The Hundred Story Home

by Kathy Izard

  “Open ours, Mom!” Kailey said, handing me a small box.

  The girls gathered together in anticipation, watching as the ribbon fell to the floor and I struggled with the tape. Maddie bounced like Tigger, her nickname. She was terrible at keeping secrets, and finally it was too much.

  “It’s for your building, Mom!” she said.

  “Maddie! Hush!” Lauren and Kailey scolded.

  “Let her open it first before you tell her!” Emma cried.

  Inside was $200 cash—their Christmas money from my mom. She always sent them money so they could do an Izard Girl service project for Christmas, just like the Green Girls did.

  “We know you are raising money, and this won’t buy a room or anything, but we figured we could buy the doorknob!” Lauren explained proudly.

  I grabbed them all for a group hug. I had the Best. Family. Ever. Four days later I had the second-best Christmas gift. On December 29, 2008, the UMC became the proud owners of that junkyard beneath the cell tower. Matt Wall had made a deal with the sellers, and we closed before year’s end.

  It was official. We were real. We were going to build a home for homeless people.

  Two weeks later I wanted to exchange that holiday gift of a junkyard.

  During negotiations, we had factored in a low purchase price with a little reserve for the massive debris removal. The piles of rusting auto parts, however, camouflaged a much larger underground problem: barrels of oil that had been leaking into the ground for years.

  The extensive cleanup was only one of our headaches that winter. We never imagined converting a junkyard to a new apartment complex would be so unpopular in the neighborhood.

  Daniel Grier represented his neighborhood association, and I met with him one morning in the same diner where Joann and I held our holiday dinner with Homeless to Homes residents. I brought David Furman’s construction drawings, which showed how the new three-story building would dramatically improve the rustyard of autos and trash.

  I pointed out all the features I thought Daniel and the neighborhood association would appreciate: twenty-four-hour security, an art room, library, a computer lab, and gardens.

  “Our members will never go for it,” Daniel said. “In fact, I think they will fight it every step of the way.”

  I was stunned. How could he not think this is an improvement over a rusting junkyard?

  Daniel carefully explained. It wasn’t the building they didn’t want; it was the people in it.

  “But they won’t be homeless anymore once they are moved in. They will be housed,” I argued. “And they will have case managers to help them be just as stable or more stable than anyone else in the neighborhood.”

  Daniel gestured at the drawings. “You think anyone would let you put this in the wealthy neighborhoods? They only put things like this in poor neighborhoods.”

  Daniel knew, and I knew, he was right. This wouldn’t fly in most areas of town. Charlotte was just like any city that had NIMBY attitudes—“Not in My Backyard.” Philosophically, people might agree with low-income housing, but no one wanted it next door.

  What Daniel hadn’t realized yet was our junkyard was already properly zoned, so whether the neighborhood wanted it or not, we could build. Even so, over the weeks and months ahead, I went to meetings trying to convince people that we weren’t trying to ruin the neighborhood. I had no success.

  Our Homeless to Homes residents already living quietly in this same neighborhood read the unwelcome signs as well. Raymond had been at Frank’s Supermarket, only blocks from our newly acquired junkyard, when a woman in front of him in the checkout line turned around to speak.

  “Did you hear?” she asked him. “They’re trying to move a whole building of homeless people into our neighborhood!”

  Raymond just nodded, feigning his dismay.

  seventeen

  PAPERS AND PRAYERS

  Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

  —Mary Oliver1

  By April 2009, the rhetoric had grown nasty. Luckily, my home phone number was unlisted, but my e-mail was distributed to the neighborhood association where we were trying to build. One member took to sending me late-night rants about her extreme opposition to our project in general and me in particular, copying the entire Charlotte City Council. One especially disturbing e-mail ended with her telling me, “You are not Jesus Christ.”

  I stared at my computer screen in shock. How had it come to this: people hating this cause and me? I had never set out to be a crusader. I was just trying to fulfill a promise, do some good, and “build some beds.”

  I found myself pushing against my quitting threshold. The distinct probability of failure faced me: reason number one to quit. This was no longer fun and required an incredible amount of work: reason number two to quit.

  I didn’t want to tell anyone, including Charlie, how ugly things had become, because I was afraid they would urge me to give it up, and I didn’t need any encouragement on that. My friends were already nervous for me—one even gave me a Taser for self-defense, fearing I might need it in the neighborhood.

  On top of the opposition, the economy was getting worse, making the idea of raising $10 million completely unrealistic. Since that miracle $500,000 gift, no other donors had come forward in almost six months. Dale, Hugh, Downie, and I had pitched to several corporations and foundations but had no promising leads because we were not a typical civic project.

  With the expenses of buying and cleaning up the lot, our funds were dwindling with no real prospects for more grants. Our best hope was Bill Holt’s dream of big-bank giving, but the Wells Fargo buyout of Wachovia had made that idea much more complicated. Wells Fargo was reorganizing employees and job titles, so no one was sure who could authorize a large corporate gift.

  Some of the residents were struggling as much as I was that spring. Although the pilot program was proving successful, we learned its weaknesses. Without the money to build our own building, our program had a huge flaw—we couldn’t protect tenants. Facilities such as the Prince George had a security guard to monitor who came and went. The turnstiles I had seen in the lobby weren’t designed to keep residents in. I now understood they were to keep dangerous people out.

  Joann and I were learning that those most at risk in our apartments were women escaping violence, and those who were trying to break away from drug activity. Abusive boyfriends and drug dealers inevitably found out where our tenants were living, even if we tried to move them to different apartments. We needed twenty-four-hour security to keep tenants safe at home.

  My biggest heartbreak that spring involved a resident named Christine, who had become a darling of the program. Christine was barely five feet tall and almost as round, with black hair badly dyed auburn on the ends. When we first moved her in, Christine was a teary mess of hugs for everyone, incredulous that the modest square footage belonged to her. With a bellowing laugh and a husky smoker’s voice, Christine was always the rowdiest and friendliest at our Homeless to Homes community gatherings.

  This same friendliness had enabled Christine to survive on the streets by attracting imposing male boyfriends to become her “protectors.” Unfortunately these protectors physically abused her. Christine determined it was better to be beaten by a boyfriend than by a stranger.

  When she first moved in, Christine confessed, “You don’t know how glad I am to be done with that life.”

  Christine was a model tenant, helping cook for her neighbor next door and giving up her heavy drinking. After a few months, however, Christine started to slide back into her old habits, and we weren’t sure why.

  “I’m worried about her, Kathy,” Joann said. “She’s hiding something, and, really, she looks terrible again.”

  Clear-eyed Christine once more had eyes that became red-rimmed and bleary, and she often wouldn’t answer the door before noon.

  “She’s got someone in there with her,” Raymond told me. “I let her know we don�
�t need her messing up.”

  After more than a year together, the thirteen residents all looked out for each other. Joann and I rarely had to enforce the apartment rules—the tenants did it themselves. Several residents had confronted Christine about the man sneaking in and out her back door.

  Due to the experimental nature of the program, each tenant was afraid of making a mistake that would jeopardize everyone else’s housing. We had let them know that proving Housing First could work meant helping dozens more. We all were nervous that an arrest or something similar might disrupt this effort. Most often I worried about a front-page article that would overshadow every feel-good moment of the last year. One drug bust, fight, or apartment fire might make the UMC board members vote to shut down the program.

  Christine was looking like that problem.

  The “someone” Raymond had identified was Christine’s old street boyfriend, and he was no small problem. The first time I saw Christine’s secret man, I was at the apartments looking down at my phone, unaware he was approaching me on the courtyard sidewalk. When six feet six of muscle brushed by me, I turned around to see his immense back disappearing around the corner. Our little enclave of apartments didn’t get many visitors, so I was sure he was the man the other tenants had been complaining about. He was huge—terrifyingly so. I could see why no one, including Christine, was doing much about his presence.

  Christine swore to us he was not living there; he was just “a friend who dropped by.” Unless Christine was now wearing size 13 sneakers, the clothes in her closet told a different story.

  “Can we call the police?” Dale asked in our summit about the situation.

  Joann shook her head. “Not unless we can get Christine to swear out a warrant against him, and she won’t.”

  “Should we evict her?” I asked.

  “This program is about second, third, and fourth chances,” Joann said. “I want to give her the opportunity to do the right thing. But she is so afraid of him I don’t think she will.”

  Christine didn’t.

  Joann called me one morning with the news. “She’s gone.”

  I didn’t need to ask. “Christine?”

  “Yes, but there’s more,” she warned. “The appliances are gone. A truck came in the middle of the night, took them out of the kitchen along with Christine.”

  Not wanting to believe that Christine would do such a thing, I drove to the apartment to see for myself. The bare and damaged Sheetrock in the apartment Mark Bass entrusted to us confirmed the truth. Christine and her muscle man had forcibly removed the stove and refrigerator along with all her possessions.

  I dreaded telling Mark, but he was remarkably understanding. We agreed the UMC would replace the appliances, and he was still willing to take a chance on a new tenant. With this, the best outcome, I should have been happy. But the thought of what was happening to Christine haunted me.

  Was she alive? Was she dead?

  Had that hulking muscleman beaten the life out of tiny Christine?

  For the next few months I kept an eye out for her at the Urban Ministry Center, hoping Christine would show up in Joann’s office. Maybe she would finally take out a warrant on the guy, and we could get her back into housing.

  I never saw Christine again. Her disappearance was a brutal reminder that we needed our own building with twenty-four-hour security if we were ever going to provide lasting change.

  Losing Christine was also when I realized I could no longer quit before achieving that goal. This job gave me all the reasons I needed to give up—it was probably going to fail, and it was too difficult. But now I had a more important reason to stay: I cared too much. The issue of homelessness was no longer abstract; it was personal.

  Denver had changed me. I could no longer not see the problem. Now that I had seen, I could no longer not see. I couldn’t walk into the UMC parking lot without being overcome by what had been invisible to me. I couldn’t walk through that parking lot and not worry what happened after the gates closed at 4:30 p.m.

  I couldn’t quit because as difficult as this job was, I had learned too well it was easy compared to being homeless.

  “I’ll take the fried chicken with hush puppies and collards, cornbread, sweet tea, and two pieces of sweet potato pie to go,” Raymond said. “But just the pie to go. The rest I’ll have here.”

  Joann looked at me and smiled. We were gathered with all the Homeless to Homes residents around a long table at the diner in our neighborhood for the monthly birthday celebration. Gigi had taught me the best way to build family was to eat together and talk together, so we now planned at least one group lunch a month. The first outing we organized had been eye opening. I realized most of our thirteen tenants had not eaten in a restaurant in years. One or two had trouble reading the menu, and the idea of sitting together at a table was incredibly awkward. The waitress had looked curiously at our unusual group of mixed ages, ethnicities, and genders. But like most southerners, she was polite.

  “Can I get y’all something to drink? Honey, you want sweet or unsweet tea?”

  Eventually we became regulars, and the staff greeted us warmly. They still didn’t know who or what kind of group we were, but they welcomed us anyway. As we waited for our food, we would discuss local and national news stories, sports, and, of course, weather. Everyone had a TV and watched a lot of it.

  “Did you see about that forest fire in California?”

  “Who’d you pick for the Final Four?”

  “It’s going to be 97 today!”

  At first, just the birthday person would get to order extra pie, but eventually, everyone ordered two pieces to go.

  Our little group started to be more than members of some housing experiment. They became friends. Raymond teased Teddy, who never talked. James ribbed Ruth for talking too much. Chuck was the intellectual who read the Wall Street Journal and knew more about foreign affairs than I did.

  Everyone lived in Mark Bass’s apartment complex, except Coleman. When we housed Coleman, Mark’s place was full, so we rented a unit about ten miles away. Coleman was excited about it at first because he considered it a nicer neighborhood, but eventually it became a problem.

  He was lonely. Lonelier than Raymond had been. Coleman needed a friend.

  The answer to his loneliness came from a church that had heard about Homeless to Homes.

  “We have a group of volunteers who are trained as Stephen Ministers,” the pastor explained when he called me. Stephen Ministers are church members who have not gone to divinity school but are trained to give support to their fellow congregants. “Problem is, we don’t have enough people in the church who say they want help. I have all these folks wanting to give help and nobody who will say they want to receive help.”

  Coleman became the first tenant to be paired with a Stephen Minister.

  Scott Mercer had moved to Charlotte in 1992 with his wife, Julie, and their four children. Working full-time for a large corporate insurance company, he devoted himself to family and church. When he found his true calling, it was not during a church service but on his front porch.

  Scott loved reading the morning newspaper and thought they must have the most accurate paperboy because the paper was always folded neatly on his front steps. Scott truly believed someone with perfect aim threw those papers that landed on his porch every day. One morning around 5:30 a.m., Scott noticed a figure on his lawn. Looking closer, Scott was surprised to realize it was his neighbor, Jack Merrill, an older man, stooping softly to place the paper with great care on Scott’s porch before quietly moving on to the next house. Jack wasn’t actually delivering the papers, Scott realized; he was just moving them from the driveway to the front door as a service to his fellow neighbors. Scott was struck by his neighbor’s kindness but not surprised. Jack and his wife, Babs, were well known in the neighborhood, and kids claimed Mr. Merrill as a favorite playmate.

  A few years later, when Jack developed leukemia and ended up in the hospital, Scott
discovered that the paper route wasn’t just a neighborhood courtesy—it was a ministry.

  After learning Jack was in the hospital, Scott offered to assume the paper route—or paper placement—until his neighbor was well again. Jack was immensely thankful but admitted moving the papers to the front porches was only part of the assignment.

  In order to deliver the papers correctly, Scott learned he must do something else.

  “You don’t just move the papers closer, Scotty,” Jack told him. “You have to say a prayer for each and every family.”

  Scott was a little taken aback. He didn’t pray for himself, much less others.

  “Well, that’s the gig,” said Jack. “I learned this in college from one of my professors at Samford University in Birmingham. He taught me to start each day off right with a little random kindness and gratitude.”

  Since he had already committed to assuming the route, Scott agreed to this second, unwanted task.

  It was awkward at first, but over time the morning ritual began seeping into his soul. As he delivered each paper, Scott loved the connection he felt to his neighbors and to God.

  In November 2006, Jack passed away, and his obituary noted the famous paper route, calling Jack’s life a “sermon in action.” In tribute, Scott permanently took over the prayers and papers Jack left behind. Scott had always thought the ultimate act of service was a foreign mission trip, but this simple morning act of kindness occurring on his own street changed his mind. Maybe Scott didn’t need to wait to go to a third-world country to help people. He could start right now helping people in his hometown.

  As he prepared to meet Coleman, Scott didn’t know what to expect. Would he and Coleman be so impossibly different they couldn’t connect? How would he talk to someone who had been homeless for more than twenty years? But Scott and Coleman soon found they shared a love of sports, a commitment to people, and a passion for good food.