September 2011 DEAR DEB

THE COMMUNITY REPORTER

Living, Loving, Laughing: September 2011

Dear Readers (and you are very dear to me…. by the way):

I don’t have a lot of letters or conversations or questions to share this month but I’m guessing I’m going to bring up what’s on the hearts and heads of many of us. I’m here on the WestEnd, yes, LIVING & LOVING but short on the laughter in some ways. I wish I could say I feel well removed from the poverty and lack of hope that permeate the news around the World. I do feel deeply blessed and privileged but despair is around every corner and behind every cloud. Some of you know I serve on THE HOMELESS ADVISORY BOARD as a representative of residents of St. Paul. While there are many thriving programs and opportunities to assist and offer help and guidance there are many more people in need than be helped. My sister and brother-in-law live and work in a Cincinnati community and share a common bond with all of us concerned with poverty and homelessness. I want to share a portion of my brother’s newsletter with my neighbors here and ask you if the circumstances of people’s lives sound familiar to you and, further, ask you to write to me to share your stories, questions and concerns.

“Dear Friends,

This is a mean season ... Jobs are scarce. Government programs are tightening their belts…. Rents are due. People are scared.

On every busy corner around here, somebody is holding up a sign asking for help. It used to be you knew those folks were junkies, but these days you don’t need a habit to be ...desperate.

Last night I had to tell Diana’s not-yet-twenty-year-old daughter that she can’t keep staying with her mom because, if she gets caught, HUD will throw them both out of the cheap-but-highly-regulated apartment we rent to keep Diana off the street. We found her a place, but it won’t last long unless she finds work, and the felony on her record makes that a long shot, even with our help.

Dena called a few days before that, crying that she had nothing to feed her four kids until their food stamps arrived. I know she and her husband smoke and drink and manage their money worse than Bernie Madoff on his worst day, but hungry kids are hungry kids. Anyway, the food I took over doesn’t change the fact that they are four months behind on their rent.

I could go on, but you get the picture. In a world where almost everyone is one check away from homeless, it feels like all the checks have stopped at once. Nobody here has any savings. Unskilled, unhealthy, and often unemployable, these people weren’t making it very well even when times were good. Now they’re not making it at all.

The question, of course, is what are the rest of us to do?

Loaning money to people who can never pay it back doesn’t work, but standing by while they get evicted ends friendships almost as surely. Taking people into our homes sounds good, but only if those people are both willing and able to do what it takes to be independent again. In this neighborhood, in this economy, we need another answer.

Almost every day, somebody sends me an article about some new program that miraculously transforms inner-city nightmares like ours into dreams come true. When I look more closely, however, I find that those programs are expensive and only seem to work for the most highly-motivated poor people...

Almost every night, we … here have a conversation about somebody we love who is in trouble. We take turns coming up with ideas and shooting them down: She doesn’t read well enough for that. He won't show up. She can’t be on her feet more that an hour. Her mom won’t help. He’s drinking again. They’ll spend the money on something else.

Over and over, we try to work out problems that have no solutions. Over and over, we end up right back where we started; living and eating, laughing and crying, walking and talking together with dear people we can almost never really help. ...

I’m not trying to bum you out. Believe it or not, I’m trying to draw you in. I figure that if enough of us lie awake wondering what to do for the rest of us, then maybe one of us will find a new answer after all.”

Bart Campolo, Walnut Hills, Cincinnatti, OH, August 10, 2011