‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
Peace House Community – Dec. ’23
Learn from the Ants By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby As a kid, I used to be fascinated by anthills. I constantly wondered how animals with such tiny brains and no obvious ways of communicating on a large scale could create such a complex society. It wasn’t until I grew old enough for deep theological reflection that I realized my view of the ants was probably about the same as God’s view of us. If I looked down on the Twin Cities from ten miles up, I’d see a lot of little beings with limited intelligence and no obvious leader running into each other, but somehow managing to survive.Obviously, there are some differences between me and God, so the analogy doesn’t really work. God created us and is all-knowing, and has the power to guide the course of history, so if He (or She or Them or It, depending on your beliefs) wants us to survive, He/She/They/It can help us out. That thought comforts me, because I don’t have any faith we would survive long on our own. We’ve shown we’re good at solving specific problems of logic and engineering, but in terms of actual wisdom, we haven’t advanced much since our knuckle-dragging, club-toting, raw-meat-eating ancestors were on the scene.I wish I was more hopeful, but there are enough reminders each day of humanity’s limitations to make hopefulness difficult to maintain. In the short-term, I can always find good news stories, or examples of individuals going out of their way to help others, but long-term, I think we will need to rely on luck or divine intervention to save us from ourselves.When I was a teenager, the main threat came from the nuclear weapons we had created – you know, the ones that could keep us safe by destroying the world 20 times over. Later it was the hole in the ozone layer. Then climate change came along. Now we’re back to world conflicts.I shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve known for a long time that we’re really good at causing problems. Countless prophets have told us we will [...]
Simple Pleasures
Peace House Community - A Place to Belong By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Lately, the negativity of the world has affected me more than usual. Over the last few months, several supporters and members at Peace House Community have died or experienced some form of trauma. World news has been bleak. The mornings are darker and colder. Sadly, I’m one of the fortunate ones, as I know many people have to deal with more problems than me. I recently asked some friends what helps them cope when they start feeling overwhelmed. As a group, we had a difficult time finding an answer. It turns out that, if there’s one thing that will increase someone’s sadness, it’s finding out that there’s no clear antidote to sadness. Eventually, I did experience something that lifted my mood. Peace House Community held an anniversary event where we went out of our way to say thank-you to our supporters. In the past, anniversary parties have been a combination of “Thank-You Party” and “Please Give Us More Money” events. I’ve always felt a bit manipulative telling our supporters how much they’re support means and immediately trying to get more from them. It felt so much better just to say thanks. After all, we’ve survived the last three years on the backs of people who pray for us, donate money and supplies, and give their time. If it wasn’t for all these people, PHC would have died decades ago. illustration: Jake Ryan But there was more to it than simply saying thank-you. This was our first in person anniversary party since covid changed everything. I got to see many supporters and former volunteers who hadn’t come to our building in years. I also met some who had only been names on our mailing list to me. As I said several times during the evening, it felt like a reunion of old friends. I was much happier the following morning than I had been in quite a while, and I spent time pondering what had caused my change in mood. There were many [...]
Peace House Community: Oct. ’23
Listening First By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby I recently attended a webinar hosted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The discussion focused on how housing advocates can speak about Housing First programs to gain support for those programs from the general public. (For this article, you don’t need to worry about what Housing First is, because that isn’t the point of this column.) As you might guess, a meeting hosted by a group called the National Alliance to End Homelessness, speaking to individuals who advocate for and provide housing to those who are homeless, became pretty self-congratulatory. Everyone assumed that housing was the correct solution, and that anyone who didn’t support it (or in this case, Housing First) was either ignorant or a villain.I sent in a question through the chat, partly because I had a serious question, and partly because I wanted to play the devil’s advocate. I asked what standards a housing program has to meet to qualify as “Housing First”. The devil’s advocate part of the question was simple: the discussion assumed that Housing First programs are good, but it never asked if the way Housing First programs are run is good.Housing First advocates can point to many statistics that show that Housing First is the best solution to homelessness, but they usually look at the most successful Housing First programs for their information. The truth is that any program is only as good as the people overseeing it. The webinar I attended never considered that someone might oppose Housing First programs because the programs they had seen didn’t deliver on the promises they made. I’ve seen homeless individuals with serious mental or physical health problems given housing, but then left on their own to find resources for getting healthy. I’ve talked with landlords who lost significant amounts of money from working with Housing First programs that would not pay for the damage clients did to appliances and [...]
Peace House Community: September ’23
Every Little Bit Helps By MARTI MALTEBY Marti Maltby After the doom and gloom of my last few columns, I wanted to write something a little more upbeat this month. Based on my current thoughts, I may not succeed, but by the end of this article I will try to have found a ray of hope.At the end of July, I traveled to England with my family to visit my parents, brothers, and other relatives for two weeks. While connecting and relaxing were the trip’s main goals, I also wanted to learn about how England deals with homelessness. What I found out was depressing.In London, I spoke with Maze, a homeless man who had fled his hometown when his life was threatened. He let me know that there was one drop in center in the city, but that it was only open for four hours a day. Other than that, he had to find libraries or museums to pass the hours. I was even more surprised when he said that there were no overnight shelters in London. I asked where he spent the nights, and he explained his methods for finding shelter from the weather in doorways or similar spots. Did the churches help, I asked. No, he said, they didn’t provide any programs to help the homeless. He really couldn’t spend time in the churches either, since the buildings were either closed during the day, or he had to pay to get in since many of them are tourist sites. Finally, I asked about his safety, and he confirmed that being homeless in a big city is extremely dangerous. In all, it was a depressing conversation, and not what I wanted to hear.Maze did mention that some cities are more helpful than London. City councils will often pay for a homeless person to stay in a hotel or bed and breakfast, but he added that they usually send the individual to a hotel in a different town. The aid includes a one-way bus ticket out of town.I tried to speak with another homeless man, but as soon as I sat down beside him on the sidewalk, he grabbed his phone and pretended to take a call. I think he expected me to [...]
PCH: What Did You Just Say?
By MARTI MALTBY Part of the Peace House Community Journal Marti Maltby Recently, a discussion about bathrooms at Peace House Community took a strange turn. I and several community members were talking about the problem we have with individuals camping out in the bathrooms. We have two bathrooms and we serve about 120 members a day, so we need everyone to get in and out quickly. The discussion migrated to the lack of public bathrooms in general. One of the members said that, in all of downtown Minneapolis, the only bathrooms that homeless individuals can easily access are at the library and the hospital. All the other buildings and stores prevent non-customers from using their facilities. There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons behind this, from prejudice to drug use to the inconvenience of cleaning up after someone tries to take a shower in a sink.As we discussed the situation, someone said, “Yeah, there are just a few people who ruin it for the rest of us.” She meant that when a few people abuse a privilege, everyone risks losing that privilege. I’m sure we’ve all experienced a similar situation at some point. One kid acts up in class so the whole class has to stay in during recess. One customer is rude to a waiter so the restaurant manager tells everyone at the table to leave. We all understood what she was saying.In this case, though, there was more to the comment. It took a few moments for me to realize how surreal her statement was. The “it” she was referring to was homelessness. How do you ruin homelessness? It’s not like homelessness is a benign situation that people tolerate or even enjoy. How do you take daily harassment, marginalization, poverty, hunger, poor health, filth, and the possibility of dying of heat stroke because you have to walk miles in 90 degree weather to meet your basic needs, and make it worse? Well, taking away public bathrooms is a pretty good strategy, I guess.Now, I know that the places that have closed off [...]
PHC: The Absurd Society
By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby This morning, one of Peace House Community’s members stopped by to say hi. He hadn’t been here for a few months, and I was glad to see him. When I asked how he was doing, he smiled, said, “I’m doing alright”, and held up his hands to show me that all his fingers had been amputated this winter because of frostbite. I expressed sorrow at his situation, but he continued smiling and said, “Oh, you know how it is being homeless. This happens. But I’ve learned how to sign my name. I can use a fork now.” After a few more minutes of chatting he left to get on with his day, and I came back inside to try to make sense of what I had just seen and heard.Every winter, people lose anything from their fingers to their lives because one of the richest states in the richest country in the world can’t figure out how to pay for proper housing. We’re more comfortable watching some people suffer so that others can live luxurious lives than we are with solving this problem.As someone whose wife has Amazon Prime, and who can get almost anything they want without leaving their living room, I am one of the ones with a luxurious life. I don’t usually think of myself that way, but if I’m honest, my life is so soft and easy that living almost anywhere else or at any other point in history would probably kill me within a year because of all the effort I would have to put into just getting food and water for the day.Because I’m so used to having it easy, I complain when the server is slow bringing my food at a restaurant, or when I get stuck behind someone who wants to write a check to pay for their groceries. In my saner moments, I ask what sort of self-centered jerk I am to complain about my troubles when others face life and death struggles on my doorstep.At the same time, I have to shake my head at the society that produced the conversation I had with my friend. How bad have things gotten that, in the United States, someone [...]
