‘Green’ issues are important but what about the homeless?

Imagined Athens City Council agenda: 1) Fracking moratorium – check! 2) Protect angelic students from devilish landlords – check! 3) Provide the most minimal support for efforts to shelter 60 desperate impoverished local children with no roof over their heads tonight – um... hmmm... could someone pass the fair trade, organic, locally grown, latte... I'm due somewhere else all of a sudden...

OK. So maybe I'm being a little snarky. And — I really am not trying to suggest that there is a contest between our environmental and world justice concerns and our concerns for the local poor. What I am, however, asserting is that there is a gross "outrage deficit" in the activism of our highly intelligent, caring and enlightened community when it comes to the subject of dire poverty and homelessness in Athens and surrounding counties.

Seriously, fell a beloved tree, tear down a historic building, or bulldoze the top of a hill and Athenians will mobilize instantly and loudly in passionate protest. And I just love it! I have leaped excitedly into such protests myself. But where is this same beloved outrage over the fact that our only emergency shelter within a nine-county radius is turning away cold, hungry families with small children on a daily basis?

Several years ago, current Mayor Paul Wiehl and I walked together as part of Good Works' annual "Walk for the Homeless." I know he has a heart for this issue. I also know what good-hearted, prone-toward-action people I am surrounded with here in our fair community. So where was the outrage when the city zoning board turned down Good Works' request for a zoning variance to expand the Emergency Shelter to include the house next door — despite the dire statistics, clear need and favorable testimony of the neighbors? Where were the letters to the editor, the buzz on the street — the emails to the listservs, the passionate response of a compassionate community?

Why does our city's leadership express no urgency to address an increasingly acute and disastrous situation for our community's weakest and most vulnerable citizens?

Something seems out of balance. I can only conclude that this inconsistency is a result of the invisibility of the homeless in our rural communities. One hears statistics, but we don't see homeless people on our streets in Athens, and therefore no personal connection is made, no compassion stirred. Rural homelessness looks different from the urban homelessness we see when we visit large cities, so we believe it isn't here. It's publicly visible when a tree is cut down, but when a call comes into a homeless shelter, there may only be one person who quietly takes the call.

So, in the interest of bringing this issue into the light of our community, I want to publicly relate just such a call and what it felt like to take it:

On a recent Sunday, my family was at the Good Works Timothy House homeless shelter working our once a month volunteer shift. The shelter was almost full. There are two rooms for families, but one was occupied with a family and the other was housing four single adult men. I received two calls for shelter during my shift. As I cannot provide specific details, I will simply say that one family had a 4-year-old son. The mother had lost her job, which included housing, and they were instantly homeless and sitting on the side of the road. It was getting darker and colder by the minute. The second call was from a young woman with a 2-year-old child — also in a desperate situation. My heart sank as they told me their stories because as I looked at the bed chart, I knew even as we were talking that I would have to turn them away. I consulted with staff members and they offered all they could, which was for me to call them back and tell them that we have no beds for them.

I ask you — how would you like to make that return call? I did make those calls and tried as hard as I could to express through my voice my sorrow over their situation and my sorrow over our inability to help them as I gave them other numbers to call. But the fact is that Good Works, right here in the city of Athens, is the only emergency homeless shelter in a nine-county region. If we have to turn someone away, his or her prospects are not good. Now, consider that this same phone call was repeated more than 100 times this past year alone.

So, whose responsibility is this anyway — sheltering our homeless? Is it Keith Wasserman's?  Is it mine? Yours? My call is for us to harness some of our GREEN POWER to fuel a mindful awareness in our beloved Athens community regarding the desperate situation of the disenfranchised, the desperate and the poor among us. Raise your voice! Call Paul Wiehl, our mayor, and express your desire to see the emergency shelter approved for expansion. Raise your awareness of this deeply human issue by attending the 10th annual Walk for the Homeless on Saturday, Jan. 14. Get outraged!

I leave you with this long-posed, worn-out question: If a family sits by the side of the road in the dark, and there is nobody there to hear them, do they really exist?  

I don't know, but I think it has something to do with us.

Editor's note: Kathryn Cooper is an Athens County business owner, farmer and homeschooling mom who first came face to face with rural homelessness as a Good Works volunteer in 1996. Kathryn and her family continue to be challenged and inspired as weekend volunteers at the Timothy House emergency shelter on Central Avenue in Athens.