Another Kind of Home...

The headlines have been filled with sad stories of hardworking homeowners who watch housing values plummet, fall underwater in their mortgage, then see their jobs disappear, until finally their home is foreclosed. This blow to the American Dream has happened for some years now, up and down the income spectrum – but it can also happen to the homeless.

Ralph did not own a home or have enough cash to rent an apartment, so he became a regular at the Homeless Services Center. He had found an old car to get around and hold his stuff. He often slept in that car.

Unfortunately Ralph kept parking his car at the Center, where all spaces are reserved. He was told that he had to park on the street, fifty feet away. He resisted for a long time, until finally he confided in me that if he parked on the street, the car would be stolen, because it couldn’t be locked, and he’d lose all his stuff.

This was one of those times when I hated to enforce the rules, when I felt a temptation to be a softie. But rules exist for a reason, and I knew the slippery slope of letting even one car onto the lot. Also, I didn’t actually believe that his car would be stolen, since it was hardly worth stealing, and I doubted that his stuff would fetch much on the market.

I was wrong.

After a few days of dancing around the rules, Ralph finally agreed to move his car, and he did. The next day when he came in for coffee, I asked how he was doing.

"They stole my car. Everything is gone."

Man, I felt like a heel. I realized that if the stuff was valuable to him, then it was undoubtedly valuable to someone else, not for sale, but for use.

When Ralph told me about the theft, with downcast eyes and a catch in his voice, I realized that this man had lost his home. No, it may not have been a $450,000 home in the North End, or a $1500 a month apartment, or even a walk-up efficiency with shared bath, but it was his home. His own home.

The dollar value is not always the point. Trim lawns and lush bushes are not the point either. It’s about having some small patch under control in a huge world that often feels out of control.

A man’s home is his castle, says the old proverb, and the implication is that a man’s home becomes his very own castle, even if its turret is a radio antenna and its walls are front and rear bumpers. Inside his car or castle, a man feels in charge of his world, "the master of his fate, the captain of his soul," as Henley wrote.

As much as any foreclosed six-figure earner, Ralph is a casualty of a harsh world.