Dalhaus makes impact through work at C-U at Home

When Rob Dalhaus graduated from St. Joseph-Ogden High School in 2007, he just knew he wanted to help people.

“I had this idea in college, and I know it’s kind of cliche, but I want to help people,” Dalhaus said.

But after graduating from Wabash College, in Crawfordsville, Ind., with a psychology degree in 2011, Dalhaus hit a low point.

Not able to find a job in his field, Dalhaus moved back home and worked at Menards.

“I remember sitting in the break room at Menards; I’d been there for a few months and I was making less than $9 an hour,” he said. “I had this big fancy diploma and college degree, and I just remember crying and being really angry at God and the situation. This is not what I was promised or what I thought I was told.

“I felt like society had kind of told me and my generation, our millennial generation, that you go and get a degree and all this money and happiness and wealth will just come to you.”

Now, eight years later, the Executive Director of C-U at Home, a non-profit organization that provides services and opportunities for Champaign-Urbana’s homeless population, realizes that he needed some life experience to make the impact that he and his team at C-U at Home are now making.

Before joining the C-U at Home team in August of 2017 as the Managing Director, Dalhaus worked at Elements (now Rosecrance), as a crisis clinician, then as an Intake Coordinator at the Times Center.

“I feel like every job I had was preparing me for the next one and for something bigger,” he said.

Dalhaus said his experiences have helped him to meet his “friends without an address” with a different mindset than he had previously.

“Imagine in your mind when you think about or hear the word ‘homeless,’ ” he said. “Generally you are going to have a negative connotation with that: lazy, smelly, bum, alcoholic, a picture of a guy on the street panhandling or holding a sign and a cup. Maybe he hasn’t showered in a few days.”

But Dalhaus said the vast majority of the people who seek help at C-U at Home are just people who have fallen on hard times.

“What has changed for me is that instead of immediately jumping to that stereotypical conclusion, you take a step back and say why is ‘John’ in this position?” he said. “Oh. It’s because he had a six-figure job and he got hurt at work. He ended up getting laid off. He was on prescription medication and ended up with an opioid addiction that led to him losing his relationship with his wife. Then he lost contact with his kids and a year after he got hurt — something that was outside of his control — all of a sudden, he’s found himself on the street or in an emergency shelter.”

While there are a myriad of reasons that people end up “without an address,” Dalhaus said, “so many guys and gals that I’ve talked with over the years, they never imagined they’d wake up and be on the street.

“When you really humanize, when you look into the eyes of someone who is on the street, you see that struggle and that hurt, you really have a new compassion for them.”

Through this compassion, C-U at Home staff and volunteers are able to provide their “friends without an address” services and opportunities they may not otherwise have.

“I just think we have to start looking at our ‘friends without an address’ through that lens that Christ saw them through,” Dalhaus said. “That changes (a friend without an address) to this is ‘John.’ These are ‘John’s’ struggles. How can we help ‘John?’ How can we empower ‘John’ to get out of where he’s at?”

C-U at Home, an organization that is run on the backs of six staff members and a community of volunteers, provides the Phoenix Daytime Drop-In Center, transitional housing and rehabilitation program, street outreach and transportation.

Beginning in 2020, C-U at Home will take over the men’s emergency shelter operations. The goal will be to provide the first shelter available in Champaign-Urbana 365 days a year.

“We haven’t had a 365-day shelter in town for nearly 20 years,” Dalhaus said.

C-U at Home will also partner with the Champaign Township Office to provide manual labor jobs for their friends without an address.

“Two of biggest issues I hear from the folks I’ve talked to on the street and the drop-in center is that ‘I don’t have a place to stay’ and ‘I don’t have any money,’ ” Dalhaus said.

“Through the work program, we’re giving these guys and gals the opportunity to work and get the dignity that comes from working; instead of them out doing illegal activities or panhandling or whatever. We’re giving them the opportunity to work, fill a gap in a resume, and we could advocate to an employer if they wanted us to.”

The goal isn’t just to meet people where they are at, but to provide an upward movement for the county’s most vulnerable.

“We try to catch them at the very bottom and figure out what are the underlying issues that have led to that person’s evictions, that has led to them being kicked out of shelters, do they have money management problems, is the underlying issue a substance abuse problem? Do they have mental health issues that they’ve never sought medication or counseling for?” Dalhaus said.

“Finding those issues takes a lot of time, and a lot of energy and resources. And because we are 100-percent community funded and don’t have state or federal dollars, we are able to individualize the services that we have, to spend that time and energy on those folks.”

While Dalhaus estimates there may be 15 to 30 people living on the streets year-round, he also estimates that there are about 1,000 people in Champaign County who seek services from C-U at Home each month.

“Some are couch-surfing. Others receive a social security or disability check and spend the first two weeks of the month in a hotel, and when they run out of money they are on the street,” he said.

The organization even fielded a phone call from California recently.

“We had a family in California who thought their son might be in this area,” Dalhaus said. “Through a lot of connections and conversations, we were able to find him. We were able to connect with the family, and get him a bus ticket back to California. That’s what he wanted, that’s what they wanted, so it worked out.”

Those connections come through C-U at Home’s community education and advocacy program.

C-U at Home is a donation-funded organization, which does not receive state or federal funding. Two-thirds of the organization’s annual budget comes from their annual fundraiser, One Winter Night, which will be held in downtown Champaign on Feb. 1 (Friday).

Other funding comes from about 14 churches throughout the area, and families who contribute a one-time or monthly donation.

Through the education and advocacy program, C-U at Home not only reaches additional donors, but also helps the community to understand the real need right in Champaign-Urbana.

“It’s the folks who have been cast off by society. It’s the folks who have been kicked out of every treatment center, every facility, every shelter,” Dalhaus said.

“I think there is this stigma in society that it’s this person’s fault they are in this position, so they need to pull themselves up. Well it doesn’t matter whose fault it is that they are in that position, they are still in the position they are in.

“Whether a person is in the position they are in by their own doing or not, that doesn’t affect how much compassion, empathy and desire to build them up that we should have.”

Empathy for friends without an address is something participants of One Winter Night often gain.

“It is one of the most unique event participation opportunities that I’ve ever been a part of or ever seen,” Dalhaus said. “It is a mental and physical challenge being outside sleeping in a cardboard box. It makes you really have to dig deep in those early morning winter hours.”

The 2019 One Winter Night will see over 300 participants who raised at least $1,000 for the organization line Neil Street in an overnight stay in a cardboard box.

“It’s really cool, exciting, engaging, energetic, there’s a lot of passion from a lot of people, but then you hit 2 or 3 in the morning when the bars close, you get some folks who are inebriated, that may want to engage with you as a box dweller. Nothing dangerous, but you get a sense of what someone on the street might endure.

“The noise from cars or the trash trucks in the morning. You don’t expect that. You don’t expect the loneliness that you feel if there is dead quiet on the streets of downtown Champaign and you’re surrounded by 200 to 300 people, but you still feel that sense of loneliness.

“Box dwellers tell me that you don’t anticipate that feeling of loneliness because you’ll get some people that will even walk by and ignore you. They won’t even look at you. I’ve had some box dwellers say that they want to say something, ‘Hey, I’m just doing this, I’m not actually on the street; you can talk to me, it’s okay.’

“But that’s just the mindset we get in. We’re conditioned to ignore that person when you are walking by. I always encourage people, don’t ignore them. If nothing else, look them in the eye and say ‘hello;’ acknowledge their existence.”

Dalhaus said the event also has nearly 200 volunteers for the night.

“You get a group of 300 participants, 200 volunteers, plus the community members who come and visit their box-dwelling friends, you get 500 to 750 people in a six- or seven-block area at any one time.

“To see that kind of community involvement is so humbling. We’re a pretty small organization, we have a small annual budget. To see that many people from Champaign and Urbana come and support is amazing.”

Dalhaus said that alongside growing One Winter Night participant numbers, he has enjoyed seeing parents with their children or high school groups participating in the event.

“Getting that younger generation involved, to give them a new perspective, to change that stereotype in their minds is critical,” he said.

In retrospect, Dalhaus feels like the struggle in the breakroom at Menards was just a time and a place that has led him to realize his dream of making a difference in the world.

On a day-to-day basis, he gets to work with a great staff who works hard to provide something more for people who need a support system.

“I’ve found that thing that’s bigger,” he said. “There’s no place I’d rather be and work. It’s an absolute blessing. Every single day. It’s difficult sometimes, but it’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done.”

“We couldn’t do what we do without extremely committed staff, people that aren’t here just for a paycheck. People who have a passion and feel like there is a calling for them. It’s not a 9-to-5 kind of job. It’s being available. You have to be available when that person on the street has that moment of clarity and is ready to make a change.

“(Our friends without an address) don’t feel like they have a lot of hope, so we take that and hold that hope for them until they are ready to take it themselves.”