but there's no guarantee that that's going to continue tomorrow, next month, next year.
And food insecurity is a big part of that. Certainly for people who are living in shelters or other kinds of low-income housing, it may be hard for them because they're older or they have disabilities or other infirmities, to cook meals, to shop for the kind of nutritious hot meals that people really need to sustain their health. And you know look, if you're hungry and you don't know where your next meal is gonna come from, it makes it very difficult to sort of do anything else in your life.
One of the things that we're focusing on right now is opening our Bethany's Room shelter, an emergency overnight shelter for women and for those who identify. And so, we've been talking a lot about sleep deprivation. What it means to never have a safe and secure night of sleep because when you're outside at night, especially if you're a female, you may be afraid to sleep at night because of what might happen. What does that do to a person? How successful are they going to be moving themselves forward from their current situation if they're not sleeping? And more than that, if they're being terrorized. And so you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs right there at the foundation, sleep, security, food, water.
JULIANA:
So, tell us about what kind of collaborations you have with Central City Concern.
SCOTT KERMAN:
CCC is a great resource to provide the services that our meal guests need that we're not necessarily equipped or have the expertise to provide. I'm a big believer in nonprofit collaboration and looking for ways that we can leverage our strengths to help other nonprofits in the communities that they serve. What do we do really well? We do meals very, very well. Food rescue, distributing food that we rescue to other organizations.
The kinds of transitional housing programs that we run here in Old Town and at the farm. But there's a lot of things that the people we serve need. That expertise lies in other organizations like Central City Concern, and so it's been a real gift for me in the six years that I've been executive director to form those relationships with CCC and other agencies in order to bring that expertise and that experience to the community we serve.
JULIANA:
Yeah, that's really great. We did talk about David for a moment. He came to you when he was needing meals. And he tells his story and it really struck me how much work he did to succeed. And Blanchet House requires people to have a part of their success. Can we talk about that a little bit?
SCOTT KERMAN:
Yeah, absolutely, it's really fundamental to the program. The Blanchet House program, as it's developed over 60 plus years, is designed to help people get back on their feet. For a lot of folks, it's getting back into employment. For some, they want to get into school or they want to do training. But we're not a resort. We're not emergency shelter. We're really designed to give people a lot of time and support to kind of get back into engaging with society, however that may be defined.
For the first 90 days, they're providing support for our meal service. It's a great time for them to just orient themselves to being at Blanchet House. If they've been on the street a long time, sometimes they're coming from incarceration, there's an adjustment period, just living in a place with a lot of other people that's very active, that has some rules and expectations is an adjustment. So it's kind of a soft launch to the program.
It's also about building up some of those soft skills. You're assigned to the breakfast shift. We expect you to be there at a certain time. We expect you to come back after your break. We expect you to get along with other people. All the things that they're gonna need to do if they're gonna eventually be successful in whatever it is that they wanna do next. After that 90 days, they can have a job in the community, do school or training, continue to live with us for free. We provide just about anything that they might need. So, we really seek to take all of that financial strain off of them, but we're also giving them the time and support that they need to really stabilize and work on some of their other growth elements. We are 100% independently funded. So, it's all private donations.
JULIANA:
Wow, so you are not receiving any funding from Multnomah County, the city of Portland, the federal government, or the state.
SCOTT KERMAN:
None at all.
JULIANA:
That's incredible. I mean, for the amount of impact you have in our community. And when people say, what can I do to help? Well, I can tell you, contribute to Blanchet House, because that's a really important thing that folks can do to help, especially giving your funding structure.
SCOTT KERMAN:
Yeah, that is so true. And we can't say enough about the generosity of people who just devote so much of themselves to supporting Blanchet House and Blanchet Farm. And I know we talk a lot in this community about long-term solutions, but I think we also have to remember there is a lot of value. There is so much value in just alleviating the suffering that is standing in front of you.
And so a lot of what we do may not necessarily be directly targeted at a long-term solution. But if somebody is hungry or alone or without adequate clothing right now, feeding them in that moment, giving them the clothing that they need in this moment, I think that's really important and valuable work. And I think as David shows, it can lead to a longer-term solution.
JULIANA:
I agree. David really is the personification of what that investment means. What gives you hope? What are you hopeful for?
SCOTT KERMAN:
I encounter people every day who are continued to invest in themselves in what we're doing. And I see people who benefit from our work, whether that's people in our residential program or people that we're feeding. And there's hope in that. And I think one of the things that I really like about my job is I can go home every day. And if my wife or my kids say to me, how was work? I can say honestly, it was great.
We did our thing today. We served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We fed a lot of people. For that moment in time, they were cared for. They knew that they were surrounded by people who see them and respect them, and what more can I ask? Let's really savor the wins that occur each and every day. That gives me hope.
JULIANA:
That gives me hope, too. Thank you, Scott, for being here today. I really appreciate you coming and sharing your knowledge and expertise and your passion for what you do.
SCOTT KERMAN:
My pleasure. Thank you for the conversation and thank you and CCC, for doing this podcast. It's really great to give people doing this work and who've benefited from this work a space where they can talk about their lives.
[MUSIC]
JULIANA:
David Hassenger was a resident at Blanchet House and now works for CCC's Clean Start program, a homeless to work employment program that helps clean up Portland streets. Welcome to the podcast, David.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
JULIANA:
So, let's start off by telling me your story. Tell me how you ended up in Portland.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Well, actually I was homeless in Corvallis and so I was doing drugs, you know, and I sit here and I don't want to blame the cops, but they broke my hip.
JULIANA:
Oh no.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah. They dislocated it and broke it, taking me down to arrest me.
JULIANA:
Oh boy. And then what happened?
DAVID HASSENGER:
And then they sent me to the hospital. They spot my hip back in, but I had to have an orthopedic surgeon work on my hip. So, they sent me to Portland. Then they sent me to a hotel for a couple of weeks.
JULIANA:
Right after surgery?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Mm-hmm. But that didn't last. And I couldn't get a ride back to Corvallis. So, it was like I was stuck in Portland. So, I ended up going to the rescue mission. Sleeping on the floor there. They have mats there for 50 people in there or something like that.
JULIANA:
So, you're laying on a mat recovering from a broken hip. That doesn't sound good.
DAVID HASSENGER:
No it wasn't, it was tough to get up and down, you know.
JULIANA:
Yeah. Okay. So, before we move on, let's go back in time a moment. What do you think led you to being homeless in Corvallis?
DAVID HASSENGER:
My stubbornness. Wanted to do my own thing instead of working or you know, I had an opportunity, I was in an apartment and I could have gotten a job and stuff like that, but I kept goofing off.
JULIANA:
And so was it, as you were kind of goofing off, when did it become no fun anymore?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Right away as soon as you're homeless, you know, and as soon as you start realizing it, you know, winter comes and you start getting cold and rained on, and you know, that kind of thing makes it tough.
JULIANA:
Yeah, so what do you say to people who say, “oh people just want to be outside?”
DAVID HASSENGER:
I don't think so. I think that they don't want to be outside, but they're forced to be there. We're stuck out there, you know. And there doesn't seem to be a way out when you're in that position.
JULIANA:
So, you're in Portland, what happened next?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Well, I started eating at the Blanchet House. And I thought, wow, this is pretty cool. And then I found out that they had residents there. People that were off the street, giving them a second chance, I guess. And I just applied for it. It took me a couple of weeks, and they finally said that they'd let me in there.
JULIANA:
So, tell me about your experience there as a resident of Blanchet House.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Oh, it was excellent. I didn't have any real clothes, I had like just a bag. They gave me all the clothing and stuff you want to live on, you know, they just set you right up when you go in the door.
JULIANA:
So, did you work while you were at Blanchet?
DAVID HASSENGER:
I did. I worked there for four months.
JULIANA:
You worked where?
DAVID HASSENGER:
In the kitchen. And we'd serve the meals, the breakfast, lunch and dinners.
JULIANA:
What was that like?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Oh, it was excellent. And you get back to working again, regular hours, you know, when you're not on the street, you're not used to the work schedule. And so you get used to having to be showing up on time and, you know, working your eight hours and that kind of thing. So, it worked out well to get you structured again.
JULIANA:
Well, you're an example, from what you're telling me, of somebody who understands that have to work for your recovery.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah.
JULIANA:
So, tell me about that.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Work helps, you know, going to work every day. Just getting to know the situation of what you're in and staying clean from it. Keeping yourself on the right path.
JULIANA:
Yeah. So how did you end up finding your way to Central City Concern?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Well, I heard about it because I talked to some of the barrel pushers. And I thought, you know, that's a good way to get back, you know. After all the living on the streets that I did and the messes I made, going around and picking up. They say it's a second chance place. Your background doesn't matter. You know, if you have a lack in work or if you have a bad work record and you have one of those background checks, all that good stuff, they see past it. And I thought, wow, maybe I should try this, you know. Give it a shot. And that's what I did. I just applied through CCC down on second street at the job access center.
JULIANA:
Yeah, what are you doing now?
DAVID HASSENGER:
I ride around in a truck, and I pick up illegal dumps.
JULIANA:
And what are you seeing outside? What are you picking up?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Couches, mattresses, garbage. You know, sometimes we have to go around with a picker and bag. It depends on how messy it is. Can be leftover burnt stuff. Just whatever. It's a wide variety of rubbish, you know.
JULIANA:
So, what would you say to a community member who says that homeless people are the ones generating all this trash?
DAVID HASSENGER:
I'd have to argue with them on that one. Yeah. They take advantage, I think, of the people who are the public.
JULIANA:
Yeah, so I mean, I don't see a lot of homeless people with boats.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah.
JULIANA:
So, what I'm hearing you say is the public is taking advantage and dropping off things near homeless camps.
DAVID HASSENGER:
You know, because when we do these garbage or trash pickups, and we'll give them bags. And then we'll say, we'll come back in a couple of days. You get your stuff together, whatever, and bag it up and we'll come by and pick it up. And that usually works, you know.
JULIANA:
So, of all the trash you're picking up, how much would you say in your experience was generated by the homeless people?
DAVID HASSENGER:
About 10%.
JULIANA:
10%?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah.
JULIANA:
Wow. That's a real eye-opener. Would you be surprised to hear that I've heard from multiple people who have said the one thing that saved my life were the Clean Start employees?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah, right. I believe that. That's the way I feel too. Saved my life, you know what I mean? But I mean, if it weren't for Central City Concern, yeah, giving me a job, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. This was the opportunity that I needed and it's been over a year now, so I'm very pleased to be part of Central City Concern.
JULIANA:
Okay, so this is interesting because Central City Concern, what we do is help people through housing, healthcare, and employment. So, do you take advantage of any healthcare?
DAVID HASSENGER:
I sure do.
JULIANA:
What do you do?
DAVID HASSENGER:
I go to the Blackburn building, in their medical clinic there, and they'd help me with all my prescriptions, and you know.
JULIANA:
Yeah, so primary care and pharmacy.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah, everything.
JULIANA:
Okay, so the listeners can’t see, but his shirt, which has our logo, says homes, health and jobs. And you're actually taking advantage of all three.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yes, ma'am.
JULIANA:
So, David, why are there so many people that are homeless?
DAVID HASSENGER:
The cost of living, because it costs so much money to live. Food.
JULIANA:
Mhmm. Or there are people who might lose their house just because of like breaking a hip or having a medical problem.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Right. Yeah.
JULIANA:
So for you, it's cost of living you think that's really...
DAVID HASSENGER:
I think that's a major problem, yeah. I mean, because when you look at rent and I think, well, if I went up another $200-300 a month, you know, that would take a check and a part of another check. Right. You know, and you've got car insurance, you have groceries you have got to pay for. I mean, I'm not on any food stamps or anything like that, so I mean, it all costs me money, you know. It's hard to get a job when you're out there being homeless. I know what that's like. It's hard for them to want to give you a start.
And the start is what they need, you know, and if you don't have that little help, you know, to where they will really help you, not just say they're going to do it or whatever, you know, because I've been in situations like that where they say they're going to help you and sometimes these programs don't work out.
JULIANA:
Yeah, you know, when asked by community members, can I do? I always say thank them for the work they're doing. Because these guys are working really hard.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Yeah, we are. There's a lot going on out there. And if it weren't for us, I mean, to be honest with you, if it weren't for these programs, these clean up programs and the barrel pushers and all that, imagine what the city would look like.
JULIANA:
Yeah, I don't think people realize that the city of Portland doesn't have a sanitation department.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Right!
JULIANA:
Central City Concern’s Clean Start Program is the sanitation department for Portland.
DAVID HASSENGER:
That’s right, yeah!
JULIANA:
You know, I hear people, this is controversial, right? I hear people say, well, people are coming in from everywhere to take advantage of the services that Portland provides. And I'm like, well, when you really think about that, is that something that you should be upset about or is that something you should be proud of?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Right? Exactly.
JULIANA:
That people who need help are getting help here in Portland. That kind of makes me feel good.
DAVID HASSENGER:
I do too. I think it's a good idea. You know, every day there's somebody else going inside the Blanchet or going inside the rescue mission or something like that and getting a job and getting on the road to recovery, you know.
JULIANA:
And then maybe helping other people.
DAVID HASSENGER:
That's right.
JULIANA:
So, what gives you hope?
DAVID HASSENGER:
Me?
JULIANA:
Yeah.
DAVID HASSENGER:
Every day. You know, I'm hoping to just keep living, you know, my life in a good way. You know, I like helping other people, so my job gives me hope. You know, I enjoy it. I do. I like I like picking up garbage. You know, it makes me feel like I'm doing something good for the planet, doing something good for neighbors, especially when people thank you. They sure thank a lot. I'll be honest with you. We're not, it's not a thankless job. Some people think that you go out there and push a barrel or you do what I do in the truck and it's a thankless job. But you get a lot of thank you’s, you know, because they know that stuff has been there for a while and they're glad to see it gone.
JULIANA:
Yeah. Well, David, thank you so much for coming today and telling me your story. It's really meaningful that you were willing to do that. So, thank you for being here.
DAVID HASSENGER:
I appreciate being here. This was great.
[MUSIC]
JULIANA:
Thank you to Scott and David for reminding us what's possible when we meet people's most basic needs with dignity. When nonprofits come together, we support lasting recovery. To learn more about CCC's programs, visit centralcityconcern.org.
If you want to learn more about Blanchet House or get involved, or if you're looking to volunteer in the Portland area, visit our volunteer page to explore local organizations in need of support.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of They Are Us. Until next time, I'm Juliana.