September 1, 2012
When Episcopalians gather to worship on Sundays, we expect the familiar. We repeat our liturgy week after week, with relatively little variation. We sing from the same hymnal, and usually hymns that we have sung often before. We sit in the same pews, we greet the same people. Continue reading
I’ve written about this before but an article in this week’s Isthmus addresses both the efforts on behalf of a day shelter and the forces arrayed against it. Here is the letter I’ve written to Mayor Soglin, County Executive Parisi, Madison alders, and the Dane County board.
A few weeks ago as I was leaving Grace in the middle of the afternoon, I noticed a man sitting on the stone wall in our courtyard garden. I greeted him and asked him if he needed anything. He told me that he had been released from the VA hospital earlier in the day and sent here. He asked me about the shelter–when it opened, what the policies and procedures were. I told him that the shelter wouldn’t open until that evening but that it would be best if he waited on the grounds of the Capitol or somewhere else.
I realize that this brief vignette raises all sorts of questions about our society–our treatment of veterans, our healthcare system are both implicated in this man’s plight. What I would like to focus on, however, is that this man had nowhere to go. Staff at the VA could only tell him about the shelter, a place to stay that night, but there was nowhere for him to sit comfortably, his possessions secure, while he waited for the shelter to open.
His is not an isolated incident. Madison’s hospitals discharge patients directly to the men’s shelter; the jails and prisons do as well. And there are those who find themselves homeless for the first time. They have no idea where to go or what to do. If they’re lucky, someone tells them about the shelter. If they’re really lucky, when they check in, they find someone who will show them the ropes, help them negotiate through the night, and tell them how to keep themselves and their possessions safe. I can’t tell you how many times I encounter someone who’s been in the shelter several days or even weeks, and has never seen a representative from a social service agency or been directed to places and people that might be helpful.
The effort to establish a day resource center for homeless people is one of the few hopeful signs I see in Madison’s approach to homelessness. I’ve lived here for three years. When I arrived, I was shocked to discover that homeless services here seemed to lag behind what I had observed in Boston twenty-five years earlier. Even Greenville, SC, where I had lived and worked most recently, and hardly a center of progressivism, has facilities where homeless people can come during the day to receive a nutritious meal, get a shower, do laundry, receive mail, and stow their possessions. More importantly, there is an array of services offered, including GED classes and the like.
The reality for most homeless people is that most of their energy is spent trying to survive on the street, making sure they know where they will spend the night, where they will get a meal, where they might find a warm (or cool) spot to spend the day. There is little physical or emotional energy left to negotiate the system in order to access resources necessary to find permanent housing, a job, or to get training or education.
A day resource center, or day shelter is just such a place. It an bring together all sorts of resources not only to provide protection from inclement weather, but to provide the infrastructure and services that can help someone move off the street and into a more stable living situation. The fact that Madison lacks an adequate facility of this sort is an outrage.
I urge the Mayor, County Executive, members of the Madison Common Council and Dane County Board to support this effort financially. Such a center is not a bandaid, it offers concrete solutions to the problem of homelessness. It offers hope to the hopeless.
A lengthy article in Rolling Stone about formerly middle-class people now living out of their vehicles in Santa Barbara, in part thanks to an innovative program allowing overnight parking in church (and other) parking lots. One went from owning a nursery that grossed nearly $300,000/yr and now can’t find work as a sales person in a nursery:
The Great Recession cost 8 million Americans their jobs. Three years after the economy technically entered recovery, there are positions available for fewer than one out of every three job seekers. In this labor market, formerly middle-class workers like Curtis and Concita Cates and Janis Adkins and Sean Kennan cannot reliably secure even entry-level full-time work, and many will never again find jobs as lucrative and stable as those they lost. Long-term unemployment tarnishes résumés and erodes basic skills, making it harder for workers to regain high-paying jobs, and the average length of unemployment is currently at a 60-year high. Many formerly middle-class people will never be middle-class again. Selfidentities derived from five or 10 or 40 years of middle-class options and expectations will capsize.
I’ve been asked to participate in a panel discussion on the topic this evening for the Annual Meeting of the Madison Area Urban Ministry. Here are my thoughts in advance of the conversation:
After I agreed to participate in this panel discussion on Justice and the Homeless, A Faith Perspective, I ended the call and began to think. Was there something unique about the Anglican/Episcopal tradition that could offer insight or a new perspective to this group? I assumed others would talk about Jewish and Christian scriptures and I didn’t simply want to repeat what they had to say. I certainly didn’t want to argue that somehow an Anglican/Episcopal approach to those scriptures was better or more insightful.
So my mind immediately turned to history and I began thinking about periods in the history of our tradition that might inform our conversation. I thought first of the sixteenth century, the point of origin for the Church of England. I think one can detect there a pattern that continues to hold true, at least to some degree. It’s often claimed that the English Reformation began with Henry VIII’s desire for Anne Boleyn and for a male heir. There were other sources, among them reformers who sought drastic change to doctrine and practice. Among their chief targets was the wealth of the church, which they argued was squandered on lavish lifestyles, when it should have been dedicated to the poor and other needs in society. They were also deeply concerned that wealthy landowners were forcing farmers off their land and converting it into pasture for the cash crop of sheep’s wool. When Henry began looking for new revenue sources, he attacked the monasteries, using the writings and preaching of those reformers as cover. The monasteries were dissolved, the wealth came to the crown and to his courtiers, and much of it was squandered in Henry’s foreign policy adventures. It did not go to help the poor.
That’s the dynamic in Anglicanism I would like to highlight. Yes, there’s a strong prophetic voice calling for justice for the poor and the homeless. But we have also been closely associated with political and economic power, both in England and here in the US. That dynamic continues to play itself out. In fact, one of the significant economic justice movements of our time, Occupy, confronted not only the economic power of Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange; it also confronted two prominent Anglican/Episcopal Churches—St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and Trinity Church Wall Street. In each case the institutional church turned a cold shoulder and either participated in or instigated police action against Occupy protestors (the evidence is not clear in either case).
Yesterday, a judge in Manhattan found a group of protestors guilty of trespassing on Trinity Church property (Trinity is one of the major landholders in lower Manhattan). Among those convicted were a retired Episcopal Bishop, George Packard, and an Episcopal priest.
There is a lively debate in our church over the events leading up to yesterday’s court decision. Trinity does enormous good throughout the world with its enormous wealth. Located on Wall St., part of its mission has to be to minister among those who work in the financial sector. And granted, it did provide hospitality to Occupy protestors. It also provides ongoing hospitality to homeless people in its neighborhood.
My suspicion is that in the history of most of the religious traditions represented on this panel, one could discern something of the same dynamic—preachers and prophets proclaiming, “let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” while business people, robber barons, or rulers acted rapaciously to accumulate wealth and power, and in the process displaced people or caused homelessness.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. Like other traditions, the Episcopal Church, nationally and locally, has done great things on behalf of the homeless, as we seek to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and to live out our baptismal vows. Sometimes such efforts have been criticized, not least here in Madison. But we persevere, sometimes at great cost, as happened earlier this year when a priest and parish administrator were murdered in Maryland by a homeless person who had been a guest of their food pantry.
If we have a unique perspective, it may be that we are better situated than other traditions to seek to build bridges between those disparate groups, the 1% and the 99%. That we fail to do so shouldn’t lead us to abandon the effort, even if we fail so spectacularly as we did yesterday in Manhattan.
The Rhode Island General Assembly recently passed a “Homeless Bill of Rights.”
It’s in response to a growing list of cities that have passed laws restricting activity by homeless people, and by service providers. Here’s an article from USA Today on the topic:
Mark McDonald, press secretary for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, said the measures are about expanding the services offered to the homeless, adding dignity to their lives and about ensuring good public hygiene and safety.
“This is about an activity on city park land that the mayor thinks is better suited elsewhere,” he said. “We think it’s a much more dignified place to be in an indoor sit-down restaurant. … The overarching policy goal of the mayor is based on a belief that hungry people deserve something more than getting a ham sandwich out on the side of the street.”
If people come inside for feeding programs, they can be connected with other social service programs and possibly speak with officials such as substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals, McDonald said.
I wonder how many feeding programs across the country are staffed with social workers, substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals. I wonder how much money these cities dedicate to funding social services for homeless people, and whether it’s adequate to address the problems. In fact, to provide lasting help to homeless people, to get them in a stable living situation, requires a lot of money and intense engagement by service providers. These laws are intended for one purpose only, to lower the visibility of homeless people.
Don’t get me wrong. I sympathize with property owners who are frustrated by the presence of homeless people on city sidewalks, in parks and on benches. But until our society provides adequate space for them, there will be places where homeless people congregate and to help them, the services must be delivered where they are, not where we want them to be.
My hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims of the shootings at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Md. The shooter is dead from a self-inflicted wound; the administrative assistant, Brenda Brewington is dead; the co-rector, Mary-Marguerite Kohn, remains on life support “to support the family intentions to provide the gift of life through organ donation.” More here.
It turns out the shooter was known to the parish, that he had accessed the parish’s food bank regularly, and that he had become belligerent in recent weeks.
It’s a shocking story, and it hits very close to home, given our own food pantry, the presence of the men’s drop-in shelter at Grace, and our regular traffic of homeless people in and out of doors.
I hate the security measures we have to take. I hate that it seems like we are a medium-security prison, that to meet me in my office, a visitor has to pass through at least three locked doors. I’ve preached about the message that level of security sends to people; I’ve preached about the mentality it creates in our staff and volunteers. And then I read this story.
We live in a dangerous world, with easy access to firearms and severely mentally ill people walking the streets. At the same time, our Savior calls us to minister among the homeless, hungry, and yes, the mentally ill. We want to open our doors and invite everyone in, never imagining that a horror like that perpetrated at St. Peter’s, Endicott City might strike us.
On Monday night, we will again welcome shelter guests and community residents to our Guild Hall for dinner and music. I will wonder, as I welcome them in, whether any of them might be capable of such heinous acts of violence.
Here’s today’s article from the Wisconsin State Journal.
Here’s the letter my colleague Andy Jones wrote to Madison’s Common Council yesterday.
In fact, it looks like we will be welcoming the Porchlight residents tomorrow. Porchlight, Madison Property Management, and our staff scrambled today to get the space ready and deal with security issues. The WSJ has info on how to donate money and items to those in need.
Pat Schneider provides background to the story I mentioned here. More evidence of the problem of providing adequate medical?
An update from Dan Simmons of the Wisconsin State Journal on the day shelter in Madison. When he visited on January 2, the coldest day of the year so far, 92 people were using the facilities. Obviously, the shelter is meeting a need.
The article downplayed one significant development–the death a couple of weeks ago of a homeless man. I asked around about it today and learned from my sources some background. The man who died was a regular fixture on Capitol Square, often sitting on the bench on the corner of W. Washington and S. Carroll St. He had significant medical issues. He rarely spent the night in the Drop-In shelter and was found dead in a stairwell in a downtown building.
Another homeless man, a regular in the shelter and around Grace–he often helped us out when we needed an extra hand or some muscle, had a heart attack on Monday and is in the hospital. I’ll try to visit him tomorrow but I know his friends haven’t been able to see him.
One of the people interviewed in the article talked with me on Monday night at First Monday. He’s trying to find housing while living on SSI disability. I’m hopeful he’s been able to connect with the agencies I suggested to him that night.
Friends and members of Grace, and followers of this blog, know that on the first Monday of each month, Grace is responsible for providing the evening meal to shelter guests and others from the community who might find their way to our doors. Today was the first Monday in January, it was also the day of the Rose Bowl. We were worried that we wouldn’t have enough volunteers to help, and hopeful that because of the game, we would have fewer guests. Neither of those things happened. We had lots of volunteers, including a contingent from Madison Mennonite Church.
The meal was excellent, a baked pasta dish, with green beans on the side. The ice cream came to us via the Fire Department. Musical entertainment was provided by Fungus Humongous who shared their music with us last year.
Three photos from tonight:
Other members of Grace will be at the church early tomorrow morning to cook breakfast for shelter guests, and most of us will be back next month, to provide another meal. Corrie and I didn’t stay throughout the meal and for clean-up, so I can’t report on how many people we served, but the shelter had been averaging right around 150 guests last week.
Preaching Grace on the Square 