Outreach - Part 1

Prepared by: Sharon McKay and Theresa Cardey

The St. Paul’s Outreach Committee truly appreciates the congregation’s response to our survey asking that a focus be selected for Outreach activity for the year 2022. Affordable Housing and Homelessness was clearly the first choice of the more than 100 replies we received and today marks the launch of our committee’s work on this topic. 

Over the next six weeks of Lent, committee members will make short presentations focused on affordable housing and homelessness, with a particular emphasis on homelessness.  These presentations will be posted on the church website along with links to relevant news articles and documents that will provide a greater understanding of the issue. We have today placed a poster board in the Narthex which we invite you to visit. 

Beyond Lent, Outreach members and friends will call attention to housing issues in a variety of ways. We will have reports in the church newsletter. We will continue to post information and links on the church website and we will keep the poster board updated. We will send out electronic bulletins when there is action to be taken that some congregants may wish to respond to; and we will bring in speakers when it is safe to do so.  Our intent is to link the issue of homelessness and the dearth of affordable housing to the issues of livable incomes, indigenous reconciliation, the housing needs of special populations such as refugees, those who are injured and disabled and those suffering from mental illness. Climate change is a factor that underscores the need for safe, secure housing – we shall work this into our project as we move forward.

We encourage each of you to participate in this project as you are able and interested.

The issue of affordable housing and homelessness covers a range of challenges for our country and our community. We are all conscious of the two ends of a continuum:  the high cost of housing which makes it virtually impossible for new homeowners to purchase their own place of living without a truly significant bankroll and, at the other end of the continuum we have those who are truly homeless – who live on the streets, sometimes managing to get to shelters, others finding a corner on a sidewalk, in an alley or in a park where they can hide or sleep under newspapers or some kind of makeshift blanket. In the midst of this continuum, there are hundreds of thousands who live in inadequate, unsafe housing: crowded, dirty, vermin infested, in poor repair, hazardous due to lack of heating or water, missing or broken fire alarms, often situated in unhealthy neighborhoods.

We wish to call attention to homelessness this week through prayer:

Creator, God…

Hear our prayer today for all women and men, boys and girls who are homeless this day.

For those sleeping under bridges, on park benches, in doorways or bus stations.

For those who can only find shelter for the night but must wander in the daytime.

For families broken because they could not afford to pay the rent.

For those who have no relatives or friends who can take them in.

For those who have no place to keep possessions that remind them who they are.

For those who are afraid and hopeless.

For those who have been let down by our social safety net.

For all these people, we pray that you will provide shelter, security and hope.

We pray that those of us with warm houses not be lulled into complacency and forgetfulness.

Help us to see your face in the eyes of every homeless person we meet so that we may be empowered through word and deed, and through all the means we have, to bring justice and peace to those who are homeless.

Amen.