Welcome to the (soon-to-be) New Residents of Clare Terrace! — October 26, 2015
We asked Epstein, a Clare Housing resident and writer, to imagine what he’d like to say to the 36 new residents of Clare Terrace who will be moving in this December. Here’s what he wrote.
Congratulations on winning the lottery for placement in Clare Housing! No one deserves to be homeless. If you’ve been on a waiting list for as long as five years it might feel as if you are being punished for a wrong you’ve never committed.
No doubt the hoopla and chaos of moving into and living in a new place is both a joyous and stressful time. Not to mention that you’ll be in the midst of the holiday season and the start of Minnesota’s harsh months of winter weather. I wish you all of the best in these efforts.
Soon you will be settled into a comfortable routine. You can decide the best place to keep each of your furnishings and personal items and know that these will be found where you left them. And you will have mastered the routes for getting to the store, to the doctor and to visit a friend living in another part of town.
No doubt there are new rules and staff roles with which to become acquainted. Hopefully these will guide you in adjusting to sharing the common spaces with your apartment neighbors and to form a community within the other residents, counting on one another for moments of companionship and support.
Yes, I’m pouring on a bit too thick. It’s such a paradox.
We’re the lucky ones to call Clare Housing home. So many others, equally worthy, remain homeless or exist in unhealthy situations. They may be HIV positive or perhaps they are affected by other health conditions. Each of us faces a life complicated by poverty. I’m fortunate – and I know this. On my good days, I try to find some way to help another in need … some volunteer activity, donation or random act of kindness. On my bad days I isolate myself – going quiet, maybe staying alone in my room, maybe ignoring another person or focusing instead on my physical or emotional pain.
There is no expectation that living at Clare Housing means I have to like its rules, love the other tenants or be the perfect poster child. After living in Clare Housing for seven years I have come to realize that my relationship with them is unlike any landlord tenant, roommate or health care patient role I’ve known in the past. It’s like being in a family, but not really. It’s something like living in a college dorm, but not exactly. Maybe someday someone will capture Clare Housing’s essence in a Best Exotic Marigold Hotel style movie.
First and foremost, life at Clare Housing has given me structure, stability and support.
Those are likely to be empty words until you’ve been here long enough to see the benefits. With time you’ll notice your healing and increased ability to sort out issues and solve problems. What once seemed overwhelming starts to become a problem list and then becomes a list of strategies to use to address each concern.
And the day may come when suddenly you realize that you’re no longer just surviving one day to the next; rather you’re able to plan for the next season, the next year and even further. That’s the benefit of healing – the security of knowing you have the luxury of looking forward into your own future and being able to plan what to do with it.
I wish you nothing but the best.
Epstein