Recently, 60 Minutes featured a segment on family homelessness, with an emphasis on families becoming homeless for the first time because of economic hardships. Click here to see the piece.
Many families are no longer able to afford rent now. They live in cars and struggle to find security and normalcy. They struggle to keep up hope. While this might be an extreme condition, this is a reality for many families in this predicament, and Safe Haven serves many families with a similar profile.
As I watched this piece on my TV one Sunday night, I was flooded with many thoughts, feelings, and impressions.
The work we do—that I am honored to do—at Safe Haven Family Shelter provides support and sustenance for these families in our community so that they can achieve long-term sustainability. We provide solutions for the families we serve through a variety of resources, strategies, and interventions. But the need is so great at this moment—we are only serving a small portion of these families. While we as an organization will expand to serve more families through many different ways, simply building more and more shelters will not solve this multifaceted problem. The problem is systemic (and, yes, personal, political, social, moral, spiritual, economic – in a word, complex)– and that is the realization that I dreamed about—all night—that night.
What is that we are called to do in this very moment to meet this need? Do we have the community will to reduce family homelessness, instead of just reacting to it?
