From Homeless to Happy

 

Weeks ago, Davey “Blessed” Moreno had no intention of staying at Haven for Hope, instead preferring a life on the streets.

“Jesus never had no place to stay,” Blessed said at the time. “He got me covered.”

He has since changed his mind.

From homeless to happy

By Brian Chasnoff - Express-News

Web Posted: 07/22/2010 12:00 CDT

About 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, the long-haired artist stood washing hundreds of trays in the Food Bank's massive, stainless-steel kitchen on the new campus for the homeless. It's a job he volunteers for every morning, arriving before sunrise and waiting to eat breakfast until after his fellow residents have been sated.

“I like it,” he said. “It's like a college atmosphere. That's why I'm volunteering.”

The Express-News is following the progress of Blessed and other homeless people as they enter Haven and use its comprehensive program to get back on their feet.

Homeless for the past three years, Blessed's arrival there was preceded by trouble.

He was evicted this year from the SAMMinistries shelter, which has since closed, after he shattered a window. On the streets, he was arrested on a charge of possession of marijuana.

Released from jail, Blessed floated from job to job, inking tattoos in cheap motels for cash and feeding a substance addiction. Already thin, his frame grew gaunt. He says he was getting into fights.

“I was out there. I wasn't eating right,” Blessed said. “I was just going through some real bad things.”

One day, his resistance to Haven snapped.

“I just got to the point where I got tired of it,” he said. “I needed out.”

Now, he frames his choice in allegorical terms: If God is a painter illustrating his life, Blessed had been trying to snatch the brush from God's hand. He decided to let God take over the painting.

So Blessed, 40, made his way to the new $100 million campus, bypassing the courtyard and entering Haven's program immediately with the aid of contacts he'd already made.

Washing dishes Wednesday, he was unflaggingly positive.

“The staff is great. I have no complaints,” he said. “People are here to help you.”

Javier De Tovar, an executive sous-chef with the Food Bank, is impressed.

“For the most part, he's here every single morning,” De Tovar said. “He has a really positive attitude.”

Most days after breakfast, Blessed attends an intensive outpatient session on the campus geared toward overcoming addiction.

“He's definitely making an effort,” said Laura Yeo, his caseworker.

Haven officials are allowing Blessed to stow his tattoo gear in a locker beside his bunk under the condition he not ink anyone on campus. And they're encouraging his artistic aspirations.

“He's going to help with the mural that's going up on the warehouse,” Yeo said. “He's already commissioned a couple of sketches with members and staff.”

About 8 a.m., most of the trays had been washed.

Blessed, no longer gaunt, approached mounds of that morning's breakfast — refried beans, fruit, bread and eggs mixed with vegetables — and spooned his share onto a tray.

“I just thank the Lord,” he said, “that this is made.”

Safety-Net for the Homeless Has Success Stories

Safety net for the homeless has success stories

Veronica Flores-Paniagua -My SA NEWS

Web Posted: 06/26/2010 12:00 CDT

Amy Riley will get a call from time to time from families who've benefited from the San Antonio Metropolitan Ministries program she runs. Their stories, Riley says, are exciting because they affirm that the support the Transition Living and Learning Center provides for homeless families works.

That kind of feedback is important as the city tackles a new frontier with its investment in Haven for Hope, a campus with myriad services intended to put the homeless on a path to self-reliance.

Some on the homeless campus are learning that path is no cakewalk, as it wasn't for Rene Ramirez when he leaned on SAMM at a low point in life. At 28, Ramirez was a single parent caring for three young daughters. He had few financial resources, no access to affordable day care and no family support system. It wasn't long before he found himself on the streets. The Express-News chronicled his hardship in a November 1994 story.

SAMM's transitional housing facility, then located downtown on North Alamo, offered stability for four lives spiraling out of control. SAMM's counselors helped Ramirez develop goals; under the program, families might be given anywhere from 12-18 months to achieve them. Then called the Community Ministries Center and limited to helping nine families, the program moved to its current Blanco Road location and now helps up to 40 families.

Ramirez recalled taking money-management classes and counseling to boost his coping skills. Riley said Ramirez also would have been required to do chores at the facility and he would have had to work or go to school. Most important, SAMM linked him to affordable day care. He could work — one-quarter of his earnings paid off debt and 5 percent was saved — and he finally had time to focus.

“It gave me a roof and made me feel secure,” Ramirez said of the SAMM program. “I opened up to ideas about parenting, about being responsible for my actions.”

The program also would lead Ramirez to find his calling as a minister, a calling that ultimately would anchor his life. But even after 18 months under the program's guidance and help finding housing where his family could live independently, Ramirez stumbled. He started drinking and was booted from the program's good graces.

It was a valuable lesson in personal responsibility, Ramirez said, and drew him closer to his church. He worked his way from a janitorial job for a cleaning service to working for a local food manufacturer before landing a job as a car salesman, later becoming lot manager.

He gave up a middle-class life in 2005 to head for Uvalde, where he opened a nondenominational church on a North Getty Street commercial strip. The 10,700-square-foot space includes a day care center with room for 65 children. His youngest daughter just graduated from high school; his oldest two are in college.

Not surprisingly, he often preaches about personal responsibility. He wears his hardscrabble past on his sleeve as testament to the power of God, of course, but also because he is so grateful for the safety net that caught him and his family. “There isn't a day when I don't remember where I come from.”

vflores@express-news.net

Middle School Students Learn Life Lesson About Homelessness

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America on Homelessness

Homelessness

This message was approved by the board of the Commission for Church in Society. It was adopted by the ELCA Church Council on October 22, 1990.

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In our country today homelessness persists. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to live without housing within a society of abundance. [1] The number of elderly people, women, and children among the homeless is increasing. Families are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Homelessness is a reality in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Millions of people exist on the precarious edge of homelessness. Without major changes in our society, homelessness will be more pervasive in the 1990s than it was in the 1980s.

For some time congregations, individuals, social agencies, and synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have called attention to the plight of homeless people. Many members have worked with other churches and groups to provide food, shelter, and care, to study the social causes of homelessness, and to advocate policies that respond to the housing crisis. People in our congregations who are homeless and potentially homeless remind us of the urgency of the situation.

It is time to acknowledge with gratitude what people are doing, to confess that we have too often neglected homelessness, and to renew our commitment to act with justice and compassion. The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gives thanks to God for what is being done and urges members of our church to take on renewed responsibility for the troubling, deeply-rooted reality of homelessness.

Remembering the Reality
Homelessness concerns people, human beings created in God's image for a life of dignity in justice. The story of each homeless person is unique. The name, the circumstances, the decisions, the faith, the joys, and sorrows of each belong to precious individuals.

Becoming homeless is often triggered by a crisis in a person's life. The crisis might be related to the changing availability of affordable housing and rental patterns, or to job loss. It might be connected with poor health, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, the break-up of a relationship, or natural disaster. In facing the crisis, persons do not receive the needed familial or communal support, or governmental or private assistance to keep them from losing their housing. Once without a permanent dwelling, individuals often experience a downward spiral in their lives.

Being homeless is being without -- without shelter, without resources, without support, without recognition, without power to influence society. Being "houseless" is lacking a permanent place to stay dry and warm, a place to feel secure, a private space. Simple survival becomes a full-time, humiliating task. People who are homeless often lose their sense of self-worth and their hope for the future. They feel cut-off and alienated from the rest of society.

Homelessness also concerns society, that is, the institutions, attitudes, and decisions that form the web of relationships in which we live. Homelessness emerges from the brokenness of society, from realities such as the breakdown of family, impoverished schools, low wages, the lack of employment opportunities, the diminishing supply of affordable housing for the poor, the absence of health insurance, and the inadequacy of services for the mentally ill and the substance abuser. Greed, selfishness, and racism are also factors in the economics and politics of housing, contributing to the persistence and increase of homelessness.

Housing is a fundamental human right. [2] The United States government has stated its commitment to the goal that all citizens have decent housing and a suitable living environment (Federal Housing Act of 1949). Yet the policies and practices of governmental and economic institutions are not adequately responding to the crisis; indeed, some policies and practices actually contribute to homelessness. During the last decade the federal government has virtually withdrawn from low-income housing development and support. This has resulted in reduced options for low-income households. The absence of a genuine commitment at the federal level to provide the resources to address a critical shortage of affordable housing has exacerbated the problem of homelessness.

Certain attitudes among people who have housing both express and further contribute to society's brokenness. Negative feelings toward homeless persons run from indifference to fear to open hostility. Drawing on stereotypes, many view homeless people as lazy, shiftless, parasitic, and opportunistic. With a misguided sense of superiority, lines are drawn between "them" and "us." In some cases, those who suffer from political or economic policies are blamed for a situation they could not control. In many ways, people without housing are made to feel like unwanted outsiders, persons without rights and undeserving of respect.

Called to Care
God heard the cry of a homeless people and delivered them out of oppression in Egypt. Jesus, "who [had] nowhere to lay his head" (Luke 9:58), ministered with compassion to the poor and vulnerable. In practicing hospitality, we are promised to encounter the living Lord: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" (Mat 25:35).

God's mandate concerning people who exist on the margins of society is clear: "Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked" (Pss 82:3-4). Working for justice with and for homeless people is doing God's will.

We, too, participate in and are responsible for society's brokenness. Yet, confident of God's forgiveness, we are daily renewed, so we might turn from what dehumanizes people to accept anew responsibility for justice. Through the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, people with and without housing alike are incorporated into the church, God's new community founded on grace and faith, not on society's view of success or failure.

The Gospel does not provide ready-made solutions to homelessness. God's love in Jesus Christ does, however, move us to care for homeless people as God cares for all. Christians who have shelter are called to care, called to walk with homeless people in their struggle for a more fulfilling life and for adequate, affordable, and sustainable housing.

Walking with People Who Are Homeless
The reasons for homelessness are complex. The homeless population is diverse so that no one solution is going to be valid for the whole population. The realities vary from place to place. In addressing homelessness, therefore, members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America need to consider the many dimensions of this crisis.

The church's ministry of Word and Sacrament is intended also for people who are homeless. Regrettably, this ministry is rare among those homeless, yet it is present. In these communities of faith, children are baptized, the Bible studied, mutual support given, forgiveness proclaimed, the Eucharist celebrated, and the dead entrusted to God. Where God's love for people who are homeless is heard and lived, hope is engendered that breaks the downward spiral of life. We walk with people who are homeless when they are empowered to defend their own rights. Is this a ministry which your congregation can and should offer?

As long as there are people without housing, Christians who have dwellings are called upon to assist homeless persons to provide for their basic needs. Numerous congregations and social ministry organizations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America do this, offering food, shelter, respect, care, and counseling to the homeless. Many volunteers give of themselves in food pantries, shelters, group homes, and other forms of service with the homeless. People are working to provide transitional and permanent housing, including programs that encourage and support home ownership. What does your congregation do? What might it do?

In many cases, a shelter ministry of a congregation is a beginning in which to explore the realities of homelessness. Temporary shelter for people who are homeless is an emergency measure. Adequate housing is needed for humane living. Educational programs can help us to understand better our personal and public responsibility for homelessness. By engaging in conversation with homeless persons, congregations can learn directly from them. Congregations can study what our church's state and federal advocacy is doing in relation to homelessness and support these efforts. How does education within your congregation address homelessness? [3]

Christians walk with the homeless when they join with others to voice deep concern about homelessness, ask hard questions, and advocate policies that seek to provide job training, employment opportunities, housing, education, health care, and support for the homeless. While as Christians we may differ in our views on what policies will be most effective, we ought not overlook the need for new and sustained initiatives by government, businesses, and non-profit organizations, including church groups. Church leaders are challenged to help create the public will to eliminate homelessness. What do you and your congregation do to advocate for those without shelter?

Equally important are the will and wisdom to keep even more children, women, and men from becoming homeless. Walking with people who are homeless includes the responsibility to prevent homelessness. We are called to be aware of and concerned for people in our midst who are vulnerable to losing their housing. Neighborhood and community initiatives are needed. Effective political and economic policies to assure housing, employment, literacy, and health services for low-income families can help people who are potentially homeless.

Let the church pray for a renewal of commitment to walk more closely with and among people who are homeless and who are at risk of becoming homeless in their daily struggles, sufferings, and hopes.

Copyright © 1990 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Produced by the Department for Studies, Commission for Church in Society. Permission is granted to reproduce this document as needed provided each copy carries the copyright notice printed above.