When Compassion Fails

by

A United Methodist Insight Special

I knew something was wrong when I saw our neighbors' household goods out on their lawn. Alarmed, I threw on some sandals and went next door.

Our neighbor, let's call him Walter, came to the door. When I asked if something was wrong, he told me that he, his disabled sister we'll call Helen, and her son Mike were being evicted from their home of more than a decade.

I was stunned. They'd lived next to us along with their father and brother, we'll call them James and Leo. They'd owned the house together, or so they thought. James died a. year ago and Lee over the summer. Without their extra disability income, Helen and Walter were behind on the rent they paid to another brother. It turned out the house's ownership had gone to Lee's son, who had sold the house a month earlier to one of those "we buy ugly houses" realty companies.

When Walter told me the tale of their situation, I burst into tears. They'd been good neighbors. We watched out for each other. Walter picked up packages off our front step so the "porch pirates" that follow delivery trucks wouldn't steal then. Helen and I bonded over the fact that we both have diabetes and must keep out of the Texas heat.

We were friends. The differences in our skin colors meant nothing. We were friends and neighbors, and now they'd been evicted.

Walter said Helen had gone to rent a truck to move their belongings into storage, so he didn't have the legal papers that said they had to move. That's when I sprang into action.

I called our pastor and left a message. I called the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center and left a message. I found out on the EAC's website that tenants have rights, and that they couldn't be evicted without due legal process.

When Helen got back with a rental truck, she showed me a "landlord's seven-day notice of eviction" and a legal order from the justice of the peace court. Helen said the realtor working with them told her that he'd abide by their verbal agreement to give them more time to work out their legal entanglement and that she didn't have to come to court if she didn't want to.

Then, Helen and Walter's nephew sold the house out from under them.

As I said, Helen has diabetes; she can drive, but they have no car. She has no attorney, and no title company was willing to help Walter and Helen claim what they thought was their inheritance – the modest home in which they'd lived – because of outstanding mechanical liens for maintenance. She trusted the realtor.

Then the eviction notice came, two weeks ahead of their scheduled court date to resolve the ownership issue. Walter said the process server threatened them with being removed by constables if they weren't out of the house by 1 p.m. the next day.

There was nothing we could do except hug and cry and make sure we had each other's phone numbers.

By 1:30, as they began to load up the truck, I'd heard back only from our pastor, who was laid up after a medical procedure. I called the community service agency he recommended, where it happens one of our church members works. I left her a message.

As I write this, it's 2:30 p.m. Walter and Mike and his girlfriend are loading up the rental truck to take their possessions to storage. John and I are unable to help physically because of our respective disabilities.

No one has responded to me except our pastor, who's laid up.

I cried for 20 minutes after John and I came back inside. I was soaked with perspiration from standing in the 90-degree Texas weather, trying to read complicated legal papers with Helen and figure out some way to stop the eviction. There was nothing.

Now I do the only thing I know how to do: tell the story of our next-door neighbors and their plight. There are so many more factors at work than what I know, family disputes and verbal agreements and lack of finances and legal knowledge.

My intuition makes me suspect that my neighbors have been bamboozled by people who know how to work the legal process to their advantage. My newly awakened sense of my white privilege tells me my neighbors are being victimized by a legal system set up not to protect the vulnerable, but to enrich the greedy and unscrupulous.

My heart breaks for Helen, Walter and Mike, and for John and me. Our neighborly relationship is being torn apart beyond our control.

Worse, hard as I've tried, there's nothing I can do to help them. My compassion has failed.

As Helen and her family packed up, I went searching for more answers. While my neighbors' situation is unique to them, the housing crisis in America is widespread.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as of January 2023, the last time for which statistics are available, there were more than 650,000 unhoused people in the United States. More than 111,000 of them were children.

To their credit, some United Methodist churches have taken bold steps to deal with the lack of affordable housing. Here in North Texas where we live, First UMC in Denton, about an hour north of us, voted in early 2023 to use two acres of church property downtown to build a 185-unit apartment complex.

"The development will be expressly for families who can’t afford soaring housing prices," said the Denton Record-Chronicle.

'Officials said renters eligible for a unit are part of a club no one wants to join: people who are asset-limited, income-constrained and employed," reported Lucinda Breeding-Gonzales. "That is, people who are working part-time or full-time jobs, but whose paycheck won’t cover rent in the city where they work."

More units are only part of the solution. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports: "The number of renter households paying more than 50 percent of their income on rent increased dramatically, rising over 12.6 percent between 2015 to 2022. People who identify as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic, Asian or ‘Some Other Race’ are more greatly impacted."

With their disabilities, Helen and Walter are unable to work even part-time. She said she used their Social Security disability checks to pay for food and utilities.

I discovered in trying to help our neighbors that the situation with Helen's family is only one part of the housing crisis in America.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling this summer that allows local governments to remove unhoused persons from public spaces has prompted more United Methodists to look for ways to solve the housing crisis, reported Heather Hahn of UM News. In a July 2 article she cited these examples:

A brief survey found additional examples of building and advocacy:

  • In March this year, Silver Spring United Methodist Church in Maryland announced several non-profit partners to build affordable housing in the downtown Silver Spring area. The church's pastor Will Green said the collaboration could build as many as 160 units.
  • Clark Memorial United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tenn., celebrated beginning a new affordable housing program in August. Six newly built affordable units were constructed on church property.
  • United Methodist Insight's sponsoring congregation, St. Stephen UMC in Mesquite, Texas, led a community effort in 2022 and 2023 to help organize residents of a seriously degraded apartment complex where public health was threatened. In addition, two dozen members testified to the city council on behalf of a developer of affordable housing, but his application for zoning change was denied. This past summer, the City of Mesquite approved its first affordable apartment complex.

No solution is happening fast enough to help our dear neighbors, who left piles of discarded household goods on the curb to be picked up as trash – or picked over by the "recyclers" who trawl our neighborhood. They're moving in with Mike's girlfriend in a two-bedroom apartment. Helen said she'll sleep on the couch. She said they'll make room for Walter somehow; he doesn't want to go with them, but he has nowhere else to go.

I wanted to take them in ourselves – or Walter at least – but Helen had made a plan, and I wasn't going to be a "white savior" and usurp her authority. Still, I haven't given up. I'm waiting for those callbacks, and if I don't get them, I'll call again.

I promised Helen I'd call her in a couple of days to see how they're doing. I hope by then I have some help for them that won't rip away their dignity or subject them to bureaucratic hassles.

Meanwhile, I weep in anger and frustration as I wait and pray.

Veteran religion journalist Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online news-and-views journalism she founded in 2011 to amplify the voices of marginalized and under-served United Methodists.