Affordable for who?

I attended a meeting last night about the future of housing in Montpelier. Montpelier has some interesting trends, which make housing a critical issue for the city. First, we have more jobs in the city than we have residents, which means that there’s work to be had here, and that there are a lot of people in both the private sector and in state government who work in the city but live outside it. Second, our infrastructure, our water and sewer systems, our schools, could hold more than their current capacity, which means that growth wouldn’t cost taxpayers additional money for built up infrastructure, and would actually reduce individual tax burden as more people share the same infrastructure costs. Finally, the city’s population has been in slow but steady decline for the past 20 years while the housing options stayed the same– there are fewer people living in the same number of houses and apartments. The average household size in the city of Montpelier is 1.87 residents. That means that a lot of singles and couples are living in homes that could accommodate larger families, were there some single-person units to move into.

All this makes Montpelier a dream location for a developer seeking to build condos, houses or apartment units for families, or senior citizen apartments. So the town is looking into incentive programs and growth strategies to help this happen, and to keep such housing affordable.

Let me say, I support this. I think affordable housing, particularly for seniors, is important. I think having more family-friendly homes and apartments will draw younger families to Montpelier, and help folks settle closer to downtown, cutting down on commuting, parking, and pollution caused by people driving in from outside.

But.

That’s not what I was talking about when I said I was interested in affordable housing. I’m interested in assuring there is housing that is affordable for someone living on minimum wage, or on disability, housing that is subsidized and promotes working toward sustainability either as a renter or an owner. I’m talking about safe, clean units that people would want to live in and could afford to not only pay for rent but for heat and electricity as well.I’m also talking about shelter available on an emergency basis, when it gets so cold that most of us shudder at the thought of our *pets* (in their fur coats) sleeping outside, and there are people who have to.

Developers aren’t as interested in this kind of thing. There’s not a lot of money in it, you see. Maybe, maybe, if people sell off their new units, and families move up into them and seniors move into a new apartment complex that caters to their needs and smaller rental units become available, maybe some of the lowest-cost housing will open up and could be redeveloped as housing for those currently without houses.

But do we really want to barter the safety and indeed, on cold winter nights, the lives of Montpelier’s houseless women and men against the odds of trickle-down housing economics?

Um, Pastor, didn’t I see you at the State House?

At the NY State House in 2005

Tomorrow is Visibility Day at the Vermont State House. It is a day for all those who support equal marriage for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons to be seen and heard, to talk with their representatives, and to give voice to their support of full equality in marriage. I plan to be in attendance.

First let me say that for a social-justice oriented person like me, being in ministry in a state capital is a tempting thing. I could find myself three blocks away at the capital building nearly every day of the week, supporting or protesting something. Realising that this could eat up a considerable portion of the time I have to do all of my ministry (and this is a part of my ministry, I do believe), I have given myself three areas where I will intentionally be socially and politically engaged as well as spiritually.

1. Addressing local housing issues. Not only do I think this is a pressing concern (about which I have blogged quite a bit), but I think that the approach is essential. It is not helpful for a bunch of middle class persons to get together and talk about homelessness and the lack of affordable housing and come up with ‘solutions.’ The proper approach I believe is to build some community around listening to the experiences and wisdom of those who have lived, are living, or are in danger of living without housing. Their knowledge of the problem and their suggestions for action should carry far more weight than those of folks (even the best-intentioned advocates) for whom this is a hypothetical question.

2. Ecology, Stewardship, and Sustainability. Because, frankly, we’re all in a world of trouble if we don’t clean up out act, kick our oil addition, and re-localize our economies. This is a moral issue, both in terms of the distribution of resources and in terms of the care of the earth, God’s sacred creation. The church has to be a leader in the movement to place care of the earth and one another above convenience and consumption, and one of the ways we need to minister is to engage in political action as well.

3. Full inclusion of GLBT persons in all aspects of society (including equal, non-separate marriage status). Understand that here I step beyond the current textbook stance of he global United Methodist Church, and that if your position differs from mine (especially you, members of my congregational communities!), there is plenty of space at the table for all positions within the United Methodist Church and within the congregations of Trinity and Grace UMC. Accord with the pastor in this issue is not a requirement! However, I feel strongly that this is a justice issue, particularly with respect to the civil rights afforded our citizens, and particularly when it comes to creating a separate-and-not-quite-equal citizenry. I also feel that for too long the faith community has been painted with a broad and monochromatic brush, so that to be a person of faith (let alone a leader in a faith community) is to oppose gay marriage. This is not the case, and other clear voices are needed to speak an alternative position. I therefore slap on my clerical collar and join in the day of witness, not as a representative of Grace or Trinity United Methodist Church, not as a representative of Troy Annual Conference or the United Methodist Church as a whole, but as a representative of the people of God and the clergy who serve in God’s church who think and feel differently. I do it as a representative of my own heart and my own conviction, because if I lacked heart and conviction of any kind, or ignored the heart and conviction that I have, I would be a poor example indeed.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and ideas, wherever you’re coming from.

It Ain’t Easy…

Being green and churchy at the same time.

First, a couple of assumptions for this post.

1. Climate change is real, significant, and really significant. I grew up knowing this– way beyond aerosol cans or cfl light bulbs, there is substantial and irreparable damage that humankind has inflicted on this planet, especially since the discovery, mining, and burning of fossil fuels. This is reaching, if it has not already reached, a critical upper limit, and if we don’t halt or reverse this trend, um, it’s going to be very, very bad.

2. Peak oil/energy is real, imminent (or just past), and really significant as well. Oh, there’s plenty of oil in the ground, but it will soon cost almost as much energy to access and transport it as the well will yield. And there’s not more to be had once it’s all gone. The consequences of running out of fuel and/or only select wealthy persons having access to it are practically apocalyptic. How do you get to the store for food? How does the food get to the store? How do you get to a clinic for medicine or the medicine get to you? How do you get to work? What do industries like manufacturing, transportation, tourism, shipping, and so on look like? How are plastics made? How does someone who doesn’t own land (to grow food on) and can’t afford a hybrid and lives too far from a town center to walk even imagine a life without oil?

I’m not going to spend my time fleshing out the scenarios of these two problems coming to a head at once. It’s depressing and frightening and induces in me a sort of terror that I usually reserve for zombie movies and dental work. At the conference I attended last week, these were taken as fact (which they are), and we focused more on response.

Who is the church and how are we called to respond in light of climate crisis and peak energy?

The church is who it has always been, the body of Christ, the light of the world, the community of hope, the city on a hill. It’s just that now that city needs to be a transition town.

That’s how I think we are called to respond. We must be the centers of a new kind of community, a new way of living together. The post-oil world will not look that different than the pre-oil one. We’ll farm and trade goods. we’ll live in closer communities. We’ll interact with each other instead of our televisions. We’ll sparingly interact with the outside world (because we’ll still have computers that run on solar energy–I’m not giving up my Internet!). We’ll look out for one another, sharing what we have, carpooling if we really must go somewhere, building systems of transportation (of people and goods) and communication that are sustainable. We will support one another in the times of chaos and uncertainty and grieving–yes, grieving, because it’s not just the things we think we love that will not survive major climate crisis and energy collapse, there will be people, too.

And imagine if the church was there for all of that. Imagine if our lawns were the community gardens. Imagine if our basements and halls and sanctuaries were the places to stay warm. Imagine if our telephones and computers were the channels of communication. Imagine if our clergy and laity were the prophets of hope and the arms of support in times of struggle. Imagine if we were the positive model of how to live together, how to share, how to weather the fear and the transition around us.

We’ve been this before. In her infancy, the church was the sustainable, thriving, alternate community in the face of Roman oppression. Can we now be the sustainable, thriving, alternate community in the face of climate crisis and energy collapse?

For the church to answer this call, we have to do several things. First, we have to confess that we are just as addicted to oil and pollution as any other organization, that in fact our buildings are often the least efficient uses of space in town. Ouch. And like any good confession, we can’t stop there but must move on to repentance, to changing the way we do things as a church and the way we encourage each member of the community to do things by our words and deeds. We may need to walk away from our buildings, or share them, or use them differently. We need to begin to organize the things that will need to be in place: community gardens and agriculture, food banks, time banks and bartering, medical clinics, carpools, shared technological equipment, agency resources. We have to have at least a little of our act together if we hope to help others.

But before we can build all that, we need to build community.

That sounds familiar.

Wait, Becca, you say, I thought you cared about housing and people living homeless? Didn’t you blog about that at length? I did. And I also said that what we need to begin to address that situation is to build community.

Could it be that these communities are the same? Could looking out for one another in terms of shelter and food also mean looking out for the whole community and for the earth? Could that be our calling in this time and place? As I said in an earlier post,

Suddenly I’m thinking that the call of the church is not just to community, but to sustainable community, in all of the senses (environmental, economical, social, spiritual…) we can imagine.

It’s not going to be easy. But then again, Kermit always said being green wasn’t easy. Come to think of it, Jesus said the same thing about discipleship.

Confession and Compassion

Hopefully not too much navel-gazing.

Maybe it’s the election, or the extraordinary ordination or talking with folks struggling to find or afford housing, but I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege lately. With the exception of the fact that I’m a woman, I am a member of every privileged majority group I can think of: white, straight, protestant, middle class, citizen of the United States.

I confess that although I like to consider myself an ally of folks who are disenfranchised, I have constantly run up against my own privilege and preconceptions. From really reflecting, years ago, about why I hit the power-lock on my car door (was it because the man outside the car was unfamiliar, or because his skin was black?), to realizing, weeks ago, the words that come out of my mouth (did I really invite the person in a wheelchair to “stand up and speak to the congregation”?), I’m on a constant journey of learning, and I can only hope that others are patient with me as I continue to stick my feet in my mouth and receive lessons in humility.

I think I have most significantly struggled to make sure that my advocacy for others does not become patronizing or paternalistic. It’s very easy to do for others in a way that appropriates them as a cause rather than respects them as persons. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in my desire to minister with folks who live in poverty here in the States and abroad. In Seminary, I met a wonderful man, Matthew, who was a phenomenal artist and a decent prophet and lived on the streets of Boston. My initial response was to try to save Matthew somehow or fix his problem, and he was the one who told me that what he needed more than anything else was for me to listen to his story and treat him with dignity. Matthew’s patience with me, especially when my overzealous attempts to ‘help’ were borderline offensive to him, taught me a great deal, and half a dozen years later his words shape a large part of how I interact with people in general, most particularly folks who might not be in the same position I am in one way or another.

This is why the Adopta Una Familia program I have participated in is so powerful. The program focuses on building community and relationship as primary, and houses as a secondary thing. Here are folks living in conditions that I had previously not been able to imagine, and yet after sharing a home, meals, laughter and tears for a week, I could not pity them or appropriate them as a cause. I could only love and respect them. From that place, when we worked side by side, we built not just houses but homes together, not because I could save or fix them, but because we care about each other and the community.

In some comments, Morgan, another wonderful man I’ve met recently, has been talking with me about the housing problem in Montpelier, and what he said really struck a chord with me, really tied together my past learning about not being paternalistic or appropriative and my experience in Ecuador with my current hopes about housing in Montpelier.

Morgan wrote:

I also may be able to help [...] with possibly helping to get interested citizens and fellow travelers on board maybe; as long as there will be both equal and mutual standing for all involved, with no one individual or group being a greater expert on these matters than anyone else, just fellow citizens coming together to raise a barn so-to-speak, each with their own expertize to help build a community project: i.e., community itself. The housing will end up being secondary, although crucial as it is in its own right. [...]

As far as the planning segment goes, actually my faith was not in the planning so much as what can sometimes happen when people come and then seriously pull together to problem solve and then end up building and creating community and from that help find ways to meet unmet needs of members of that community for the common good and betterment of everyone concerned.

That’s it exactly! Exactly what is needed wherever we seek to ‘help other people.’ Those who would want to help have to instead listen and learn and build community around the subject, getting to know the people involved as real people, not numbers or case studies or projects or causes. Listening to the folks involved will not only empower them (rather than making the ‘helpers’ feel good, which may be part of what we’re after when we’re honest), but, as Morgan points out, will have the added benefit of being more effective because listening allows for learning from another’s expertise. Suddenly, I imagine an approach to the crisis of housing in Montpelier not as a committee of church people and politicians and agencies, but as a series of gatherings with those who live without housing or on the brink of houselessness. Much more like the Ecuador program, what if we build respect and relationships and community first, and let the housing flow from that? Tough for this goal-oriented impatient person!

Even tougher: don’t let me go appropriating Morgan’s good idea.

See? Still learning.

In the News

This past week, I had an article published in The Bridge, Montpelier’s independent newspaper. That article was an edited version of two of my earlier posts about houselessness/homelessness (found here and here). Since that time, I’ve had several folks contact me about doing more together to find sustainable solutions to the housing shortage in our area. I’m excited to see where our efforts together might lead.

Welcome, Bridge readers and other visitors! Thanks for surfing over!

Its not homelessness, it’s houselessness.*

My husband commented in my previous post that my conversation marked a mere beginning in a chapter of my ministry, and he was right. My education about homelessness in Montpelier continued today, mostly in the form of a conversation over lunch with a wise man and fellow blogger, who has lots of insight into politics, housing problems, and what might be important, relevant ministry in Central Vermont.

Vermont is, as you probably know, my home state.

Homelessness is, as you may or may not know, something for which I’ve had a near-life-long heartache, ever since I saw someone sleeping on a bench in a park in Boston, and my dad explained to me why. My little pre-teen mind couldn’t grasp the concept; you mean this person doesn’t have anywhere to stay? but look at all these people walking by! do they not notice? do they not care? how can they ignore him? why doesn’t anyone help? why don’t *we* help?

But never have the two come together before. I’m in Vermont, but in a new way, having not lived here since I was a high school student, and with (slightly!) older eyes I see it in a different way. Mainly, that we are just like everywhere else. People are hungry here. People are homeless here. And, unfortunately, people try to ignore these problems or find short-term solutions.

Montpelier is a beautiful city, a jewel of a place to live and work. It also doesn’t have much available housing, as I found out first hand when my family and I were looking for an apartment or house to rent about a month and a half ago. It definitely doesn’t have a lot of affordable housing, and on top of rent let’s not forget the heating prices in one of the most frigid states in the country.

Also, Montpelier doesn’t have a homeless shelter. Perhaps it would be unsightly, and people don’t want it in their back yard (*Carlin, again), or perhaps it is a logistical nightmare to get all the political, religious, and private parties lined up behind a project like that. I don’t know. What I know is that it gets really cold here, and there’s not anywhere to seek shelter for the short term.

But in talking with this fellow, M, at lunch, even the shelter–even our little free lunch– is just a short-term solution. What’s needed, what has always been needed, is not shelter, not transitional housing, but real, actual affordable, available housing. How are we ever to break the cycle of poverty, unemployment,  homelessness, and hunger, if people have no place from which to build references, job hunt, or demonstrate residency (you can’t even *go* to a food pantry unless you can prove that you are somehow a resident of the community being served, and how do you prove that with no utility bill, no drivers license, or no pay stub?)?

And suddenly, ministry seems to take on a much larger, more political, more advocacy-based and community-development-focused meaning.

Suddenly I’m thinking that the call of the church is not just to community, but to sustainable community, in all of the senses (environmental, economical, social, spiritual…) we can imagine.

Added with some suggestions (his and others’) about radio shows, local access tv, podcasting, video blogging, and so on, and I begin to feel that old Wesleyan pull that the World, or at least the Central Vermont portion of it, is my parish. Maybe my circuit is bigger than two churches, and maybe being faithful in that circuit means being an organizational and motivational force in the community for sustainability and care (beats defining success by my bulletin-toting for sure).

I don’t think it’s just the hour that makes me feel tired and overwhelmed.

And I don’t think it’s just the coffee that makes me feel excited and inspired.

* Ah, the late, great, George Carlin (WARNING: clip contains *a lot* of swearing, and may not be appropriate for all viewers, because, well, it’s George Carlin. This is not an endorsement of all of what Carlin says, but credit for the title, which is his. There, that should be enough of a disclaimer, should any of my congregants one day run for President and people try to hold them accountable for what their pastor once linked to in a blog).

Wake up Call

“Pastor, can I talk to you just a minute?”

The fellow asking has a laugh-lined face and a voice gravelly from cigarette smoking. I stop mid-stride, and give him my full attention.

He tells me that he’s homeless, and that he sometimes sleeps on our handicap access ramp, because it’s a gentle slope, and wood rather than cold stone, and has a roof to keep off the rain. He wants to make sure I’m okay with this, and that I’d know who he is, should someone call or the police ask me about the man on our back porch. He assures me that he comes late at night and leaves early in the morning, and will not be in anyone’s way.

“But,” I sputter, because I’m a Vermonter and it’s the first thing into my head, “the snow, the cold?”

“My bag is good down to zero,” he says, “and just the shelter from the roof and the side of the building is usually enough.”

I furrow my brow at the ‘usually.’

Now I don’t know that it’s my place to give out sleeping spots on my church’s stoop, and I’m simultaneously torn between sorrow that I really can’t just give him a key to the front door and shame/horror that one even needs to ask if the church, the building that houses the people who represent a wandering, oft-homeless rabbi and his work in the world, is a safe place to sleep. So I say the only thing I can think of, which is to call him by name, and tell him that I’ll recognize him should I see him there or should somebody give his description, and that I am okay with him seeking shelter on our ramp.

He goes downstairs to the food pantry, and I go inside to my office to wonder what in the world it means to be in ministry in a place where three or four people call or stop in a day looking for money, where a night on the street in certain times in January can in fact be fatal, and where the institutional body we call church can sometimes be so anxious about the survival of its ministry that we sometimes forget to do the ministry of survival. I’m not saying that we have the wrong response, but I wish we could have more.

Go ahead. Ask me if I embodied the presence of Christ today. I shudder at the answer, because he was present in that conversation, but I think he had a gravelly voice and some laugh lines.

I Have a Dream. Again.

As I’ve said before, I feel most passionate about my ministry when I’m building something. Whether it’s a worship idea or a bible study or a small group ministry or a new church start, I’m not about maintaining what is but about building anew.

My church is one of five in town involved in an ecumenical group that operates a food pantry (with thrift shop storefront) in the socioeconomically depressed downtown of our community. Currently, this pantry, The Anchor, which has an operating budget of around $30K a year (coming from donations, grants, and, um, some sort of divine intervention), rents space on the first floor of a building in very bad repair. The landlord does nothing to fix the building, not even last spring when the heat shut off because the boiler in the basement was under five feet of water, overflowing from the Hudson. The space is really too small for our needs; a bigger and brighter storefront would attract more business and a private office space would allow for confidential meetings such as client intakes and foodstamp counseling and the like. Additionally, our ministry could significantly expand if we had some extra space.

Basically, we need to own a building.

My congregation has been talking about this in earnest for about a year, since the idea came up in a Bible study. This fall, at their insistence, I brought the idea to the ecumenical council and began the process of pestering people to make this a reality. With the new twentysomething female pastor in town (my Lutheran friend A), we began a mostly two-church effort to, you know, buy an entire building, take it off the tax rolls, renovate it, and create a new storefront and food pantry. No big whoop.

Last night’s meeting was the first one that felt particularly productive. From the buildings available on Main Street, we picked the one we think we want. It’s a beauty.

This is the second-oldest building in the village, at least the blue-grey part is. We’re not sure if the whole foundation is good, but there is funding available to help preserve what’s left of the building through the historical preservation people. The door on the left leads to a stairwell and up into the top of the blue portion, which we would plan to make a private office area for counseling and social service agencies. The top of the white building would be the office for the Anchor and storage space. The entire ground floor– all the white and most of the blue portion– would be the new storefront and pantry, almost double the current space.

The building is nearly gutted inside, which means a lot of work, and some siding has to be replaced on the white building, and structural work done on the blue. However, it is about to go up for auction for back taxes– it’s not currently on the tax roll, so it wouldn’t be too hard for us to keep it off the rolls as a tax-exempt organization. There would be, we think, very little money needed to actually secure the deed to the place. Then we can dump everything into fixing it up, raising huge amounts of money for the supplies and working largely with volunteers in the community. We even have a lawyer lined up to do the closing and legal stuff pro bono (thanks, K!).

And now the fundraising begins. We’ve set an initial goal of $50,000. This would be enough to either make a serious dent in all the work, or pay for a downpayment and first year’s operating budget on the mortgage for a different building, should this one fall through. I’m in charge of looking into initial grant money and funds from each of the five churches (c’mon, that’s $10 K a church! we can do that!). My Lutheran colleague is going to the mayor and town supervisor to get their support. One of my congregants is going to the county to check the status of the foreclosure, while another is attempting to contact the current owner and see if he and an architect can do a walk-through.

In addition to participation from each church, grants available from each denomination, local, state, and federal assistance for food pantries, faith based organizations, and main street revitalization programs, there is an added community support here. This project would not only provide space for a vital and justice-oriented ministry in town, but it would simultaneously preserve one of the village’s oldest structures *and* fix up one of its biggest eyesores (we figure Stewart’s Shop alone will donate thousands to help clean up their next-door neighbor!). The support of the community can make a huge difference in this one.

And it’s all being done by a couple of churches with their crazy naive little pastors and a whole lot of faith and chutzpah.