We must do more to fight homelessness

If you read this column regularly, you may be weary of hearing us cheer for the good people here who make this Valley great. Forgive us, but we’re back at it again today.

We are here to laud the efforts of Burchell High School students, staff and their network of volunteers who are giving one young family a gift that will benefit at least two generations of our Valley neighbors.

For most among us it is beyond our ability to imagine the cruel reality of being a 15-year-old homeless girl. Most of us can count among our blessings that we have never been homeless, never been even truly hungry. Most of us were chaffing under our parents’ curfew at 15, too blinded by our inexperience to know such boundaries are one of the ways parents show they love their children.

But the challenges of being a homeless teen that we struggle to comprehend are what many Valley teens know as daily life. Melissa McGraw is one our Valley youth who has been fending for herself for the past five years, since she was 15.

Now 20, she’s recently married to her longtime boyfriend and mother to 3-year-old Brooklyn. She’s a senior in high school and about to move into her new home. It’s not a fancy place, but every inch of it was built with love. Every board, every nail, every piece of Sheetrock hung and mudded by a community that cares too much to leave this family to slog along through another winter.

It is our shame, though, that she first spent five years as a homeless teen before we as a community rose up to help. It is our shame that McGraw’s story is one of dozens of homeless teens in our community.

What Burchell principal Adam Mokelke and guidance counselor Michelle Overstreet did was organize an effort to give this family hope for their future, and a safe place from which to make their start in the world.

We would do more. We would see our community work together to identify how families and teens end up homeless here. We would see our caring neighbors work to strengthen the safety net to keep more families in their homes, no matter how humble.

While we are proud to live in this caring community where neighbors help neighbors build a shelter in which to raise a family, the reality is we must do more.

It wasn’t that long ago homelessness was an anomaly in the Valley. Projects like this feel good. But beyond these grand gestures, we have a moral imperative as a community to address the root causes of homelessness.