The Complicated Issue that is Homelessness.

If you remember back to 2009, the nation was in a housing market crash. The church I was pastoring lost substantial support from attendees, and we had to take a huge pay cut to keep the church open. In reality, the Sr. Pastor and I had made the same amount of money needed to pay rent in the strip mall that housed the church. 

Before going full-time at the church, I had worked at a hospital, and the church. At that time, I worked two jobs to pay the bill. I left the hospital to go full-time at the church, so after the lost of pay, I went back to the hospital, making only one income, where there had been two.  

I was proactive and called the mortgage company. I was told "call us when you are a couple of months behind" so I did. I was told then that we could make a payment on the mortgage that didn't fit our actual budget. I am not kidding when I say the bank person said: "you are responsible to pay your house payment first, then you can pay utilities and eat!" Crazy right!!

God came through, and I was called to a church in PA who provided a parsonage (pastor's home). When we left the Reno, Nevada area, our home was in a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure status, which means we turned over the keys to the house to the bank. I should add that when we left at the end of 2009, there were over 650,000 homes in Nevada in foreclosure status. 

The reality of this story is that our family of five were on the verge of being homeless. While we were lucky, so many others were not.

I have had the blessing to work in ministry that served the poor for a number of decades. In fact, the church I went to start in Nevada was to help the working poor. I worked at City Union Mission here in KC, which provided me a wealth of hands-on experience working with people who are "Unsheltered." I have seen first hand the complicated issue that is homelessness.  

For years, I have heard people say, "we should fix up the abandoned homes in KC and give them to the homeless..." Or people say "the answer to being unsheltered is to provide housing," which social services call "housing first." However, if you watched the city of KC spend millions of tax dollars to provide housing in hotels post covid and then watch the plan fail, only to have them back on the streets, you might come to understand this is more complex than housing. 

Homelessness is a multifaceted issue that extends far beyond the lack of housing. While many assume that simply providing shelter resolves the problem, the reality is far more complex, involving economic, social, and systemic factors. In this series of blogs, we will explore the underlying causes and challenges of homelessness, with particular focus on Kansas City, MO, to offer a deeper understanding of this pressing social concern.

YES, for many people, like my family, housing was the need. There are many people who become homeless because of tragic circumstances and situation beyond their control. But, in reality, these people are hard workers, resilient, and find housing fairly quickly. They do not stay homeless for long. 

In this series, I will take you on a journey to explore the various complexities of homelessness, especially as it relates to KC. I hope you will learn and come to understand not just the issues, but some ways to work as a community to resolve many of these issues. 

One final word as we start down this road, apart from putting people in prison to house them, homelessness cannot be 100% resolved. Shocked? Good, then read on... 

Good Reputation of Our Children

When our children were born, they were our pride and joy. There was nothing we would not do for their personal growth, emotionally and physically. I used to take a cassette player and play classical music over Tammy’s belly so that the unborn child would be well cultured. Maybe it worked, at least one of the older kids love that kind of music today.

I truly think every parent hopes for the best for their children. Regardless of how the children turn out, the parent I would hope, seeks their best future. I know that this might be a false statement for many people who are reading this, because their parents were not good, nor sought their best interest. I pray that is the exception rather than the rule.

I must admit that raising children is a hard job. I often told all three kids that we had a responsibility to produce well educated, respectable children who loved the Lord. That was the goal. We didn’t always make them happy, but they always knew we loved them.

One part of parenting is that each child bears your name when they go out into the world. When a child acted up in school, and the principle called, it was because my name bearer had made a bad choice which reflected on me as their parent. If their behavior was poor, it was my responsibility to correct that negative behavior so that it was not for my lack of instruction, but their will to disobey.

The Apostle John’s letter Gaius gives a beautiful place for understanding the reputation and respectable child concept.

3 John 1:3-4 “It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

Verse 4 is probably the greatest hope of a Christian parent that their children are walking in the truth. But that is not always the case, and not because the parents did not take their responsibility to raise up a faithful child. Yet the context of the text is a relationship that John had with other children of God within the church of Jesus Christ, and not about parenting.

However, it remains a valid truth that Christian parents have no greater joy than to hear that their children have a good name, especially if that reputation is within the community of faith of Christ Jesus. When this happens, they reflect not just our hard work in raising children, more importantly that they are His children as well.