A chat with Sister Connie Driscoll by Bruce Upbin
"The best way to help society's losers is to teach them to help themselves."
Forbes - May 19, 1997

In 1983 Sister Connie Driscoll, a Missionary Sister of the Poor, cofounded the 120-bed St. Martin de Porres House of Hope in Chicago's downtrodden Woodlawn neighborhood. There she and her partner, Sister Therese O'Sullivan, have sheltered and counseled nearly 10,000 homeless welfare mothers and their children- 85% of the mothers are addicted to drugs.

 

Almost all the women who come to St. Martin de Porres kick their drinking and drug habits. Only 5% return to shelters. Sister Connie estimates that the citywide return rate could be as high as 40%.

 

Since 1986 Sister Connie, now 63, has, done all this without getting a dime from any federal, state or city welfare program. "When you're funded by the government," she told Forbes, "you're always in fear of getting cut off if you don't follow every rule and file every form. After a while you end up toning down the moral messages of responsibility and work."

 

Sister Connie doesn't encourage her wards to feel sorry for themselves or to blame society. She takes the view that they brought their problems on themselves-and have the inner power to solve them.

 

INTERVIEW:

Sister Connie: For the first couple of months after we started, I had the same rose-colored glasses as everybody else-thinking these poor people have been abused and victimized. After a while you have to take the glasses off.

 

Forbes: You haven't had much support from the Catholic clergy.

You're not kidding. I'd say 85% of the church is against welfare reform. Why? They'll lose their funding. Catholic Relief Services gets 74% of its budget from taxpayer dollars.

 

Forbes: How do you reinforce the message that people are responsible for their own fate?

We give every woman a job in the house the day she arrives, whether that's cooking, security duty or helping Sister Therese teach the children.

 

That's only the beginning. The teaching here is constant. We're telling people who have had no budgeting experience they can't buy their babies $90 shoes. They're saying it's hip and cool. This is nutso.

 

Responsibility 101.

They have to give me 80% of their welfare check and 50% of their food stamps. I put the money and stamps into a safe-deposit box and return it when they're ready to leave so they have some savings for the first month's rent on an apartment. We teach them to pay rent, utilities and food bills first, then prioritize what else they need.

 

The word on the street is that ours is a tough house, probably the toughest in the city. Everyone's up at 6 a.m. and in bed with the lights out at 10:30 p.m. Children are in bed by 8 p.m., and 9 p.m. in the summer. No men can visit.

 

Other than a 3/4-hour pass to go for job interviews, the women always have somewhere to be: career or computer training, GED classes, Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings or a job here in the house.

 

Since 1990 the average resident stays 7 1/2 months, and every day we talk about responsible sexual behavior, the dangers of illegitimate child births and how to hold a job.

 

Forbes: Do you think Congress' decision last August to turn welfare over to the states and set a five-year limit on aid will be the end of welfare as we know it?

I hope so. At the very least it is the beginning of the end of misery. Since 1964 we've spent about $5.4 trillion on fighting poverty. What did we get? An absolute disaster.

 

Forbes: Are there enough jobs out there?

The work is there. I see plenty of McDonald's help-wanted signs for $7 an-hour jobs along with a $100 signing bonus.

 

The problem is not a lack of jobs, it is bureaucracy and the lack of accountability.

 

I remember when the folks from CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973] came to visit us in the early 1980s. They put quite a few people here in Woodlawn who were supposed to be cleaning, but no one was supervising them. They didn't do anything except sit around the rectory all day.

 

The problem is not a lack of jobs but the inability of people to work and be responsible with a paycheck.

 

It's going to be interesting to see how Wisconsin's new program [which mandates work in return for aid] plays out. We'll find out how companies and communities respond.

 

The effort has to come from the community level. Once government gets out of the way, people will step in. They only stopped helping when government took over. No one is going to let kids in their neighborhood starve. It's just that people are fed up seeing their taxes wasted.

 

I grew up in Ontonagon, which is a small town on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

 

When I was a little kid during the Depression, a lot of hoboes would get off the train in town and head straight for the rectory to get something to eat. But my family, not the priests, lived in the rectory, so my mother, a great Austrian baker, would end up giving them coffee and her fresh sweet rolls.

 

Then she would ask, mimicking my father's Irish accent: "Now, would you mind be chopping a little wood for me?" And they would, be more than happy to do it. That taught me it's nice to help people but it's far better to let them help you with something in return.

 

Our alumnae often come back to speak with residents. These women are delirious to be off the dole and working and independent.

 

People equate welfare with compassion. But compassion's got nothing to do with it. A handout is the least compassionate thing you could do. Compassion means suffering with, doing with, being with. Teaching is 99% of what we do.

 

by Bruce Upbin

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