Well, it's been a long road!
It started back in 2008, before even meeting my wife. I had started a non-profit corporation with which to buy a fixer upper house. I had in mind a charitable outreach, but was still wrestling with my own alcoholism. It would not be until 2012 that the first house was fixed up enough to be useful for anything, it having been a condemned house and $25,000 worth of repairs having had to have been put in.
I had bought it for $8,000, and it was missing half a roof, all the windows were broke, the plumbing was gone, the electrical system hopelessly outdated, the furnace broke, the water heater broke, nothing at all intact except the frame itself.
But in 2012, my wife and I finally had the first house done, and were working on acquiring and renovating the second one that was just next door. It was not officially condemned, though it may as well have been. A lot of work later, removing trash - the deceased former owner had been a hoarder - and it still was not ready.
At the end of 2014, with the second house only just paid for and cleaned out, and needing, well, pretty much everything done to it, we had a choice to make. If we stayed in the first house, it would be another two years - at least - before we could fix up the second house.
On the other hand, if we moved into the house with no electricity and plumbing done, we could immediately start aiding people in the first house. We prayed a lot about that, and after much discussion and prayer, we made the jump.
With half a dozen very long extension cords stretching from outlets in the first house and the electrified shed behind the first house all the way to the second house, we were able to have power for lights. By filling a lot of gallon jugs with water from the hose at the first house, we could have flush toilets. We moved in, leaving most of the furnishing behind, for the guests we'd soon be having.
And never looked back.
Yes, it was difficult at first, we being new to such an enterprise as running a sober living home. The first few months, we got zero dollars in program fees. We learned then that getting those fees up front was pretty important!
Yes, it was difficult at first, we being new to such an enterprise as running a sober living home. The first few months, we got zero dollars in program fees. We learned then that getting those fees up front was pretty important!
Just before it got too cold, we got the plumbing done to the extent of there being cold running water. Which meant being able to flush the toilet without filling the tank manually. We got some basic electricity done, enough to drop down to only three extension cords coming from the first house. We could plug in a refrigerator and the stove. Still had to unplug the coffee pot to plug in the microwave.
Got a gym membership for hot showers, but had a water heater donated after a not so comfortable winter!
But best of all in all this was we were actually helping people! That first winter we aided eight people. We've aided dozens more since, and this house is only now nearing completion. (In that now it is only lacking gutters, four new windows and some more electrical work to make the basement more livable.) So had we waited, there'd have been 40 plus less people aided!
How did we get the houses and get them repaired? Living in each house as it was being fixed helped. We obviously use our own money on this, and are the largest "donors" to our own non-profit. But we also have received a great deal of aid from those who have valued what we are doing.
Sometimes that has been money donations. Even more often labor donated, or appliances, or clothes or toiletries or furnishings or blankets or such. Thus our budget is satisfied by the program fees charged the guests aided ($50 a week, it covers everything including internet and washer/dryer on site), some private donations here and there now and then, and each month from our own pocket.
Given that the program fees have a guest paying $200 a month, we ourselves spend at a minimum $400 per month and have no more room than the guests. More privacy, obviously, but no greater standard of living. That is in this what started as a one story one bedroom home, my wife and I are living in the top part, and the fixed up basement will hold two. One is already there, currently. When it's fully fixed up, two.
See, each house has two people per bedroom. In our by laws, salaries for directors or anyone in the non-profit are forbidden. We believe that charitable outreach should come from the heart, and that there doesn't need to be salaries for doing good. Thus are "administrative costs" are zero, as are our advertising costs. Money donated goes to aid those in need. Period.
Are we done? Hardly. Besides the fixing up the rest of what remains to be fixed up, there'll be improvements. For curbside appeal and just generally making the places nicer for the guests. We're also starting on a more general outreach in which we'll be collecting and acquiring food and clothing and then coordinating with aid agencies such that a given number of people per month can be aided with food assistance and clothing assistance.
We'll also be coordinating with other agencies to be available to help people with resume writing, learning how to go to an interview, filling out various aid applications, aid in acquiring lost/stolen IDs (there's a lot of call for that, a person is helpless without ID nowadays) and more.
Oh, and while it may well be two years down the road, we hope for a third house at a given point.
So here we are. Lately we have re-branded ourselves, as the last name we had was too specific to a church that while many people there had been kind to us, neither of us are actually affiliated with. We could then have avoided any further difficulties and had a name so generic as to be nothing to do with any church or faith, but that's not where our hearts are.
Both my wife and I recognize the need of a church home, and that ours should always be a faith based ministry. I in particular have felt strongly called to be a member of the Seventh-day Adventists. I'm not one to change churches lightly, and at this stage in my life - 48 - am not up for changing ever again. It was a long road getting home to this church, home to where I need to be.
I have elsewhere in this blog described the quarter of a century faith journey that led me to the Seventh-day Adventists (or back!), and so now, stand or fall, till the trump calls, here my wife and I will be, aiding alcoholics as always, aiding addicts as always, aiding others in general as always, but now in the spirit of the charitable giving efforts that Seventh-day Adventists are already known for world-wide.
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