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Ways to help displaced Tent City residents
July 22, 2010 by Amos House Community
We recently set up a “Care Calendar” for volunteers to sign up to help some of the displaced Tent City residents who are living at Hobson United Methodist’s parsonage in East Nashville.
We currently need volunteers who are willing to stay overnight with us at the parsonage as “Inn Keepers” each day from now until the end of August, provide dinner for about 20 people, and/or help to transport residents to appointments, especially in the morning hours. Being an Inn Keeper involves getting to the house sometime around/after dinner, spending time with the residents, sleeping on the cots provided in the living room, and then leaving sometime the next day. If you stay overnight, you should bring your pillow and sleeping bag. We also have wireless at the house.
To sign up for one of these volunteer opportunities, please visit out Tent City Care Calendar site at http://www.carecalendar.org/logon/45351 and enter the following
information in the appropriate spaces:
CALENDAR ID : 45351
SECURITY CODE : 6077
The address for the parsonage is 1716 Greenwood Ave., Nashville, TN 37206. If you have any questions about these opportunities, please e-mail amoshousemercyfund@gmail.com.
7.12.10
These past few weeks of resettlement of the Tent City folks off the Beaman property have been long days for everyone involved – especially the folks that have had to pack up and move again. How frustrating it must be to not be in a position to provide for yourself, your companion or your spouse and be at the mercy of other people (and if you’re reading this and think that all someone needs to do is try harder, get a job, stop drinking and start acting like a “normal” person in society then I’d love to have you spend part of a day with me and get to really know a few of the folks that are trying to get back up on their feet). I’m haunted by the thought of such vulnerability.
Each person struggling to find their place in community is a unique soul with a story of happiness and sadness, success and failures, struggles and victories. With all the differences in personalities it’s no surprise that there are conflicts when groups are brought together, either voluntarily or not. No different than you and me, some folks are not ready for living on their own or in close proximity to each other or being asked to share in chores. That’s why different models of support are so important. With assistance from trained and caring providers each person’s personality and needs should be assessed so that they can be offered support where it’s needed. For some that may mean the Rescue Mission, for others Father Strobel’s Campus and Room in the Inn, still others look to the Salvation Army for shelter and support. Each of those organizations is a different model of support. Being forced to accept shelter where your personality clashes with the program but having no choice creates fear and mistrust. I’m haunted by the thought of my friends trying to adapt to inappropriate living situations and feeling helpless to tell anyone how they are feeling.
And then when someone has taken all they can and put up with all they feel they can, they feel they have no choice but to fall back on their own survival skills. Trust no one, get what you can and take care of number one. Knowing that they need to get their meds refilled so their mood swings and potentially violent outbursts can be controlled but realizing they don’t have the transportation or money for the refill and adamant that they are not going to ask anyone for charity, they let their words and actions go where they will and then they face the consequences of arrest or isolation from their peers. What shelter has been provided is taken away and they face the reality of life back on the streets and in the woods. With the closing of Tent City and a sanctioned place for retreat I’ve had to take some of my friends to unauthorized camping sites where they know they face being told to move or, even worse, get arrested with the potential of losing their personal belongings. I drive away having given them a tent, a sleeping bag, some food and water. I’m haunted as I drive back to my air-conditioned house by the thought of them in the heat, living a subsistence life and wondering if there’s any hope.
Decisions are being made by people that will have long term implications on the lives of my friends. What support services will be provided? What shelter and housing options will be approved and which will not be allowed? How receptive will the community be to programs that will reeducate, retrain, rehabilitate and reintegrate these folks back into the life of the city? Who is going to champion their cause and be a voice for those whose voice is not only not heard but not even acknowledged? Is there enough vision and courage to see how developing a comprehensive program to address Nashville’s most vulnerable can be as positive an investment of time and money as a new convention center or medical mall? Or will the fear that creating a compassionate program will open the floodgates and welcome even more poor, vulnerable, marginalized people to our city and that will be seen as a negative by those driving the economic engines of our city? I’m haunted by the thought that the progress we have the potential to make will be short-lived and pushed aside when the voices of opposition and threats of votes raises its ugly head.
And yet, we are called to be people of faith. To work within the areas we have influence and not waste our time and energy by lamenting areas over which we have concern but no ability to effect. Many of the people serving the marginalized in our community are serving with a motivation that seems counter-intuitive to many others. We’re marching to a different drum, answering a different call. Are we naïve? That thought does not haunt me. We’re following in the steps of one who saw a community of compassion and equality. Not where everyone was the same, but where differences were valued for the contribution they made the whole. There’s energy and resources to help that vision take shape. But mostly there’s faith. Let’s keep that thought in mind when we are tempted to feel haunted…
Each person struggling to find their place in community is a unique soul with a story of happiness and sadness, success and failures, struggles and victories. With all the differences in personalities it’s no surprise that there are conflicts when groups are brought together, either voluntarily or not. No different than you and me, some folks are not ready for living on their own or in close proximity to each other or being asked to share in chores. That’s why different models of support are so important. With assistance from trained and caring providers each person’s personality and needs should be assessed so that they can be offered support where it’s needed. For some that may mean the Rescue Mission, for others Father Strobel’s Campus and Room in the Inn, still others look to the Salvation Army for shelter and support. Each of those organizations is a different model of support. Being forced to accept shelter where your personality clashes with the program but having no choice creates fear and mistrust. I’m haunted by the thought of my friends trying to adapt to inappropriate living situations and feeling helpless to tell anyone how they are feeling.
And then when someone has taken all they can and put up with all they feel they can, they feel they have no choice but to fall back on their own survival skills. Trust no one, get what you can and take care of number one. Knowing that they need to get their meds refilled so their mood swings and potentially violent outbursts can be controlled but realizing they don’t have the transportation or money for the refill and adamant that they are not going to ask anyone for charity, they let their words and actions go where they will and then they face the consequences of arrest or isolation from their peers. What shelter has been provided is taken away and they face the reality of life back on the streets and in the woods. With the closing of Tent City and a sanctioned place for retreat I’ve had to take some of my friends to unauthorized camping sites where they know they face being told to move or, even worse, get arrested with the potential of losing their personal belongings. I drive away having given them a tent, a sleeping bag, some food and water. I’m haunted as I drive back to my air-conditioned house by the thought of them in the heat, living a subsistence life and wondering if there’s any hope.
Decisions are being made by people that will have long term implications on the lives of my friends. What support services will be provided? What shelter and housing options will be approved and which will not be allowed? How receptive will the community be to programs that will reeducate, retrain, rehabilitate and reintegrate these folks back into the life of the city? Who is going to champion their cause and be a voice for those whose voice is not only not heard but not even acknowledged? Is there enough vision and courage to see how developing a comprehensive program to address Nashville’s most vulnerable can be as positive an investment of time and money as a new convention center or medical mall? Or will the fear that creating a compassionate program will open the floodgates and welcome even more poor, vulnerable, marginalized people to our city and that will be seen as a negative by those driving the economic engines of our city? I’m haunted by the thought that the progress we have the potential to make will be short-lived and pushed aside when the voices of opposition and threats of votes raises its ugly head.
And yet, we are called to be people of faith. To work within the areas we have influence and not waste our time and energy by lamenting areas over which we have concern but no ability to effect. Many of the people serving the marginalized in our community are serving with a motivation that seems counter-intuitive to many others. We’re marching to a different drum, answering a different call. Are we naïve? That thought does not haunt me. We’re following in the steps of one who saw a community of compassion and equality. Not where everyone was the same, but where differences were valued for the contribution they made the whole. There’s energy and resources to help that vision take shape. But mostly there’s faith. Let’s keep that thought in mind when we are tempted to feel haunted…
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