Open Doors

I just learned something that shocked me. The number of people in Kalamazoo County living on incomes below the poverty line grew from 12 percent in 1999 to 20.5 percent in 2010. There were 27,483 people living below the poverty line in 1999. By 2010 this number had increased to 49,724, an increase of 22,241 men, women, and children living in the misery of poverty. This represents a 71 percent increase over the decade.

I’m surprised that I had not heard about this huge increase in local poverty. I learned about it from reading a report prepared by the Kalamazoo County Community Action Agency called “Poverty in Kalamazoo County — 2012 Update.”

Did you know that our county had such a huge increase in poverty over the first decade of this century? How did you find out about it?

Our tagline at Open Doors is “Building Relationships. Overcoming Homelessness.”

We offer emergency and affordable long-term housing to people without homes. But housing is not enough. We also need to offer personal support. We need to be willing to be in personal partnership with the people we serve.

In 1970 our founders felt that to really help someone you need to get to know them. So they organized the Open Door as a way to get to know people and learn how to be helpful neighbors to them. I admire our founders for this insight, and I’m happy to say that I think we are continuing to live by it.

This commitment to relationship presents us with challenges. As we grow and so many more people live in our housing, how do we keep building personal relationships with each resident? How do we help those relationships become deep and meaningful?

Relationships take time. We get to know our partners by listening to stories from the past. We also need to be available to hear about the challenges and successes our partners are experiencing now. And our hearts need to be open to our partners’ dreams for the future.

While relationship-building challenges us, it is also part of what makes our life together at Open Doors so rewarding.