Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Restoring city streets with dwellings. . .


For the past two days I've been in Houston, Texas attending the Supportive Housing Institute Texas, sponsored by the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), one of our best national partners.

I found myself pretty well sequestered in a conference room with about 35 people who devote themselves to the enterprise of developing permanent supportive housing for very low-income residents of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

Quite a bunch!

I mean, think about trying to pull housing out of the ground from, from, well, often from seemingly nothing. . .for a living!

We've now spent four days over the past five weeks working on the design of a new housing development plan. It has been beneficial to be away and to be forced to focus on the planning.

As I listened and watched and learned, I realized that I was seated in a group of dedicated, highly creative, extremely hard-working, largely unsung housing providers for some of the weakest and most fragile citizens among us.

My other impression--not a new one, actually--was the recognition of just how hard these projects are to pull off.

No one in that little hotel conference room would ever dream of giving up.

Really great people.

My mind drifted to a very old text from Isaiah. Something about the people of God being known as "restorers of streets with dwellings" (58:12).

Glad to be among these folks. Grateful to CSH for pulling the Institute together. We will conclude come September with three more days together in Austin.

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