Homelessness forum speaker calls for action

By Patrick Ball/Staff Writer

Concord Journal

Posted Mar 04, 2010 @ 01:34 PM

The world is at war. People are running out of food and water. Men, women and children are spending their nights in shelters or on the streets.

It is, the Rev. Liz Walker says, a Kairos moment.

“We are living in a time that we’ve never seen, and we may never see again of global economic meltdown,” Walker said Sunday afternoon at First Parish in Concord. “Now is a Kairos moment. … From the pulpit, I would say this is a moment when God says, ‘Don’t make me come down there.’”

And that’s why Walker was OK with preaching to the choir as keynote speaker at the “How Faith Communities Can Help end Homelessness: A New Vision,” the sixth annual forum on family homelessness, co-sponsored by the Advocacy Network to End Family Homelessness and the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries.“I look at you and say, ‘this is the choir,’” said Walker, an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and former WBZ-TV news anchor. “But sometimes, as members of the choir, we need to hear music, because you work hard doing what you do.”

Walker talked about how, as a 7-year-old girl at a Baptist church in Little Rock, Ark., she saw the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talk about a successful Montgomery bus boycott. This was before the movement became a movement, she said, and right as King, who inspired people to take risks, himself took “a risk of love” and stepped out of his comfort zone — the pulpit — and into the front lines of the Civil Rights movement.

The Feb. 28 forum is proof “risks of love” are being taken in and around Concord, according to Walker.

“No I don’t know a lot of things, but I’m sure homelessness is not one of the Top 10 problems” in Concord, she said. “So that means you’re already stepped outside of the comfort zone to at least talk about it.”

But it’s not enough to recognize the moment, and now is no different than the 1960s, so “don’t get weary,” Walker told the choir of 100 or so residents of Concord, Acton, Bedford, Boxboro, Maynard, Stow, Sudbury, and other communities.

“You have the power to change things,” she said. “Seize the moment.”

What’s happening statewide

The rest of the forum was about how to seize the moment as guest speakers and local state legislators held panel discussions on the system of using homes, as opposed to shelters, as a way to end homelessness.

Elizabeth Curtis, executive director of the Massachusetts Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness spoke about the shift toward homes as a way to end homelessness, and the goals of the ICHH’s regional network programs.

According to Curtis, since September, the ICHH’s networks have diverted 383 families from homelessness, kept 4,000 more from becoming homeless and re-housed 1,300 families from shelters to homes. But help is needed, she said, and individuals can think about the resources they have — meeting space, fundraising capacity, political clout — which can help to end family homelessness.

“This is our moment,” Curtis said. “We know what to do. We know what works, and what doesn’t work. We just have to come together.”

Alexander Kern, executive director of the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries, talked about the role of interfaith collaborations and ways congregations can become involved.

It comes down to “awareness, alliances and action,” Kern said. Awareness through public forums and homelessness liturgy; alliances of faith communities or public-private partnerships and the actions of going out and volunteering at soup kitchens and shelters, contacting legislators, mentoring homeless people or providing them jobs.

“If you know landlords, we need your help providing affordable housing,” Kern said.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/concord/features/x1526283875/Homelessness-forum-speaker-calls-for-action