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Reflection on a “Home”
Posted on April 17, 2015
This week, my wife and I put our home up for sale. This decision came after many months of consideration and finally a painful recognition that our lives no longer allow us to live up in the mountains we love so much. We will likely end up back in Denver, a city I truly love, and the excitement of the new life has replaced some of the heartbreak of leaving our mountain home.
I’ve moved a lot in my life. Having a dad who was a basketball coach in Indiana, we moved seven times in my childhood. While we did live in one house throughout my high school years, this home was sold when my parents divorced while I was in my early 20’s. I soon realized the odd nature of “going home” to a home you never lived in, and I’ve come to understand the meaning the physical home has in one’s life. Losing the only real home I had known, and the family that once occupied it, was heartbreaking on many levels.
I continued this pattern into my adult life living in nine different places through my twenties and thirties. Then, six years ago, Sarah and I purchased our home at 351 Hummer Drive, about six miles outside the small town of Nederland and 15 miles from Boulder. For the first time in my life, I had a home and the odd sense that there was not a next move anywhere in my future. I didn’t truly appreciate the security and stability this offered until three days ago, when our realtor listed our house and suddenly my home was for sale.
At the time I reviewed the listing, I was preparing my workshops for the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference in May. The power of the word homeless took on a new meaning at that moment. While shelter is part of having a “home,” it only explains one aspect of the experiences of homelessness. To have a place that is yours, that provides not only shelter, but stability and a sense of place in a community, does not just satisfy Maslow’s Physiological Needs (Food, Water, Shelter, Warmth) and Safety Needs (Security, Stability, Freedom from Fear), but also the Need for Belonging, as a home also provides membership to a community.
The experience of homelessness and the loss of Belonging, Safety, and Basic Physiological Needs makes being a healthy human being nearly impossible. Without a home, energy and focus has to be given to meeting these basic needs. A society that does not value ensuring that its members have housing takes away any opportunity they might have to fully experience their potential.
We have to make sure we do not mistake a “shelter” for a “home.” A shelter is a short-term intervention that meets someone’s immediate Physiological and Safety Needs. While shelters are a critical part of the service continuum, we have to make sure that our policymakers and the community understand that even the best shelter is not a home. Without the stability, security, and belonging of a home, we cannot expect the majority of people experiencing homeless to change their lives and realize a better future.
Having a home is a human right, because without a home, a person’s ability to reach their potential is stolen from them. This systematic repression of potential should be seen as both an economic and humanitarian crime against the citizens of any country. Continuing to turn our backs on the poor and traumatized means we will lose generations to violence, poverty, imprisonment, and despair. I hope that everyone, regardless of political or religious persuasion, can understand the power and need for a home. Maybe it is this connection that can bring an end to the longstanding policies that create and maintain generational poverty and homelessness.
Hello Matt! Thank you for these remarks; I especially appreciated “…we do not mistake a shelter for a home”; as your know (you were there!) Care for the Homeless runs a “Cinderalla” shelter in the Bronx for women as risk – it is a shelter to be proud of, but it is not someone’s “home” & our goal is to be able to place these women in places of their own. The climate in NYC is not a good one & we are making social, health and political strides to do our part to change it – even if it is one person at a time!
Regards,
Meybol
Hello Matt! Thank you for these remarks; I especially appreciated “…we do not mistake a shelter for a home”; as your know (you were there!) Care for the Homeless runs a “Cinderalla” shelter in the Bronx for women as risk – it is a shelter to be proud of, but it is not someone’s “home” & our goal is to be able to place these women in places of their own. The climate in NYC is not a good one & we are making social, health and political strides to do our part to change it – even if it is one person at a time!
Regards,
Meybol
Thank you for a very reflective and powerful post Matt. Having moved about every two years (12 times in 28 years) I understand how emotional the upheaval can be. I can only imagine how our homeless neighbors feel when they have no stable place to call their own. May we as individuals and a nation find the political will to take care of “the least of these” our brothers and sisters.
Thank you for a very reflective and powerful post Matt. Having moved about every two years (12 times in 28 years) I understand how emotional the upheaval can be. I can only imagine how our homeless neighbors feel when they have no stable place to call their own. May we as individuals and a nation find the political will to take care of “the least of these” our brothers and sisters.
Matt, thinks makes me think about a patient last month who was homeless and after a lot of work we were able to find him an apartment, paid for it for him, and he moved in. End of story, right? No. We asked him later how the apt life was going and he said he wasn’t staying there. Why not? He didn’t have any furniture. No bed, no table, no sofa, no chair. It’s so much more than about having a roof over your head. We’re working on getting him some of those items.
Matt, thinks makes me think about a patient last month who was homeless and after a lot of work we were able to find him an apartment, paid for it for him, and he moved in. End of story, right? No. We asked him later how the apt life was going and he said he wasn’t staying there. Why not? He didn’t have any furniture. No bed, no table, no sofa, no chair. It’s so much more than about having a roof over your head. We’re working on getting him some of those items.
Our friend Ken Kraybill has written powerfully on the same theme, about the that each of us must have: the physical body, the building where we live, and the community in which we can thrive. All of them require maintenance and our loving attention, and none of them is sufficient unto itself. Thank you, Matt, for your beautiful refection and the way you always connect the intensely personal with the social and political. We’ll see you soon at the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference!
Ken’s piece is at https://www.nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/courses/hch101/mod4/3/1/doc/Three_Homes.pdf
Our friend Ken Kraybill has written powerfully on the same theme, about the that each of us must have: the physical body, the building where we live, and the community in which we can thrive. All of them require maintenance and our loving attention, and none of them is sufficient unto itself. Thank you, Matt, for your beautiful refection and the way you always connect the intensely personal with the social and political. We’ll see you soon at the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference!
Ken’s piece is at https://www.nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/courses/hch101/mod4/3/1/doc/Three_Homes.pdf
Matt, your article is extremely timely for me personally as I just spent 5 days in the last two weeks with a mentally ill homeless person. This person kept calling the temporary shelter I was trying to help her leave “home”.
Matt, your article is extremely timely for me personally as I just spent 5 days in the last two weeks with a mentally ill homeless person. This person kept calling the temporary shelter I was trying to help her leave “home”.