Worth it

Yesterday I attended a conference with about 15 professionals working with homeless agencies throughout the United States. Attendees came from New York, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, and a few other states.

After introductions we were advised to state three of the most prominent challenges that we face in this line of work. Answers varied from lack of funding, excessive paperwork, not being to help everyone, getting landlords to agree to allow our clients to live in their apartments, getting employers to hire our clients, focusing on our own employees' self care, and many others. It was about an hour or two of shared empathetic frustrations bouncing back and forth. If you're involved in homelessness, you know it's not an easy job.

After we discussed the many challenges we faced, we went on the tour of the facility we were at, which was the Rosa F. Keller building, a Permanent Supportive Housing building that my agency owns for chronically homeless and disabled individuals.

The last part of the tour was a viewing of one of the apartments. It was a formerly homeless man's apartment who we housed after he was on the streets for many years. He wasn't severely physically disabled, but had a few mental disabilities. I'm not sure what else he had endured, but in order to get housed in this building, he had to have been through a lot.

He greeted us at the door and openly welcomed us into his apartment. A multitude of fake-flowered garland and Christmas lights lined the ceiling, the moldings and the trimmings. Each doorway was decorated beautifully with photos and flowers and anything else he thought looked nice (ex. place mats that had pretty pictures on them). Every inch of the apartment was tended to and the place was immaculate.

He had been there since June, and before then it was probably a very long time since he had his own place, if he ever did at all. But this place was his, finally. And it was clear that he had been working diligently to make up for the years he lost not having a place to call his own--the place was beautiful.

When I complimented the decorations and cleaning and everything else he simply responded, "It's not finished. When I'm done, this place will be fit for a king."

He described the plans he had for the rest of the wall space throughout the apartment and other ideas he had and then invited us to come back in June when it was all finished. "I promise you," he reiterated, "It will be fit for a king."

He was blessed, he kept saying. God gave him a second chance and God worked through UNITY. He said his apartment came with "everything but a Bentley," and then proceeded to say that he'd welcome a Bentley if anyone had one to give.

Pride is a wonderful thing. I've been proud of a lot of things in my life, but never have I reached the extent of pride that this man had for his apartment. I yearn for the feeling to look at something and say, "This is mine. I did this."

When we left his apartment I was walking alongside one of the attendees from New York. She turned and looked at me and said, "That right there is why we do what we do. That right there makes it worth it."