Showing posts with label Room in the Inn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Room in the Inn. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Check it out!
Check out this newsletter article written by my roommate who works at Room in the Inn, a homeless community center that I've written about before. Then "like" their facebook page!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
We All Need a Cheerleader
I think I've mentioned this before, but our work schedules as Nashville YAVs are set up so that we work 32 hours a week Monday thru Thursday. We all have Fridays off so that we can have time together. We meet every Friday morning with our coordinator, Susan, and sometimes with Janet as well, who is an associate minister at Trinity Presbyterian where I attend and is also a spiritual director who works with us a lot on vocational discernment.
Yesterday, for our Friday morning meeting we met at the Room in the Inn's Campus for Human development downtown, where my roommate Sally works. To prepare for this week, we read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which is a look at how many people in America live day-to-day, struggling to find affordable housing, working (often multiple) low-paying jobs, and some of the challenges that our neighbors face, from not being able to save enough to afford the security deposit on an apartment (and therefore having to live in a hotel, even though it is much more expensive in the long-run) to availability of healthy food, to the treatment of low-wage-earning workers by the shopper/client/consumer, to blatant but accepted (or at least tolerated) sexism on many fronts.
At Room in the Inn, we met with a group of three formerly homeless men who are now living in apartments that are owned and operated by Room in the Inn. These apartments are available for men who have completed one of several programs that the Campus for Human Development offers, from a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, a recovery program specifically for veterans, a respite program for people leaving the hospital in need of bedrest (but with no bed to go to), or the Odyssey program which is a holistic program for the chronically homeless (includes drug and alcohol recovery, job training, etc.).
The apartments are very nice efficiency apartments (see photos on the link above), but more than that, the men who live in them are part of an intentional community that offers support and activities. All three of the men who shared their stories with us spoke about the need for community, especially for people recovering from addictions. They spoke about what an important part of their experiences the community has been, and it showed. We listened to one man, Earl, talk for a long time about his upbringing, his children, his career as a musician. And at the end, Don, the quieter of the three, said, "If you've never heard Earl play, you gotta come back one day. He's real good."
One problem the men spoke about (and that Nickel and Dimed demonstrates) is how necessary but difficult it is to save money. We also learned that for many people struggling to live without drugs or alcohol, it is very difficult because if they are able to afford and get into affordable housing, many of those apartments are located in areas of Nashville with high drug activity where it is easy for a recovering addict to relapse.
What's more, because these apartments at Room in the Inn are only for men over 18, it provides a place for many whose criminal record prohibits them from being able to find housing (people with sex offenses on their criminal records have very limited housing possibilities because of laws that say you can't be within a certain distance of a school, childcare facilities, etc.).
It struck me as we were listening to these three very different men tell their very different stories of how they ended up living in the apartments at the Room in the Inn's Campus for Human Development and how the community was such an important part of each of their experiences how much we all need cheerleaders in our lives, people who encourage us and believe in us. It's more than unconditional love, because unconditional love means someone will love you even when you mess up big time. That is freeing in its own way, but I also think we need some people who really believe in us, believe that we can succeed and do well. The second man who spoke to us is a recovering drug addict who had moved into the apartments just the Friday before. He has family still in the Nashville area, and he said that one of the best moments in his recovery process was when his sister told him she was proud of him. "It had been a long time since I heard that," he said.
Yesterday, for our Friday morning meeting we met at the Room in the Inn's Campus for Human development downtown, where my roommate Sally works. To prepare for this week, we read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which is a look at how many people in America live day-to-day, struggling to find affordable housing, working (often multiple) low-paying jobs, and some of the challenges that our neighbors face, from not being able to save enough to afford the security deposit on an apartment (and therefore having to live in a hotel, even though it is much more expensive in the long-run) to availability of healthy food, to the treatment of low-wage-earning workers by the shopper/client/consumer, to blatant but accepted (or at least tolerated) sexism on many fronts.
At Room in the Inn, we met with a group of three formerly homeless men who are now living in apartments that are owned and operated by Room in the Inn. These apartments are available for men who have completed one of several programs that the Campus for Human Development offers, from a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, a recovery program specifically for veterans, a respite program for people leaving the hospital in need of bedrest (but with no bed to go to), or the Odyssey program which is a holistic program for the chronically homeless (includes drug and alcohol recovery, job training, etc.).
The apartments are very nice efficiency apartments (see photos on the link above), but more than that, the men who live in them are part of an intentional community that offers support and activities. All three of the men who shared their stories with us spoke about the need for community, especially for people recovering from addictions. They spoke about what an important part of their experiences the community has been, and it showed. We listened to one man, Earl, talk for a long time about his upbringing, his children, his career as a musician. And at the end, Don, the quieter of the three, said, "If you've never heard Earl play, you gotta come back one day. He's real good."
One problem the men spoke about (and that Nickel and Dimed demonstrates) is how necessary but difficult it is to save money. We also learned that for many people struggling to live without drugs or alcohol, it is very difficult because if they are able to afford and get into affordable housing, many of those apartments are located in areas of Nashville with high drug activity where it is easy for a recovering addict to relapse.
What's more, because these apartments at Room in the Inn are only for men over 18, it provides a place for many whose criminal record prohibits them from being able to find housing (people with sex offenses on their criminal records have very limited housing possibilities because of laws that say you can't be within a certain distance of a school, childcare facilities, etc.).
It struck me as we were listening to these three very different men tell their very different stories of how they ended up living in the apartments at the Room in the Inn's Campus for Human Development and how the community was such an important part of each of their experiences how much we all need cheerleaders in our lives, people who encourage us and believe in us. It's more than unconditional love, because unconditional love means someone will love you even when you mess up big time. That is freeing in its own way, but I also think we need some people who really believe in us, believe that we can succeed and do well. The second man who spoke to us is a recovering drug addict who had moved into the apartments just the Friday before. He has family still in the Nashville area, and he said that one of the best moments in his recovery process was when his sister told him she was proud of him. "It had been a long time since I heard that," he said.
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