Hope can be a fleeting thing when one's home is on the streets. Maybe, just maybe, it can be rediscovered in a big way by thinking small.
That is the idea behind New Beginnings, a project in south Fayetteville for which advocates for helping the homeless broke ground early this month.
What’s the point?
The advocates for the New Beginnings community in south Fayetteville are offering shelter for the homeless, but more importantly, hope.
The nonprofit group Serve NWA is in possession of nearly 5 acres south of 19th Street near School Avenue. Serve NWA acquired the land from the University of Arkansas so it could become the site for a collection of 20 A-frame "micro-shelters" that represent a new approach to rendering assistance to homeless people within the community.
Each shelter will measure about 140 square feet, tiny compared to the homes contractors build all over Northwest Arkansas. Despite their diminutive size, the value of what these shelters will offer to their occupants cannot be overstated. When one has lived in the elements, perhaps protected -- if that's even a fair description -- by a tent, the prospect of four walls and a roof, a real roof, over one's head might seem luxurious.
New Beginnings isn't, however, about luxury. It's about basic needs. About building a way out of homelessness. About serving the individual and the greater community.
In Northwest Arkansas, moving an individual from homelessness to having a home is a challenging process. Yes, there are resources available, but waits for housing of some permanance are typically long.
Through New Beginnings, the idea is to get people shelter first.
"We can bring somebody in out of an unsheltered circumstance, and provide the emergency security, safety and clean, private environment to get somebody stabilized," Kevin Fitzpatrick, a college professor and advocate for the homeless, said. "Then we begin to work on the complexity of their circumstances. For some people that's two months, for other people that's maybe 20 months."
The low-cost shelters offer safety and security. The community Serve NWA is in the process of building will also include a 3,000-square-foot service building with showers and a place where residents can seek out assistance in their journey back toward permanent housing. That assistance can attempt to evaluate the disparate circumstances of each person's life in homelessness and craft ways to respond.
Advocates for the development hope it will serve as a prototype other communities can emulate, with the ultimate goal, lofty as it may be, to make such housing options unnecessary. In the meantime, however, New Beginnings will provide a vital foundation from which its participants can relaunch their lives.
Will it solve every circumstance? No, because the roots of homelessness are complex. But getting an individual into a private shelter will create new opportunities to make a difference.
We commend the people behind the New Beginnings project, the many contributing organizations, businesses and individuals and the city of Fayetteville for paving the way for a new approach that shows such promise.
And yes, if there are people ready to help, the project and those it will serve will benefit from continued generosity.
One can fit a great deal of hope in 140 square feet.
Commentary on 04/24/2019