McMinnville Action to Create Housing is inviting the community to a film screening and town hall this Thursday to spark conversation and solutions around local homelessness.
MATCH President Brad Durham said the documentary, “Beyond a Bridge: A Solution to Homelessness,” follows filmmakers who traveled more than 40,000 miles across the country to highlight real-world solutions to homelessness. Durham said the goal of both the film and the town hall is to educate the public and inspire people to get involved.
“Maybe if they have not experienced firsthand, they are seeing positive solutions from around the country,” Durham said. “And hopefully, they are feeling a sense of hope that they can do things and help support policies that will transform people’s lives.”
Durham said solving the issue of local homelessness has been a challenge. Durham said volunteering efforts in Warren County are stretched thin due to a lack of people willing to get involved.
“There’s a lack of advocates in trying to get the resources, the funding, and leverage those resources to develop programs for the homeless,” Durham said. “And every city thinks that hey, if we start doing that, we are gonna attract more people to be dropped off here who are unhoused, you know, who are homeless, and I believe that is a myth, you know, in terms of like, generally 80 percent of any number of the unhoused in any community is from that community.”
Durham said Warren County had an estimated 83 people who were unhoused, according to last year’s point-in-time count. Durham said Warren County School System reported that 113 children were homeless last year.
“It’s clearly an issue, it’s overwhelming, and I challenge anybody to do the math and the comparative metric of the amount of the people who are homeless in McMinnville and the amount of people who are homeless in Nashville,” Durham said. “I think our metric proportionally is a little bit higher, and that’s why I think all of the volunteers are overwhelmed in trying to help the homeless.”
Durham said local advocates, along with city and county leaders, will be in attendance.
The film will begin this Thursday at 6pm at the Park Theater in downtown McMinnville. The town hall will follow the film. Durham said the film and town hall are completely free.