Jason Walke – lawyer by trade, volunteer advocate for the homeless

Lawyer by day, friend by night –

Jason Walke is viewed as a ‘friend’

by the homeless people he serves

By Steve Boeckman

Reprinted with permission from the Iowa State Bar Association “Iowa Lawyers Can Do” newsletter.

“He’s not just a volunteer. He’s a friend.This is not something he does for business. This is something he wants to do.”

Those were the words Tom Willis, a former client of the Interfaith Hospitality Network in Des Moines, used to describe Jason Walke who helped to establish the charitable organization in the capitol city.

A partner with Gunderson, Sharp & Walke with offices in Des Moines, Kansas City and Houston, Jason isn’t so sure the description fits. He feels like he is disorganized and a procrastinator. And, he acknowledges that sometimes the people in the program are not easy to work with. “These people drive me crazy.”

The “people” he’s talking about are the homeless families that IHN serves. Jason was one of the two people who brought the nationwide network to Des Moines about five years ago.

Started in the early 1980s in New Jersey, IHN has spread across the country. Des Moines was approximately the 100th network to become established, Jason says. There are now 134 networks throughout the country.

IHN houses homeless families in host churches at night and buses them to a center located in Westminster Presbyterian Church during the day. The host churches provide rooms for the families to sleep, a couple of volunteers to stay with the families overnight, evening meals and sack lunches. They also take care of providing beds (usually air mattresses), linens, towels and all of the other incidentals that make a home.

Presently, there are 13 churches in Des Moines and the surrounding area who host families, Jason says. Each church hosts the families for a week, beginning on Sunday evening and ending on the following Sunday morning. With 13 host churches in the pool, each church hosts families on the average of once per quarter.

The 11-year legal veteran, who describes his law practice as a “real traditional litigation practice,” doesn’t attribute his dedication to IHN to any higher calling. He says that Tom Beytein, a man he met in his men’s group at church, asked him to become involved.

He and Tom, along with a “lot of other people who got involved,” began working to set up the network in 2002. It took two years to accomplish the goal. IHN in Des Moines began serving families in September 2004.

“The hardest part was recruiting churches to let homeless people stay in their facilities,” Jason says. Understandably the churches were concerned about what might happen.

Based on his involvement, Jason is fairly comfortable in telling a church that everything will be fine. Yes, there is usually a cultural difference between the people serving and those being served, he says. But the program requires that only families can be served. That could be a husband, wife and children; a mother and children; or a father and children.

Plus, the families are carefully screened and referred to IHN by social agencies. Criminal background checks are run on them. And, they have to agree to put their children in school if they are of school age and work hard to find housing and employment during the time they are in the program.

The initial length of stay is 30 days, says Jim Cain, IHN director (and only full-time paid employee). He sits down with each family and writes up goals they agree to pursue during their stay. At the end of the 30 days, he sits down again with the families and evaluates how well they’ve progressed toward achieving their goals. If they are making progress but need more time, he can grant extensions in two-week increments up to a total of 90 days.

The common denominator -- and what makes IHN one of only two programs in the Des Moines area that serves families -- is the children. There must be children in the family in order for the family to qualify for help through IHN. Historically, about 60 percent of the individuals helped are children.

Actually, when pushed, Jason acknowledges it was the idea of helping homeless children that got him hooked on helping out. “I could feel really good about helping kids,” he says.

As it turns out, his volunteerism is helping his own child. He and wife, Michelle, a graphic designer and stay-at-home-mom, have one daughter Bailey, four and a half. As much as possible, Jason involves her in his volunteer work with the families.

He is the host week coordinator for his church, Lutheran Church of Hope, in West Des Moines. As such, he lines up the volunteers to provide all of the services given the families. Jim estimates that it can take up to 30 people at a church to host families for a week.

Unless he is out of town or busy with something else, Jason tries to spend time with the families in the evenings. He also drives the van that picks them up in the morning and takes them to the day center. Sometimes he drives the van that picks them up from the day center around 5 p.m. and brings them to the church.

He likes to take Bailey along, especially in the evenings. It gives him a chance to expose her to what it means to be of service to others, he says. “That’s a valuable opportunity for me as a parent.”

Bailey sees it as an opportunity to drive “the magic bus” as she describes the van, and to play with four or five children she has never met before. “She doesn’t see these kids as anything but kids,” he says.

Jason isn’t afraid to acknowledge that his faith plays a big role in his life and is probably the driving force behind his volunteerism. He grew up in Sumner attending the largest Lutheran church in a very small town. He was involved in the church as a youth. His parents instilled in him the importance of pitching in and helping out.        

Nonetheless, he knows that he struggles with acting out his Christianity on a daily basis. In fact, his work with IHN has helped him in that arena by forcing him four times a year to help other people, he says.

“The people we serve are oftentimes very challenging,” he explains. “Often the kids aren’t very well supervised; they open doors they’re not supposed to open. I have to work at not trying to change them.”

Jason says he feels most blessed when the families are the most difficult to deal with. It’s then when he has to remember that the reason he is doing this isn’t to make him feel better, but to help people who need help.

Over the years, he has grown accustomed to thinking that when he is pulling his hair out over a family’s behavior, that’s when he is doing his part. “One of the blessings of this is that I can help people without trying to be responsible for change them,” he says.

Before he realized the role he should play, Jason says he had lost sight of the hospitality aspect of caring for homeless people. “I was running things like a prison farm,” he says. He had strict rules and high expectations about how the families should behave. Now he tries to get across to the volunteers the idea of respecting the families. Let them treat the churches as their houses because for that week they are, he tells volunteers now.

Jason’s attitude isn’t lost on Jim, the director. He acknowledges that it’s easy to pass judgment on the families and why they are in the condition they’re in. However, “Jason is open-minded and non-judgmental,” he says. “He’s easy going and meets people where they’re at.”

An ongoing issue for the IHN, just as for many charitable agencies, is finding sufficient money. The program works with an $80,000-per-year budget. Many of the host churches have included IHN as a line item in their budgeting process. But soliciting funds still is a major issue.

Jason has a solution for that. His wish, if he had a magic wand, would be for every attorney in Polk County to donate $5 to IHN.

“What a wonderful way for lawyers in Polk County to support a worthwhile cause,” he says. “It’s a lot of people doing little things.”