The Hundred Story Home Page 9

  “He would be great,” Liz agreed. “Do you know Samuel has been living in the shelter for over seven years? He has nowhere to go and now he is so sick that at his last doctor’s appointment they said if he kept losing weight he wouldn’t make it through the year. He needs some kind of special nutritional supplement but has no way to get it.”

  This was the kind of information that just undid me. But Liz seemed to understand how to listen to people’s burdens and not be buried by them. The hundreds of Neighbors at the UMC were all her extended family, and each brother and sister deserved a home.

  “We have to consider Raymond,” she went on. “He is just the sweetest man. There are over three hundred men in the shelter at night, and he just can’t sleep, so he has been staying in a barn since last year. I hate that that man lives like livestock.”

  This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

  “I have a meeting this afternoon if you want to come,” she told me. “This guy from the bank called me. He read my article and said he wanted to do something about homelessness.”

  Neither of us was sure what that meant, but we went late that afternoon to meet Bill Holt.

  Bill’s office was in one of three Wachovia bank buildings in downtown Charlotte. For years Wachovia and Bank of America were euphemistically called “Charlotte’s rich uncles.” If you needed something done in Charlotte, you asked for the help of one of the “uncles.”

  Bill had taken off his banker’s suit coat and rolled up his sleeves by the time we arrived. We shook hands, and he dived into the subject of homelessness while he still stood, bouncing on his feet with excitement.

  “I’ve been reading Liz’s article,” Bill began. “I think I have an idea.”

  On a large whiteboard he drew a rectangular outline of a building filled with circles indicating people. “I think we should build apartments for these homeless people and then, here’s the thing.” He added a square within his rectangle and tapped excitedly on the inner square. “We put social workers and other people who can help the homeless in the building with them.”

  He finished with an excited flourish and an expectant look on his face. “What do you think?”

  Liz and I looked at each other, stunned.

  “Bill, what you are drawing is called permanent supportive housing, and I started today to do just that,” I told him.

  He broke out into a huge boyish grin. “Well, I think we can get both of the banks to kick in $3 million each.”

  As we left, we promised Bill a place on our team—whatever that meant. In the elevator on the way down, Liz and I looked at each other and laughed. “What was that?” she asked.

  As the elevator doors opened, Denver’s words came back to me.

  The people who are going to help you, they already know they are coming.

  twelve

  WING AND A PRAYER

  You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

  —Thomas Merton1

  The next day I went to work with the memory of Bill and his multimillion-dollar plan on my mind. His vision of an apartment complex was at least two years away. I couldn’t begin to think about raising money for a building yet; we still had to figure out how to test this idea in Charlotte. At the entrance to my new office, a vinyl plaque on my door announced our new program title with my name:

  Homeless to Homes

  Kathy Izard

  It was official—I really had signed up to do this. I had a desk, a chair, a computer, a window, and no idea where to start.

  I spent that first month of work researching and trying to understand the landscape of homelessness in Charlotte. To my surprise, there were almost thirty agencies in the city involved in some aspect of helping those in crisis. But just like the issue of education, homelessness is a large topic with complex problems and solutions.

  I began to understand distinctions between types of homelessness. Situational Homeless referred to a person or family in temporary financial crisis from a lost job or a sudden hospitalization. These families were the easiest to assist because they just needed a little help with rent to get back on their feet and into an apartment. If this happened more than once to a family, they were considered to be among the Episodic Homeless. Typically one or both of the wage earners had an issue such as mental health or addiction, and assigning a caseworker might keep the family out of constant crisis, preventing future homelessness.

  Charlotte was estimated to have more than six thousand homeless persons. Our program would target the chronic homeless, thought to be only 10 percent of the total number. These were street homeless with layers of issues, mental and physical, resulting in addiction and disability. There were no families in this group. Usually the chronically homeless referred to individual men and women who had been estranged from their families and had nowhere to go. They were by definition the hardest to help and the most likely to die on the streets. I was shocked to learn that in 2007 thirty-seven homeless people had died in Charlotte. That was a number equal to the murder rate of some cities. How did this happen? It was difficult to understand how someone could stay on the streets for years.

  In that first month I took a class on understanding poverty to try to comprehend how a person who has become homeless thinks and feels.

  “Okay, imagine a time when there was an ice storm or power outage,” the instructor said. “You have no power, no hot water in your house, and no way to cook any food. The refrigerator doesn’t work, and you can’t use your computer or charge your phone.”

  That wasn’t too hard to imagine. When Lauren was nine months old, Hurricane Hugo hit Charlotte, and we had no power for ten days. It was miserable. I had to take her to the YMCA for baths, and every meal was an ordeal.

  “Now imagine this has gone on for a week or more,” the instructor said. “You can’t sleep at night because it is so cold in your house, and you spend all day trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from and how to do something as simple as make a phone call.”

  The class nodded in agreement, many recalling their own Hugo stories.

  “It’s rough, right? All the things you take for granted—like eating, sleeping, and just staying in touch—become the focus of your day. You spend all your energy on just getting those things done, plus you’re exhausted from not sleeping, right?”

  He paused as we all nodded, remembering similar experiences. “So what would happen if during that time someone tried to talk with you about your IRA account?”

  “I would hang up on them if I had a phone!” a man said.

  The class laughed. “Right!” the instructor said. “How could you possibly listen to something about your long-term future when your immediate situation is an absolute crisis? You wouldn’t care what happens in the future, only this moment, right? You can only care about the next twenty-four hours.”

  We all agreed.

  “That is what homelessness is like,” he said. “Except for many people it lasts years, not days or weeks. And no one on the streets wants to talk about getting the high-school diploma that will get them a job someday. What they need is something right now. Not next year.”

  This understanding was a revelation for me.

  A homeless person will never tell you that what they need is a treatment program, a class, or a life strategy. Only one thing will solve their immediate, overwhelming, all-consuming crisis: a home. Our Homeless to Homes program would be Charlotte’s first effort to offer the chronically homeless just that.

  Dale and I met to strategize. Based on best practices in other cities we knew one social worker could effectively work with fifteen people. From the hundreds of Neighbors, we would choose fifteen men and women, move them into existing apartments, and hire one full-time case manager to work with tenants.

  Dale and I believed if we did this tes
t pilot program for two years, we would have enough data to convince potential donors of its effectiveness. That meant I had two years before I needed to worry about Bill, his $6 million plan, and building all those beds I promised Denver.

  “First, we need to hire that case manager,” Dale said. “And then I’m sure we can find some empty apartments to rent.”

  Both turned out to be much harder than we expected.

  Out of dozens of candidates who applied for the social-worker position, Joann Markley was the only one who seemed to understand that this job would be 24/7—with no road map.

  When I asked one applicant what he would do in a middle-of-the-night emergency with one of the pilot program residents, he looked confused. “Call 911?”

  By contrast, in her interview Joann answered the same question without hesitation: “I’d get out of bed and go help them.”

  We hired her on the spot. Joann had worked for the county social services for years and was intrigued to help develop this new program. From the interview process, it was clear Joann was fearless. As we began the next task of finding apartments for our potential tenants, I needed her courage.

  As in any city, there were neighborhoods in Charlotte we could afford and those we couldn’t. Inevitably the neighborhoods where we could potentially afford rent had obvious signs of gangs or drug deals occurring on the corners. Neither bothered Joann. Where I saw danger, Joann saw opportunity.

  As we roamed neighborhoods for vacancies, she would boldly march up to rental offices as I waited in my car and locked the doors. I was beginning to see that driving to the Urban Ministry Center campus was as far out of my comfort zone as I had ever gone. Not only had I hid behind the counter when I was there, I hid in my own neighborhood once I left. Charlotte had more than seventy-four zip codes, but until that month with Joann, I had probably been in only ten of them. Beyond my insular world was a larger city I had lived in for almost twenty years but knew nothing about.

  “Don’t you get scared?” I asked Joann.

  “At first. But you learn not to be. Sure there are bad people, but there are a lot more good people than bad,” she said. “Mostly you realize being poor isn’t the same as being violent or criminal. It’s just TV that makes us think that.”

  In those first few months of learning on the job, my best teacher was Joann. As we toured neighborhoods, we discussed the program, how she would work with tenants, and what we hoped would be the outcomes.

  Together we drove through neighborhoods I never knew existed, looking for vacancies that met our unique requirements of low rent, low utilities, and a kindhearted landlord willing to take a chance on formerly homeless people. We were slowly realizing that combination was impossible to find in Charlotte.

  I came home from one of these frustrating rental searches to a voice mail from Lynn Pearce Tate, who used to live across the street from us. Her message said she had heard what I was doing with Homeless to Homes and wanted to get together for a prayer session.

  I listened to her voice mail and deleted it.

  A prayer session? Not likely. I had always felt uncomfortable when people said they were praying for me.

  In my adult life religion was something I actively chose to avoid. Those forced Sunday mornings and unanswered prayers of my childhood were not something I wanted to revisit. It was nice of Lynn to want to help, but prayers were not what I needed. I needed apartments.

  But like Denver’s words, I kept hearing Lynn’s voice mail in my head. Worse, I felt guilty for not returning the call. To clear my conscience, I finally called her back, agreeing to meet. I arrived at her home early one morning after taking my daughters to school, having told no one about this meeting.

  Lynn is chatty, perky, and has chin-length dark brown hair. She led me into her living room as if we were about to start book club.

  “So how is Homeless to Homes going?” she asked.

  I started to say, “Fine,” but the honest answer slipped out. “Overwhelming.”

  It felt good to admit the truth. I had only been at the job a few months, but I was beginning to fully realize the magnitude of this assignment. It was hard, much harder than I had planned on, and we had not yet helped a single person.

  Lynn nodded as if maybe she already knew this.

  “I have found I have a gift of prayer,” she said with no hesitation or awkwardness. “I kept thinking about what you were trying to do and just thought I could help.”

  Her words “gift of prayer” made me shift uncomfortably on the sofa. Lynn seemed confident about this gift, and I couldn’t understand how or why she felt she had a direct line to God.

  “So we’ll just start by holding hands,” she said calmly and reached over to hold my hands in hers. Lynn closed her eyes and began praying out loud.

  Our hands were loosely connected, but I couldn’t close my eyes. I was trying to get comfortable with this whole thing. Lynn and I had known each other for years but not like this. Our prayer meeting definitely opened a different dimension in our friendship. For a minute or two I wasn’t really listening, just studying the calmness in her face as she spoke aloud. Giving in to the moment, I finally closed my eyes and tried to be as serene as Lynn.

  By the time I was really hearing her words, she was finishing. “God, help Kathy find strength and wisdom for her work. Amen.”

  That was it. Just minutes, and it was over.

  The funny thing was, it seemed my anxiety was over as well. I felt enormously relieved. I had worried this prayer get-together would feel cultish, but truly it just felt calming—like the end of a great yoga class. There was nothing scary about it, and I needed all the help I could get on Homeless to Homes.

  Several times that spring Lynn and I got together, yet I never told a soul. Not even Charlie. I was afraid he’d laugh at me for believing that a prayer was going to help me do this impossible job.

  Really, I didn’t understand what was happening to me or why I kept returning to Lynn’s condo when clearly I didn’t believe in the God of her prayers. But I loved the feeling they gave me. Her home was like my private confessional booth, where I could truthfully admit things weren’t going well. I could say this career change was not what I had bargained for, and Lynn would nod in understanding and she would confidently pray for me.

  The experience helped me to lessen my grip on pathological self-reliance just a little and begin to believe maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t in this alone.

  In April Joann and I finally found some apartments. They were perfect: a small cluster of one-story one-bedrooms in a quiet neighborhood with huge oak trees out front. We would be able to house up to twelve tenants in the same complex. I was thrilled, already envisioning the tenants gathering on the lawn or having barbecues outside their new homes. It had been three months since I started work, and finally we were going to be able to bring the first Neighbors off the streets.

  We were finally going to do something.

  Right before we signed the lease, however, our lawyer came back with terrible news: the apartments were in foreclosure. The guy I had been dealing with was running a scam, trying to steal a huge rent check before the bank took his property.

  I was crushed—months of work and we were back at the starting line. It was all feeling like a giant dead end. Worse, it felt like a huge failure. I would never get this pilot program going, which meant I had no shot at building something like the Prince George.

  That week I went to my prayer session with Lynn, demoralized and unsure of my next move. She listened, then held my hands.

  This prayer I remember.

  “God, please help Kathy know that every time you close a door, you open a window.”

  Later that week I met with a friend I used to work with at my first ad agency job. It had been at least a year since we last talked, and I was surprised when she called. After catching up on ad agency gossip, I mentioned the difficulties in getting the program off the ground.

  Unexpectedly she offered: “There is a
guy at my church who has a foundation, and I think he may have a heart for this type of program. You should call him.”

  She thought he might help with buying furnishings if we ever found apartments. I wrote his name on a scrap piece of paper: Mark Bass. Because I was much more focused on apartments than furniture, it took me a couple of days to contact him. On Monday, April 28, 2008, Mark answered my call.

  Not very practiced in asking for things, I rambled through an unprepared explanation of how I got his number and a little about the program, Homeless to Homes.

  “So are you looking for apartments or money?” he asked.

  Startled, I sat up in my chair. “Well, both. Why?”

  “Well, I thought that was why you were calling,” he said. “I have apartments.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. “And you would consider renting to us?”

  “Sure, let’s talk.”

  I met Mark the next day at his apartments, but at first look, I was not optimistic. On one hand, they looked like the perfect complex I had just lost, with single-story buildings and a small grass courtyard. Most of the sixteen units, however, had huge, plywood boards covering the doors and windows. It looked like Mark thought a hurricane was coming and was overly prepared for a storm. Over the past few months, Joann and I had been to several boarded-up properties. In every case, behind the boards were rats, gang graffiti, and cockroaches.

  Prying the boards loose, he apologized. “Sorry for the plywood. This is the only way I can protect the apartments from break-ins until tenants move in.”

  When we stepped inside, I wanted to cry.

  The walls were freshly painted, the carpets were in pristine condition, the kitchens had modern appliances, and, most unbelievable compared to other apartments we had considered, they had heating and air conditioning. Not only were these ten times nicer than the foreclosed apartments I had agonized over losing, Mark was asking for less rent, and he was eager to take a chance on us. It seemed he had a deep faith, and helping people get back on their feet was something he felt called to do.