10.24.09

It was about 6 months ago that a fellow Otter Creek met me for breakfast with a copy of the front page of the Tennessean in hand. He laid it in front of me and asked “is this right?” The article was on homeless children in Nashville. It reported that the best estimate was 2,200 homeless children in the city. I told him I definitely thought it was right and probably even more than that. His next set of questions started a series of events that brings us to today…
“what’s the problem?” “There’s not enough housing for moms and their kids much less just for kids”
“how much is not enough?” “Not counting the women’s mission there are less than 100 rooms for homeless moms and their children”
“what would it take to have more housing?” “Money and a group willing to take the lead to pull together a consortium of service providers – there’s some great service providers that would gladly add service capacity but can’t afford to do that when they have to handle the cost of additional facilities”
“what’s a reasonable number of housing units that could be brought on before it gets cold later this year?” “probably another 100 or so rooms, but that would take a commitment of money that would be tied up in government bureaucracy for months or for private dollars to come available that hasn’t stepped up before now”
“How much money would you need?” “somewhere between $500,000 and $1,000,000”
“I’ll make some calls, get started putting the program together”

Since that time he has assembled a group of his friends from his business connections. We’ve had an organizational meeting, divided up into subgroups and had a few subgroup meetings. We’ve looked at several sites but not found anything until 2 weeks ago. We were contacted by a Christian real estate developer and investor who had 40 units of a 250 unit complex available. Over the phone we talked arrangements for a 12 month lease. I called the leadership group of three who conferred for less than 10 minutes and committed to a significant amount of money to not only lease the units but hire a case manager. The units are not furnished but I made one call and got a significant commitment from another congregation to lead that charge as well as head up making the arrangements for a daily evening community meal for all the moms and kids. We met this week with a group of service providers and have started to form up the vision for the “hole” that these units will fill – emergency stabilization housing for moms and kids that want to begin the transition process of getting housing along with the services they need to address their needs. The more we get into this project the more we learn that there is nothing else like this.

The need is huge and the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of moms and kids is significant. The synergistic ties to establish relationships between service providers, between the moms and kids, between the churches offering assistance and between the moms and the churches is becoming a phenomenon that is approaching “holy status”. More to come on this later. For one way you can get involved check out Josh Graves blog and the invitation to jump in (http://www.joshuagraves.com/). I can’t express how proud I am of Otter Creek and how its members are stepping up and looking for ways to connect their gifts and their sense of need to the greater call of justice and mercy.