To Look Beyond the Obvious

I’ve recently been in the Catskill Mountains helping a friend get ready to close on her sold house and to have a moving sale. Next to her beautiful house, which is named Marmalade Manor and was built in 1815, flows a rushing stream. I took a lot of pictures and enjoyed its sounds and spray.

However, next to my friend’s house and the rushing stream, is a house that has collapsed. Its owners died, no heirs came forth, and the building’s front eventually fell against a tree that had overgrown the front entrance. The remaining structure followed, falling into a dozen skewed piles of boards, cabinets, nails and furnishings. I stood across the stream and imagined the meals that were served within, the babies that were born, the illnesses that were endured, the weddings, deaths, and a million other events that evolved as life happened. While I pondered, I spied an apple cider-looking jug and a canister of flour that were still upright on the counter, seemingly awaiting hands to put them away. I felt melancholy for this family that put their life’s blood into their home never knowing that someday it would be a pile of rubble. I also was, and am, dismayed that such waste occurs.

I wondered how a house that withstood over a century of rain, snow, sleet, wind and sunshine could be left to just fall down – especially in a day of such homelessness and a need for lodging.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a repository of abandoned buildings into which the homeless could move for a new start and to establish roots? Would cities, municipalities and towns allow property to go to one of modest income and to become a home again instead of allowing it to fall into ruin or of selling it to the highest bidder? Would the neighbors shun a low-income family relocating into their territory, or would they pitch in to help with repairs, childcare and other necessities for the working poor? I know, I know, some homeless individuals have chronic addiction issues that preclude their interest in four walls, however, the average age of a homeless person in the United States today is nine years of age…

  N I N E  Y E A R S  O F  A G E. 

Several years ago, I was helping build a Habitat for Humanity house. It was in a neighborhood that had been lovely, had declined, but was on its way back to prosperity. As I walked from my car to the building site, I was enthused about helping Wendy and her family, build their home. Wendy and her children had put in sweat equity, so I’d become acquainted with them. She was delightful and, like so many women whose men leave, underemployed, but hard-working. She will be an asset to the neighborhood, thought I.

I was scheduled to help install siding on this particular day and I'd helped with roofing the evening before. The house was almost finished. I was excited.

As I walked by, I threw up my hand at the neighbors, and smiled a greeting. They turned their backs to me. My greeting was met with silence – stony silence. I was stunned. A woman living across the street yelled, “Of course, you’re happy, you just build the house and leave the neighborhood. We’re left to deal with those people and our lowered property values.” The “backs” pivoted forward again, waiting for me to answer the challenge.

I gulped.

As naïve as it seems now, this neighborly response had not been on my radar screen. I thought ANYONE would be HAPPY to see a homeless family have a home. I believed no one could want a family to be without lodging. However, from that point forward, I realized that the home had to be in someone else’s neighborhood for people to rejoice about the homeless having a home. Empathy costs money – so no empathy from these neighbors on this day.

So what’s the answer? The answer to homeless is complicated I know; however, there are measures to help those in dire conditions.

Interfaith-Hospitality Network is nation-wide and coordinates the lodging for homeless families in church buildings while the parishioners are away, snug in their homes. The homeless must be up and ready to leave in the morning before church business begins and are brought back in the evening for dinner and to sleep. Each housed person is allowed one plastic bag with which they may carry their belongings from church to church, until Section 8 housing opens for them. I have watched, tearfully, as children schlepped their bags from their make-shift rooms, to the bus, for their next relocation. NO toys, there is no room. Each church stay lasts a week and then it’s on to another church and new smiling faces of dinner-serving volunteers making small talk - no questions of any consequence are ever asked of the guests. The privacy of each guest is respected.

In addition to Interfaith Hospitality Network, there are also Community Soup Kitchens that serve food, offer health care and job assistance.  These are organizations that meet acute needs.

These are all vital interventions, but what about after jobs have been secured and individuals are ready to move forward? Often, Section 8 housing has built-in issues, such as ensconced drug dealers, violence as a matter of course, and people who have lost hope. This spawns generation and generation of angry, discouraged people who often seek lawlessness to meet their needs. It becomes an ideal training ground for impressionable youth - remember - the average age of a homeless person is nine.

So, as tax-payers, do we pay upfront and help the homeless into safe-affordable housing or pay on the backend and support them during incarceration or by our very lives, lost during violent acts? Do all homeless become drug-addicted, violent offenders? Of course not, but the odds rise as resources and hope diminish.

So, what about abandoned buildings being slated for the homeless, and vacant lots being dedicated to inner-city vegetable gardens and playgrounds? Couldn’t this cycle of waste be interrupted by outlining a process where need meets availability? Technology makes it doable; tax rolls could identify buildings, and organizations, such as Interfaith-Hospitality Network, could identify candidates.

There are people smarter than I who wrestle with this issue. This just seems like a possible intervention – especially when buildings fall down from neglect. We could ask, couldn’t we? Or is that too simple – or too complicated? Remember, the average age of a homeless person in the United States of America is nine years old.

What were you doing when you were nine years old? Do you remember? I’ll bet the homeless nine-year olds of this generation will always remember where they were when they were nine years old – without toys, friends, X-boxes, or necessities, carrying all their belongings in a garbage bag to the next handout; or, worse yet, sleeping under a bridge somewhere, hoping to endure the night.

Abandoned buildings; someone’s way to wealth or someone’s way to wholeness? We can ask can’t we?