The trenches in the war on poverty are close at hand yet easily overlooked.
At the rear of a small, aging strip mall, a line forms at a cramped office with an American flag, three Bronco football calendars and a crucifix. This is the Lakewood Southwest Emergency Assistance Center.
Charity happens here.
Each day, 40 to 60 families seek help for groceries and prescriptions they can’t afford — or they ask for assistance with rent and utilities they can’t pay.
The center is one of the dozens of outposts of Catholic Charities of Denver, the largest private provider of social services in the Rocky Mountains, aiding more than 250,000 people a year.
At the Lakewood center, a statue of St. Dymphna, the patron saint of mental afflictions, presides from atop a metal file cabinet. A vault no bigger than a breadbox safeguards bus tokens, dispensed to people with job interviews and doctor’s appointments to keep.
So far this fiscal year, the center’s manager, Patti Carr, has seen a spike in requests for emergency assistance for the working poor over last year, which was up 33 percent over the previous year.
“All of this is way beyond us,” Carr said of her all-volunteer staff. “Somehow we always manage to have food. Sometimes I don’t know where the resources are coming from. It’s a God thing.”
In 2006-07, Catholic Charities of Denver’s nine emergency-assistance centers served 76,700 households at a cost of more than $1 million, up from the previous year’s 72,000 households’ need for $850,000.
Catholic Charities of Denver also shelters and feeds 500 homeless people a night at four locations.
It runs more than 40 programs, including housing projects for farm laborers and seniors, adoption services and child care.
As economic downturn and government belt-tightening dry up revenue streams and create more need, the question for Catholic Charities and others is how to keep up.
The 81-year-old Catholic Charities of Denver relies on 30,000 donors, 600 staff members, 8,000 volunteers and parishes’ financial support. Its annual budget is more than $32 million. Last year, the organization had to dip into reserves for about $1 million to balance its budget.
“The purpose of our system is not to control the bottom line,” said the charity’s recently retired chief executive, James Mauck. “The purpose is to enhance services.”
Catholic Charities of Denver has no local peer in the private or faith-based sector in terms of scope and scale — only the largest health-care nonprofits rival it in size, said Charley Shimanski, spokesman for the Colorado Nonprofit Association.
“Where there is a need, they will find a way,” Shimanski said. “That’s been the mantra over there for many years.”
Catholic Charities earns the highest rating — four stars — given by the New Jersey- based nonprofit evaluator Charity Navigator.
For every $1 of revenue, tax records show, an average of 90 cents goes directly into service and goods, not overhead, according to Catholic Charities tax records.
Mauck’s successor, Christopher Rose, 32, a former attorney with the archdiocese’s lobbying arm, said staying on budget will be a priority for him, yet services will not suffer.
“We’re going to continue the tradition of growing and strengthening services to the poor,” Rose said. “We will be strong stewards. We will squeeze every dollar until it bleeds.”
Rose volunteered Wednesday at Carr’s center, packing boxes of groceries for families, following food-bank guidelines that each family gets canned fruit, vegetables, tuna, beans, rice, pasta, sauce and, “if available, one treat.”
Carr said mothers sometimes apologize for misbehaving children — children who haven’t eaten in two days.
The center now helps people by appointment only. When Carr accepted walk-ins, people would fight, sometimes with fists, for a place in line. They know the center’s resources on any given day are finite.
Mauck said he fears something worse than economic setbacks. He fears people losing their desire to help others without judging them.
“The hard times are not financial,” Mauck said. “The hard times are when the country is polarized — so many strident positions on the right and on the left.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
