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Flood.
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There ya go. Updated.
If you'd like more than the abridged version of the story, read on (or do a toddler read through of the rest of this post by only looking at the pictures, which are gnarly). But honestly, you don't have to. "Flood" is really all you need to know.
But for the unabridged version, we must rewind to... oh... December. Right around when I wrote that last post. I went home for a wonderful Christmas with the family and spent some time in a climate that actually experiences winter. I also spent my first ever New Year's with Ryan (three years in the making).
As I was prepping my belongings and myself to board a flight back to Phoenix, I got a panicked phone call from my roommate Krystle. I kid you not, her exact words were, "it's raining from the ceiling."
I had known that Phoenix had gotten some bad weather over New Years, so I figured it was raining and there was a leak in the roof.
Oh no.
Phoenix had gotten some REALLY bad weather and abnormal cold (remember how I just said I went home to a location that actually experiences winter? Apparently Phoenix does too in freak apocalyptic storms), which actually froze and burst our pipes. And because nobody was home over New Year's weekend, they had been spewing water without stopping for several days.
After inspecting the house and proclaiming that the water damage to it would make it "unlivable,"our landlord told us we had to be out immediately and no, we couldn't come back.
And this, my friends, is what the house looked like.
Ironic, right? Half of our household works with homeless populations. And here we were. Homeless.
Bummer.
The following week was probably one of the longest and most difficult weeks I've ever experienced. It was filled with a lot of stress and a lot of questions. And while I'll never publish this thought in a JVC magazine or newsletter (in yo' face!), I'm sure several of these questions are ones my own clients think through before they ever come knocking on our door for services.
"Where were we going to live?"
"How much money do we have right now?"
"Do we have any friends who could take us in?"
Of course, our situation had an additional question of, "Was it our fault the pipes burst?"
... But that's a different story.
We didn't hear much from JVC, other than a phone call from our Program Coordinator saying she was really busy, but would help how she could. She said it would take us less than a month to find a new place (and we were foolish enough to believe her). She also reminded us she was really busy. And would be sending us a care package — with ponchos, mind you, as insensitive as that is — but was really busy, so she didn't know when she would be able to send it. Oh. And she was really busy (JVC, hope you're reading this. Leave me comments of hatred if you are).
Luckily, we were fortunate enough to be offered a week's worth of temporary housing through the local parish. They had a retreat center — previously Jesuit housing for the parish priests. In other words, it rocked.
There were 4 bedrooms, 4 beds and 5 housemates. As the charitable heart that I am, I volunteered to take the couch, not realizing that we were going to be there more than a couple of nights. Although I wasn't thrilled with the sleeping arrangements, the Jesuit house itself was incredible. Along with its many bedrooms, it had enough bathrooms that I lost count and it had a huge kitchen, which was also very practically stocked with absolutely no pots and pans. So we spent the first few nights of our homelessness eating out. We ate better meals as homeless JVs than we did as stably-housed JVs.
A week went by at the Jesuit center and we knew we were wearing out our welcome. CASS, my employer, is the placement in charge of finding housing for the JVs. Conveniently, CASS had just purchased an apartment complex that it is slowing fixing up in order to permanently house families who are leaving our family shelter. Basically, successful families who have found jobs and saved their money at our shelter can move into this apartment complex and sign a yearly lease. The apartments are designed to be a continuation of our shelter program. They can still meet with a case manager if they choose; there's an after school program; and when the complex is complete, it's going to have new playgrounds and a family center added to it.
When it's all done come December-ish (you know how construction goes...), the place is going to be gorgeous. Right now, it's not much to look at. Many of the apartments are in poor condition (read: a dump), but we were very lucky to get two apartments that are in pretty good shape.
These two apartments were to serve as our TEMPORARY housing solution, so we would have a place to stay while the administrators and JVC worked to find us a permanent home.
We have one apartment that is one bedroom and one apartment that is two bedrooms. The boys took the one bedroom apartment and converted the living room into Eddie's personal Mancave. The girls took the two bedroom, and I suddenly have a roommate again. Word.
With our new digs, it was time to get rid of a lot of our old digs (read: crap that was in the old house).
The house that was Formerly Casa Truth had been a JV house since the early 1990s. As a result, roughly 20 years of crap had piled up in the cupboards and closets. We had done a good job of ignoring it while we were living there, but our landlord was now threatening to not pay back our January rent and to continue to charge us for each and every day ANY of our stuff (Read: Previous JV's junk that got left behind when they moved out) was left in the house.
So we got a 40 foot dumpster... and filled it to the brim.
Now, I'll tell you what. There was a lot of sh*t in that house. I'm not going to even try to sugarcoat it with flowery language. It was just baaaaaad. And I don't think any one of us in Former Casa Truth was looking forward to the task that fell solely on us (seriously, nobody came to help) of having to go through it all. But we made a pact with one another. If we couldn't justifiably explain to another housemate within 3 seconds why the object should be kept, it would be tossed. Soon, the pact fell to one second or less. Then, the pact fell to "oh hell, just throw it away now."
There you go, JVC. Living simply. Former Casa Truth single-handedly put a hole in the Ozone by the amount of crap we sent to the landfill that day.
But the sound of shattering glass on the inside of that dumpster was glorious.
In case you haven't noticed by now, I'm a little bitter towards JVC. Mind you, I love my job, I love my clients, I love my housemates. I'm only bitter (read: disgruntled, read: very perturbed, read: F'ing pissed) with the JVC Southwest staff, because we received very little support from them — especially in the first couple of days we were homeless. It's no secret that this whole situation has not been handled very well. And despite attempts to correct the situation's handling in more recent days, it still has not been handled very well. There's been a lack of communication, a lack of organization, and a lack of... help.
That's the simple way to phrase it. As I was describing to one of my housemates yesterday, I went into this year with so many hopes and goals for myself. Yet, six months into my JVC year, the only word I can use to describe my JVC experience thus far is "jaded." And it's not because I hate my placement, the people I'm serving, or my housemates. It's because JVC staff have left me feeling like I'm disposable and ultimately not as important as their next year of recruits — or the $500+ these recruits can bring in to the JVC organization through Send Me to Serve fundraising.
I'm doing my best to not turn this blog post into an Anti-JVC rant, but I have a lot of pent-up frustration, so if I slip every once in a while, just go with it.
Anywho, the sacred action of throwing away many of these symbolic JVC objects from our JVC house, released more frustration than we could have ever dreamed of. What we thought would be an all-day event of cleaning the house out, only took several hours because that's how long it took us to load up an arm-full of crap, walk to the dumpster, hurl it in (and listen to the satisfying sound of all of these objects shatter into thousands of pieces), and walk back inside to repeat the process. Unfortunately, Greg and I "accidentally" lost our JVC cross necklaces in the threshold of said dumpster and they are now lost forever. Too bad.
We spent one more evening at our incredibly swank (that's a word, yes?) former Jesuit retreat center. And then we moved into our new temporary apartment, with the help of 2 incredible gracious workers from Catholic Charities, who were the only people to help us at all in the moving process. The new apartments aren't bad. We have a small bug problem... er... a problem with small bugs.
We also soon found that we had probably gotten a little too carried away with the objects we had disposed of in the dumpster. We found ourselves scrambling to the CASS donation sheds, searching for plates, bowls and other dishes. We also realized we had no cleaning supplies or even any trash cans. Quick! "To the cloud!" I mean, to the dollar store! (Sorry, poor attempt at a pop culture reference)
And after one week of living in the apartments, mysterious puddles started covering the floor in the kitchen and bathroom of the boys' apartment.
No, I'm not kidding.
Yes, the flood had followed us.
A pipe in the wall of the boys' apartment was leaking. The maintenance man remedied the leak after a couple days, but the boys were without a bathroom wall for several more weeks. Ironically enough (and I mean really "ironic," not the Alanis Morissette definition of "ironic"), the air conditioner in the girls' apartment also started leaking in the bathroom and created a mini flood. However, this was quickly fixed and not at all traumatizing.
Yet, the message seems clear. Anybody who may potentially be housing with one of the Casa Truth refugees now or in the future puts their home at risk; it does in fact seem like there is a Curse of the Flood, which is still following all 5 of us.
After moving into the apartments, we did settle back into a routine. Dinners started to be cooked again, instead of purchased at the fine dining locations of Taco Bell or Pizza Hut. We went to our JVC ReOrientation without much incident, although Casa Truth did try to gain as much sympathy from the other JVs as possible. Interestingly enough, that didn't prove to hard, as numerous houses have had their own issues themselves, and have similar (lack of) support from JVC staff.
Nonetheless, because we had found a location to live — at least temporarily — the stress and anxiety seemed to diminish ten-fold. We were living comfortably and that was enough, at least for now.
However, the greatest thing about our new, temporary apartments is that me and Becky have a much shorter commute to work. Instead of waking up at 6 a.m. and walking one-mile to the bus, riding for 40 minutes, and then walking another 1/2 mile, we now only have to walk about 5 minutes. Total. It rocks. I also seem to be gaining some weight, hmm...
All in all, there really haven't been any huge problems with the apartments. At the offset, we were worried that our "temporary" housing situation would soon turn into our "permanent" housing solution; we feared that with the way the situation had been handled thus far, JVC and the administrators would be satisfied enough with finding us this place to stay and may ultimately forget about us. Or if we weren't forgotten about, we feared the search for a new place would drag on for several more months; as a result, a new house would be set up for next year's incoming JVs, but as this year's JVs, we would never actually have any time in it. We pleaded with JVC to set a deadline for when we would be moved into New Casa Truth.
In the end, our talks at the end of January secured a March 1 deadline.
Yet, we found that all of us were comfortable in the apartments, and not surprisingly, we found ourselves approaching the March 1 deadline without a house (Oh look! It's Feb. 27 and we don't have one yet!). Because we were so comfortable in these apartments, we suggested to JVC and the administrators that we would be perfectly fine staying in our present living accommodations past March 1, providing more time to find a suitable house, instead of one that would be rushed into too quickly.
Unfortunately, there were new pressures adding to the situation.
When we first moved into the apartment complex, the vacant apartments could not be filled. At all. As case managers, neither me, Mike or Stephanie could convince any of our eligible families to apply. However, since January, we have gotten 4 new families into the apartments. With the trend set, now our clients are lined up at the door and we cannot submit applications fast enough. The apartment complex now has a wait list and, because they need the two apartments we're occupying, they want the JVs out as quickly as possible. Mind you, this makes perfect sense. None of us as JVs want to take away housing from families who need it more than we do.
The only problem is, we don't know where we're going to go.
Alas, it seems we will have to know by March 5, the day the apartment complex has extended us through. And, as my boss Billie said the other day, "we need to stay as close to that date as possible."
In other words, after March 5, we're screwed.
There have been several different possibilities that have been pursued by various different administrators. A former JV owned a house that was conveniently in need of a renter. But, the house also had a pool, which immediately sent up red flags against JVC's tenant of "Simple Living." The debate over the pool led to a bunch of confusion and miscommunication about the house being usable for our purposes. Several weeks later, when JVC (yep, I'm blaming you for this one again) finally told us that it was acceptable to have a pool, the house was no longer available. Everybody started scrambling to find rental possibilities again, but none of them seemed too promising.
A glimmer of hope arrived when the former JV who owned the other house decided he might be interested in purchasing another house to fit this year's and future JV's lifestyle.
We all saw the photos of said house and all of us began drooling.
Alas, it was not meant to be either. This past Tuesday, when he went to sign the final papers, he met the seller, who conveniently told him that he had decided to go with a different bidder.
And...
We were back to square one again.
Which is how it always seemed to go. Each time any housing possibility falls through, we are once again back to square one, without a back up plan. When we found about about that house falling through, it was February 22, one week before we are scheduled to be out of these apartments, and we were in no better of a situation then we were in the first week in January.
On the brink of being homeless.
The good news is we now have a realtor working on looking up listings and setting up showings. Keep in mind, Casa Truth contacted Mike the realtor, a former program support person, the first week of January. He immediately sent us listings, which we forwarded to the JVC staff and the administrators. We also passed along his email address a couple of times to multiple people. He was never contacted by any of these people. At all.
Until this past Tuesday. And in a matter of a couple of hours, he had found 9 more potential listings and set up 3 showings for later in the week.
Meanwhile, the JVC staff members can continue to feel good about themselves because they set up pointless and time-wasting conference calls (Oh shoot, anti-JVC rant has resurfaced!), including one in which JVC staff were the only participants not to show up. Oh, and both our program coordinator and program director will be in town next week to help us move into our (as of now) non-existent home.
But you know what they say, that's just water under the bridge.
