Posted on 03/20/2015 6:11:17 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
WASHINGTON — St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco is getting bad press this week over a sprinkler system it installed to keep homeless people from sleeping on church grounds.
People are outraged that a church would treat the poor so callously. But St. Mary’s isn’t alone. Many houses of worship all over the country face the question of how to keep safe, welcoming grounds while being compassionate to homeless neighbors sleeping on porches and in doorways.
Here’s what we tried at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Washington, DC.
A couple of months ago, we started a dialogue about how to move people off the porches of the church and assist them in moving on. Over the years, the protected and secluded porches had become sleeping quarters for a dozen or so folks, and it was now out of hand. People were using the grounds as bathroom facilities; others were leaving their belongings in plastic-covered 4-foot high mounds.
The conversation, held in a church committee meeting in January, was contentious. Some felt we had an obligation to offer a place to stay if our neighbors were homeless; others felt it was time to reclaim the building as a place that was clean and safe.
It took us hours to arrive at a decision, but we did. On March 1, no one would be allowed to stay on the porches or use the grounds for storage. We would hire security to help us enforce this decision. And here is what made our decision different: We would meet weekly with anyone who had lived on the porches to help them make the transition.
The good news was that the church has resources to support the changes we were imagining. If anyone wanted to go home, we had the money to buy a bus ticket. If folks needed something, we would do what we could to provide them with it.
So every Tuesday at 7 a.m., a small group of us met with our homeless neighbors for breakfast and discussion. We talked about what it would take to find permanent housing and kept track of commitments.
Six weeks in, when it was time for everyone to be moved to someplace else, we decided that we would continue the community we had formed beyond the March 1 deadline. At our meeting the first week of March, some miracles occurred:
Dominique came for the first time and told us he had a job if he could get a bike helmet. (Bob, a parishioner, left the meeting, went to his nearby home, and arrived back moments later with a bike helmet.)
Ivy told us she had had an interview for a job at Starbucks.
Stephen said he was going to interview later that morning for a restaurant job.
Several folks needed help with transportation, so after the meeting, Kris, a very committed and active parishioner, put more money on their church-provided transit cards.
After six weeks of support, no one is living on the porches anymore. It wasn’t easy, and we did have challenges. We did have to call the police when Eddie refused to leave his place on the porch. Having to call the police was the single sour note in the trajectory to reclaiming the porches and building an amazing community.
As a pastor, I have had to move people off property in the past. It has always felt punitive and mean. This time it felt different because we gave ample warning; We formed a team to get to know and support everyone individually, we consistently enforced the rules, and we used the resources of the church and the neighborhood to help.
I am convinced that those individuals who were sleeping on the church porches are better off now than they were in January, before we started.
There is a way to keep safe, clean grounds while helping our homeless neighbors — and it’s both easier and harder than installing sprinkler systems or putting up fences. It requires the investment of time and resources to build relationships, listen, and help. The community we formed still gathers at 7 a.m. each Tuesday.
I recently saw Dominique, with his bike helmet. He told me he got the job. Later that day I heard that Ivy got a full-time gig. Herbert and Sonia have a place to live. The miracles keep rolling in.
Linda Kaufman is an Episcopal priest and national movement manager for Zero: 2016, an initiative of Community Solutions. Community Solutions has its offices at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church.
It's easy to claim one thing and still be using it as the other - from the stories, it would come on every 30-45 minutes meaning it had to catch anyone trying to sleep in the area. The intentions may or may not have been as officially stated, but the results were as if the malicious intent was there.
That said, if one has ever been in close proximity with one who doesn't bathe regularly, it is overpowering and it stays with one for a while before the inside of your nose can finally purge it. I once gave one a ride to a shelter, in my 6 month old Camry, and it took close to a year before I stopped getting whiffs of the ripeness he left behind. While I wouldn't get mean to keep them away from certain areas, i would have trouble repeating the ride or letting one in my home w/o a pre-decontamination.
What do you mean, </i>”She can do so without telling tales”</i>? It’s th personal stories which make this article helpful and hopeful, because we can see what is happening in real peoples’ lives.
I recognize that it IS a biohazard. Such an environment is not even good for the homeless. They’re basically sleeping in shit.
Our local churches have a homeless ministry that houses the homeless in the church during winter months. We don’t have traditional homeless. All are employed but have been kicked out by family or are traveling through the area.
Of course, we have rules that treat them like prisoners.
In this case, they are acting in a God-pleasing manner. Whatever they did for the homeless, they did for Him.
“It sounds like most of the homeless needed just a little help and understanding to get back on their feet.”
If that were true, they wouldn’t be homeless.
Yeah -— their approach seems more in line with Matthew 25.
The glitch is hat there's a subset of homeless people who do not want and will not cooperate with the church's benevolent services. They want to carry knives, do drugs, panhandle churchgoers for cash and and predate on other homeless people.
I don't have any solution for that except "Call the cops."
As this article states, after discussion, they were not dealing with criminals here. In all cases all just turned to the last house on the block.
This prevailing stereotype here that the homeless are crazy criminal junkies who should be dealt with by: 'shoot first, ask questions later' really is disturbing. Vets? Teens? Did we have this attitude during the Great Depression?
Sheesh
You're correct: there are those who don't want help and simply want to do whatever it is they want to do. I'm not aware of any instances where our church has had to call the police on anyone, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.
Now that I remember, one of our pastoral staff dressed up like a homeless person - complete with raggy / smelly clothes and completely filthy dirty as if he'd been on the street for weeks - and walked into our church building one Sunday morning as services were getting ready to start.
He anticipated that he'd be ignored and that no one would offer assistance of any kind.
He was completely wrong. He kept up the act of being a homeless person and not wanting to communicate as long as he could, eventually breaking down and giving into the help he was being offered and then revealed himself as one of our Pastors.
Same Pastor went up on stage and delivered one of the most powerful sermons about the heart of the Church that I think I'd ever seen.
It would seem that to some here, that is the issue - they do not want to see that. Judging a book by it's cover.
Great post
Around here, it is called testimony or witness.
We have a lot of street corner panhandlers here. I give them money but I don't want to shake hands with them afterward.
The real problem is with people who can't or won't work, who won't go to a public overnight shelter because of the restrictions (no drugs, no alcohol, no weapons, no fighting) and will not clear out when bidden.
I have volunteered in homeless shelters in 3 different cities --- in one I was a full-time volunteer --- and you would be amazed, maybe, at how crazy some of these unfortunate people were. And a subset of the crazy are abusive; and another subset are abused (by other homeless).
I shared my own apartment with a paranoid schizophrenic older woman for 6 months; and another time, with a younger woman who was deeply psychologically wounded and emotionally needy, sexually promiscuous. I don't believe in chasing these people out with water jets --- I was wrong about defending that in previous posts; hey, I guess I was (wrongly) expressing my own frustration --- but as of now, there aren't any easy answers.
What a tremendous example. Thank you.
Perhaps I misspoke. The author makes a definitive claim that the sprinklers were to shoo away homeless. The Church’s claim is to contrary.
I don’t intend to diminish the help others are trying to afford the homeless.
That is following an assumption made by the author. The author assumes a motive, which is to shoo away the homeless. The Church gives a different motive.
Generally speaking, one shouldn’t assume motives when a contrary position is reasonable.
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