Making Room: Housing ministry stretches volunteers

By Erwin Gunnells

Room in the Inn began in

1985, when the priest at one parish in Nashville opened the doors of the church to a few individuals in the parking lot to sleep for the night. Thirty-four years later, Room in the Inn is a national, even international, project--a workable and working program, caring for homeless people using church facilities and volunteers.

The specifics vary from vicinity to vicinity. In some towns the congregations take only men, in some they do their own screening, giving breathalyzer tests before accepting guests. In some communities the program has developed into a separate staff and shelter run by the churches.

Our Room in the Inn (RITI) is one branch of the nonprofit Homeward Bound, which offers

a variety of services to help folks get off the streets into homes. Rather than an emergency shelter, they call it a ”shelter-to-home program” in which congregations provide overnight lodging and food for a dozen prescreened women, women who are actively participating insupport services such as job education and drug treatment, medical care and behavior skills sessions, all leading to being housed and staying there.

Homeward Bound finds suitable housing when the women are ready and continues to support them until they are firmly on their feet. RITI retention rate for staying housed is about 92 percent. The overall rate for Homeward Bound clients is about 89 percent—quite good. But why the difference?

“I believe in my heart the difference is that for all those

months instead of sleeping in shelters they are surrounded by people who care,” says Sharon Blythe, director of Buncombe County Room in the Inn.

In our county about 40 faith groups participate in the program,

using around 2,000 volunteers. Trinity has been a part of the local Room in the Inn since its beginning. As usual, our church contributed significant leadership and financial support to launch a great community effort. Partnering with Central United Methodist, we host the women three weeks a year, usually twice at Trinity. The Basilica of St. Lawrence, which does not have suitable overnight facilities, provides meals.

Many of the host churches find it very difficult to recruit volunteers to spend the night with the women. People with loving hearts and the best of intentions are hesitant about face-to-face contact with a group so different from themselves. Scott Abernathy, who spearheads the program at Central, says about potential volunteers: “You can hear it in their voices, the uncertainty. They ask, ‘What do I do? What can I say to them?’”

Aside from the physical discomfort and loss of sleep, the being

away from home and our own comfortable beds, there is a social anxiety, a fear, not of the women themselves, but of the situation. Many of us have similar anxiety about large parties where we have to make small talk with strangers.

On a typical RITI evening, the guests come from the day shelter, where they have access to showers, mail, and storage. They settle into their space in the youth rooms and then gather for supper with the overnight volunteers and cooks. There are introductions and prayer, and everybody lines up for the excellent meal. Conversation at the tables is quiet and covers everything from global warming to bell bottom trousers. (Nobody seems to approve of either one.) Everybody disperses, some to the kitchen to wash dishes and collect serving bowls, some to read or call friends or have a smoke outdoors. Most of the guests are in bed very early, as their day is long and tiring. Very few are still awake at ten o’clock lights out.

For the overnight volunteers, the most difficult task may be staying awake until locking the door at 10:00. They chat with other volunteers, get paperwork done, or read. While both hosts and guests have obvious goodwill for each other, “The ladies have their own world” as long-time volunteer Grace Pless says. She wishes she could get to know them better, but one night is a very short time. She and Meriwether Beaty have been roomies each host week since Trinity entered the program, a dozen years ago. They both agree that the job does a lot of good while making few demands. It is a time for them to be together, to meet new people, and to give one peaceful night to people who need it.

This ministry is not one of personal relationships or of creating change (except possibly in ourselves). It is one of presence. Being there, not advising or formulating solutions. Simply being there.