About me
"Love your neighbor as yourself.”
You’ve heard the phrase before, but perhaps, like me, you always thought it was a neat phrase, but… a bit too... abstract. I’ve glossed over those words dozens of times. However, I remember the day my idea of who I thought a “neighbor” was, completely shattered. It was on my first day working at a recovery program, I encountered people that, up to that point, I had not considered neighbors. But when I looked into their eyes, and heard their stories, I realized that they were people just like me.. And I realized that they were my neighbors. Over the next four years working at the recovery program, I came to see more and more God’s value and love of every individual regardless of circumstance, and it helped clarify my own call to love my neighbor.
The biggest need in our community of Elgin is housing and homelessness. I believe that God has equipped me over the past four years to help lead the charge to solve issues related to this problem. By building deep and meaningful relationships with organizations that provide services as well as people who want or need access to them, I want to make sure that my neighbors are loved and cared for in the best way possible. I’ve joined One Collective to do just that. Love my neighbors.
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Over the last few years, I have lived in Elgin and I have been working at a Bible-based recovery program in Aurora, Illinois. During my time there, I have encountered hundreds of men, from all walks of life, who are searching for that holistic ministry that Jesus offers. Being able to build relationships with the men and encouraging them along their journey has been one of my favorite things. What breaks my heart the most, is that those men I have encountered represent such a small fraction of the greater issue of homelessness. When it comes to loving people, there is no room for politics, and yet our society has politicized the care for others. There are people living in squalor on the streets, unable to get plugged into the help they actually need and are largely invisible to most people. The reality is that the issue is a 5-minute walk from our apartment by the downtown area. The neighbors that Jesus tells us to love, are living on the streets just a few blocks away.
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To see lives changed.
We want to foster greater collaboration among the local social and mental health services, local government, non-profits, and churches to work together in addressing the issue of homelessness in Elgin. We would like to help bring more unity and direction to the local community and the organizations within Elgin empowering transformation from within, ultimately moving those that are homeless into housing. The long-term, big audacious goal, is to develop a simple, yet robust model to better address homelessness that can be replicated in other towns and cities. -
I currently run a space for collaborative casework where caseworkers from different organizations, volunteers, and city employees come together to talk about unsheltered individuals to make sure there’s no duplication of services and that people have easy access to services they want.
I have also been developing several different shelter and housing models. Currently, there is no year-round emergency shelter. This means people who don’t have an ID, substance use problem, or criminal background have nowhere to go. The only time they can go somewhere is the warming shelter in the winter when temperatures reach below 15º.
There is also lack of housing stock. The vacancy rate in Elgin is less than **half** a percent, which means it’s easier for an 18 year old to get into Harvard than it is for them to get into an apartment. It’s almost impossible for anyone to find an affordable place to live which makes moving unsheltered individuals into housing even more impossible.