When Christians celebrate Christmas this week, we will tell the story of a displaced family.
They are homeless and pregnant. Their first child is born in a cave where cattle were kept. The mother laid the child in a feeding troth for animals.
We’ll sing lyrical ballads whose beauty can both reveal and hide the hardship. “Away in a manger, no crib for his bed. The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.”
As winter sweeps through our nation, in the throes of the cold realities of a major recession, I’m reminded of the homeless in our own midst. In a few weeks we will take another point-in-time census of the homeless in Northwest Arkansas. In 2009 thecensus documented 1,287 homeless people, up 10 percent from 2007, the majority of them under 18.
At Seven Hills Homeless Center we saw the economic downturn starting several months before it began to make the news as the numbers of first-time visitors to the Day Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard began to rise. I’ve been on the Board of Seven Hills since its founding 10 years ago this month. We’ve served record numbers these past three years.
Seven Hills is the brainchild of Kimberly Gross who saw a need for resourcing homeless neighbors during the daytime.
It is common for four to five hundred different people to access the Day Center each month.
Services and visits at the small facility exceed 27,000 in a year. Showers, laundry, internet and telephone;
clothing, food, toiletries and warmth; resources for jobs and housing. Maybe the most important thing - it is a welcome place of compassion and care for people who often experience shunning and worse. Seven Hills is a community of hospitality and welcome.
The economic recession has created a new wave of homelessness.
This past year Seven Hills has served as the administrative arm of the regional FICASSO project to prevent homelessness, a part of the federal stimulus efforts. In one year more than 300 households in crisis received temporary help to become selfsupporting without becoming homeless. Some of the help was rent or mortgage assistance. Case managers offered financial management, coaching to create a healthy family environment, as well as education and vocational advancement. All but seven of those 300 households have already graduated intoself-sufficiency.
The Seven Hills’ Walker Family Residential Community on Huntsville Road offers transitional housing for families and for single adults. It also provides permanent supportive housing fordisabled persons, most of whom are veterans.
Veterans are a large percentage of our homeless population.
A new program called Project Hope connects homeless youth with adult mentors to offer encouragement and positive role models.
Here’s something I’ve learned after more than a decade of meeting homeless people. The biggest difference between someone who is homeless and someone who is not, is that when a crisis happens and the wheels fall off, people who don’t have someone to take them in - family or friend - become homeless. I’ve met some remarkably wonderful people among the homeless. There are some stories and more information on Seven Hills’ new website: 7hillscenter.
org.
The end of the year is an important time for most nonprofits. The combination of qualifying tax deductions and the Christmas spirit makes December the biggest month for charitable giving.
If homelessness moves your heart, give to programs like Seven Hills and the Salvation Army.
Instead of another tie, make a contribution to something compelling in honor of some of those on your Christmas list. Families and individuals can make time to give themselves to a hands-on charitable project.
But I want to sound a note of realism. Charity alone will not solve our deepest problems of poverty. If every congregation in our nation gave away to charity every dollar of it receives, it would not equal one major government program such as food stamps. The total income of the 64 church denominations (the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church and others) reporting in the 2010 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches was $36 billion. The 2008 Food Stamp program was $36.7 billion.
For our nation to respond compassionately and responsibly to families like Joseph, Mary and Jesus, we need churches and charities like Seven Hills, but we also need effective government services like FICASSO, Food Stamps, and Medicaid. It takes both private and public investment to create a just society with opportunity for everyone.
It takes individual and governmental virtue to create “peace on earth and goodwill toward all.”
Remember the poor.
Remember the children.
Merry Christmas.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 15 on 12/19/2010