Months-long housing search worth the wait
Blog written by Damien Poling, housing case manager at The Salvation Army Harbor Light Shelter in Minneapolis
I’d like to tell you about a man we’ll call Aaron.
Aaron has been homeless for the past 18 months, and has experienced homelessness for more than 10 years of his lifetime. His criminal record is extensive, mostly stemming from addiction. He knows that The Salvation Army Harbor Light Shelter is the end of the line for him and so many others. He accepts this, and hopes that if he keeps doing the right thing, his lot will improve.
This week, Aaron’s patience and positive attitude finally paid off. After a year of trying to get Aaron into permanent housing, he is no longer living at Harbor Light. We finally secured him a home.
It wasn’t easy. Indeed, it is almost never easy to find housing for men and women staying at Harbor Light. Besides the range of personal issues many of them face, there is always lots of red tape.
The process of securing a home for Aaron, for example, started with applying for three different housing programs over three months. We were denied each and every time. On the fourth try, his application was initially accepted by a social service agency, but it took them two more months to get back to us. When they finally responded, I was informed that Aaron’s case had been referred to another agency and we were to apply anew with them. After applying to that agency, we had to wait another month for Aaron’s intake interview. Finally, he had his interview, and was accepted!
Or so we thought. We were then informed that the facility did not currently have any openings and they were not expecting any for four to six months.
Boy, was I frustrated. I complained to my boss and to anyone who would listen. I dreaded that I had to break the news to Aaron.
But the day Aaron came into my office, do you know what happened? He comforted me. He told me, “Don’t let ‘em get you down, man. It’ll be ok. You’re trying your best.”
In that moment, our eyes met, and my selfishness and ego were vanquished and replaced with embarrassment. I felt like I was doing a visualization exercise where you sit down and tell all of your problems to Christ on the cross. In fact, that is exactly what it was. The absurdity and irony of it all struck us both simultaneously and we did the one thing appropriate to the situation – we laughed. We kept laughing (usually) for the final six-month wait.
At long last, Aaron was housed this week. I have 100-plus other guys in need of stable housing waiting outside the door of my office. Helping them find a place to live will take time. But it will be worth the wait.
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