I still remember what it felt like to evacuate New Orleans for my first major hurricane threat, wondering if the house I was leaving behind would be there when I returned.
We had boarded up the windows and tried to put everything of value on the second floor. I tightly wrapped my favorite portrait of Jesus in a large garbage bag and stuck it on the top shelf of my bedroom closet.
That was 1998. Our house was fine. The hurricane turned to the east at the last minute and New Orleans was spared. Seven years later, the Gulf Coast was not so lucky.
I had since moved north, but many of my friends found themselves without a home—at best, for several weeks, some for several months, some for years. In their stories, I got a glimpse of what it is like to lose the security of one’s home.
It’s something many of us take for granted: a place to return to, at the end of a weary day, to find shelter from the cold and the rain. A place where you feel safe. A place that is uniquely yours.
Two of my friends and their families struggled to regain this concept of home after Katrina. Their stories exemplify the realities faced at the time by tens of thousands of families along the Gulf Coast.
One family found themselves in a Houston hotel room, quickly running through their meager savings. They were lucky to have a local church step in to help while they tried to wade through the morass of government assistance programs.
Another family ended up in one of the infamous FEMA trailers for over a year while their house was rebuilt. Both families endured many frustrations, indignities, and stresses. One couple divorced.
It’s tempting to think of the destruction along the Gulf Coast as a temporary, isolated incident. But more than one million families in the United States lost their homes to foreclosure in 2008. Millions more struggle to find affordable rental housing.
Every day, families and individuals who long to have a safe place to rest their head at the end of the day instead face the fear, the frustration, and the injustice of being a person without a home.
Read on to gain a better understanding of housing issues in the U.S. and to learn how you and your congregation can take action to help ensure that all of God’s people can “abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isaiah 32:18).
