By Dave Cucchiara

Communications & Program Associate

In one of New Jersey’s wealthiest counties, where the median household income tops $134,000, a troubling reality persists: homelessness increased by 34% between 2022 and 2023, with 351 individuals identified as homeless by year’s end. Morris County Prevention is Key (PIK) has been awarded a $300,000 Innovation Engine grant from the F. M. Kirby Foundation to address this growing crisis by establishing the Morris County Respite Center (MCRC) in Rockaway — a groundbreaking facility that brings essential services under one roof, something that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in Morris County or the state.

The challenge isn’t a lack of services. It’s access. Currently, an unhoused person in Morris County must navigate multiple organizations across the county, each with different schedules and limited hours, to access basic necessities like showers, meals, and laundry. Limited New Jersey Transit routes make transportation nearly impossible without a vehicle. The Morris County Respite Center will change that equation entirely by consolidating these services in one welcoming location, where participants can shower, do laundry, eat nutritious meals, rest safely, and connect with intensive case managers who provide “warm hand-offs” to additional services. This ambitious project reflects PIK’s nearly four-decade track record of innovation in Morris County. Executive Director Chris Goeke, who has led the organization since 2006, describes how the organization identifies gaps and develops pioneering solutions that often become standard practice across the state.

From launching Morris County’s first independent recovery center in 2014 to helping create the Hope One mobile outreach vehicle to recently becoming a registered Harm Reduction Center, PIK has consistently been ahead of the curve. The respite center hopes to serve the county’s ALICE population — those who are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed — representing 22% of Morris County households, plus another 5% below the poverty line. As Goeke envisions the center as a replicable model for other communities, PIK’s core philosophy remains clear: “every person we encounter, regardless of circumstance, has innate value, goodness, creativity, resourcefulness and is deserving of health, wellness, respect, compassion, and kindness every day.”

 

 

Interview with Chris Goeke, Executive Director of Prevention is Key Morris County 

Dave: All right, Chris, well, I appreciate you taking the time today. I’m joined by Chris Goeke, the Executive Director of Prevention is Key in Morris County. He’s going to talk a little bit today about the Innovation Engine Award and his work at Prevention is Key — what they’re doing right here in Morris County. So, Chris, thank you for joining us. Why don’t you talk a little bit about your background and what you do as Executive Director?

Chris: I’ll keep it brief — Reader’s Digest version. I come from the for-profit sector in manufacturing engineering. I found my way into the nonprofit sector back in 2001-2002. I was a refugee from 9/11 and really fell in love with the space. I ended up working for our Warren County affiliate for a few years before this opportunity presented itself. I’ve been here since late 2006.

I like to say when I started, I had two and a half employees, one working computer with a dial-up connection and an AOL account, and I was the only guy who knew how to use it. We’ve come a long way. My job here has been to really bring the organization into the 21st century and put it back up on the cutting edge in terms of all of its service delivery. That’s really what I do. I’m the guy who looks long over the horizon, and I hire a lot of very talented people to make sure that my vision comes to fruition. That’s why we’re having a conversation today.

Dave: I saw “Pirate Captain” on the website. Could you explain that a little bit?

Chris: Sure, yeah. I’ve always been a bit of a rogue. I wear that proudly. Within the space that we occupy here, we were one of the original 21 affiliates of the New Jersey Prevention Network for many years. As my peers would say, I was probably the black sheep of that group, coming from the for-profit sector. I looked at the world a little differently. Usually, they’d be going right and I’m going left. It’s a very different kind of feel for someone like me who’s very entrepreneurial-driven. I’m not risk-averse. Whereas a lot of my peers would be shying away and clutching the pearls, I’m the guy that’s stepping forward, grabbing a hold of the bull, and seeing how far I can throw it. That’s the Pirate Captain.

Dave: Got it. All right, well, for those unfamiliar with Innovation Engine — you were one of 40 applicants for this $300,000 award over three years. Talk a little bit about what this award means for you guys over at Prevention is Key. And for those unfamiliar with Prevention is Key, help us understand your organization’s core work in prevention, recovery support, and harm reduction here in Morris County.

Chris: A little bit about the agency: we’ve been around since 1989 when we were incorporated. The place started in 1988, and here’s a piece of history you probably don’t know. [Shows ledger] This is the original ledger from 1988, and where that orange marker is is the very first Kirby Award that we were given. Your organization gave birth to this. So as far as the Innovation Engine is concerned, it means a great deal to us.

What we do: we started life in the prevention area. We were part of the original council system here in the state and became part of the New Jersey Prevention Network. When I came on, we were preventionists working in the community, doing evidence-based prevention programming and marshaling local community coalitions to do coalition work.

That evolved, and in 2014, as we found ourselves in the midst of the opioid crisis, I was able to get a tiny little grant from the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and open our first Recovery Center here in Morris County. We were the first recovery center not affiliated with a treatment provider and not funded by the division. So, we were Pirate Captain out there doing our thing from 2014 forward. That gave rise to a lot of the work that became the foundation for where we are now with the Innovation Engine.

We started with recovery coaching. We started training peers. We were asked to create a curriculum. We worked with the sheriff to create Hope One. It’s grown — one step after another. As we found the gaps, we worked with our collaborative partners to fill them.

It’s evolved since then. Five or six years ago, if you were in polite company in my space and said the word “harm reduction,” they would have run you out on a rail. It was not something that anybody was even going to think about. But because I had such really talented people working for me, they came to me and said they’d really like to see how we could incorporate harm reduction in a lot of the outreach work we’re doing. That gave rise to some baby steps, working with the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement, changing a lot of attitudes and minds around this particular issue. To the point now where, literally over the weekend, we were awarded another $150,000 grant from the Department of Health to be a registered Harm Reduction Center.

We just keep marching along one step at a time. We do everything from soup to nuts. We start with prevention, we go to recovery, we do harm reduction. The respite center is the next step.

Dave: So, it sounds like innovation and fulfilling those unmet needs is kind of built into the core foundation of what you do over there, especially since you joined in 2006-2007.

Chris: It is. That’s exactly who we are. When you guys announced that grant, we all looked at each other and went, “Yeah, we better write for this one.” This is exactly who we’re about, and I wear it proudly. It’s part of my DNA. I was very blessed to have a father who was an incredible innovator, so I learned it at his knee — that there’s a million different ways to solve some of the most difficult problems. You just have to be open to it and keep trying.

I like to say I rely a lot on PR, and that’s not public relations — that’s patience and being relentless. That’s kind of how we got from where we were to where we are.

Dave: I like that. So, I’ll give you the floor here, Chris. Talk a little bit about the program itself, what you applied for, and what you expect to build with this center.

Chris: This particular award was to start a pilot-scale respite center. We like to pilot things. This is the way we’ve always done it. When we step outside of our normal scope of work, we pilot so we can small-scale and have the ability to tweak on the run.

A respite center is kind of a place — let me couch it this way: the gaps that we identified which led us to this place had to do with the fact that we were working with a larger and larger unhoused population who were in need of a wide variety of resources at any given moment. Many of them were in disparate locations throughout the county. You’re talking about people who are transportationally challenged, who are unhoused, have food insecurity, and may also have substance use or recovery issues.

Yeah, there are services, but for someone who is unhoused to be able to go from one end of the county to the other is hard. It’s very hard. So we were looking at how we bring this idea into one place where someone could come — or we could bring them, depending on where we locate it and how we do it — where they could get their laundry done, get a warm meal, have a couple of hours of peaceful sleep, and engage with people who are intensive case managers who can “warm hand-off” them into other services. Not just give them a phone number and expect them to chase this down, but where we could, if we can get the appointments and do the work, put them in one of our vehicles and drive them and actually give them the services that they need — whether we’re performing them or somebody else is. It makes no difference because we work with virtually everybody in the county.

As a matter of fact, we deliver services in the entire northern seven counties in New Jersey right now, so we’re very well connected as far as those services are concerned. That’s kind of a Reader’s Digest version of what a respite center is.

As part of our evolution in harm reduction, we became connected to and brought in as a consultant, Sam Rivera of OnPoint [NYC]. He has been really integral in helping us formulate what this will actually look like because he runs something very similar in New York — a lot larger. But we’re always interested in getting other perspectives, especially so that we don’t trip and fall too many times in the beginning.

Dave: Yeah, I’m curious, Chris, about your research in this area of New Jersey. Obviously, this is something that this area has really never had. I mean, we’ve had different parts of the center sprinkled throughout different organizations that have done a great job. But what do you think this will mean for the community, and how do you think it’ll impact it?

Chris: I think it’s going to have the same kind of impact that many of the things we’ve done thus far always have. It’s often — I’m not one to blow horns, especially my own — but it’s not unusual for us to find ourselves so far ahead that we don’t see where everybody else is behind us, and it takes time for them to come up. I think this is going to be very similar in that respect.

I think we’re going to find ourselves way out on the edge, way on the cutting edge, learning and leading, and at the same time teaching those who are following in our footsteps. Ideally, if you look at it the way the division would look at this, like they looked at recovery centers — they wanted to have one recovery center in every single county so that they had this one point. Anybody who looked at the population of New Jersey would know one recovery center in every county is not going to serve anybody.

You have to take more of a — I’ll call it the McDonald’s approach. You want a recovery center on every corner, and you want them different because everybody’s path is different. It’s no different with the respite center. I think what we’re going to see is we’re going to pilot this, we’re going to learn, we’re going to teach, and then there are going to be others who follow behind us. As we innovate and create the next iteration and the next iteration after that, they’re going to be going in their directions, and it’s going to be really interesting.

I would love to see this replicated multiple times. My dream would be to see several in each county because I think that’s what needs to happen. That’s really what needs to happen.

Dave: And I guess you’ve alluded to this on the macro level — what success looks like for you. More on the micro level, working alongside your team and the community you’re serving immediately, right here, what does success look like for you over the next year or two?

Chris: What does success look like? It looks like a vibrant community that we’re going to foster — which is what this is. It’s not something you build. This is attraction, not promotion. It’s a place where people are going to come because they know they’re going to be safe, they’re going to be able to get the things that they need, and they’re going to be able to become more than they ever thought they were capable of.

So many times the folks that we work with — a lot of them — have given up. They don’t have a vision. It’s interesting. When we started the recovery center — that’s the last big thing that we really did — we began working with folks. I’m going to use an example right here, right now. I’m not going to name names, but a gentleman who is currently on staff was one of our participants back when we were at the old location. He had been arrested, had gone through the whole million rounds through treatment, the whole nine yards. And now here he is, a totally different person, giving back, has a job, and will probably become an integral part of this respite center.

That’s what success looks like. It looks like helping people and then having them come full circle. I love to hire people who have been part of our story.

Dave: That’s great. So, Chris, how can people support this work moving forward? Obviously, you’ve got the three-year grant and you’re working through this over the next couple of years to build this out. If folks hear your story and want to chip in, want to support that work, how can they do so?

Chris: We always accept donations. Prevention is Key will take donations of money and many things. If you go up to Amazon, we have a wish list. When we learned that we were awarded this, we actually put the wish list together before the holidays, and I’ve already been getting donations through that wish list. So, we’re well on our way to stocking our respite center with many of the things we need.

Also, volunteers. So much of what we do is supported by the volunteers that we have who come in and participate in the various things that we put together. So volunteering, either here at Prevention is Key or at the respite center once we get the door open.

Dave: That’s great. Well, Chris, I really appreciate your time, and from the bottom of our hearts over here, thank you for everything you guys do. This is an issue that’s touched countless families and countless lives across the country. What you’re doing for the community right here is just invaluable, so we really appreciate it. This is a much-deserved award, and we can’t wait to follow your journey over the next few years here.

Chris: Well, we’re very enthused, we’re very humbled, and we’re very proud. Thank you.