Richard Carbone had spent what seemed like hours shooting the breeze with, oh, a dozen or so other men and women who’d found their way out of the cold one morning last month.
Over hot cups of coffee, they opined on everything from politics to building relations, and for all the time, no one once tried shooing them away. They were homeless but this place felt oddly like home.
As Carbone walked away that December morning, he told me, he was warmed by a friend’s heartfelt sentiment. It was the first time, the friend said, he’d felt hope.
Hope.
It’s a small word to which we don’t afford much value, but when felt, pays big dividends.
It doesn’t just make us feel good. It’s good for us.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” reads Proverbs 13:12, “but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
When we’re hopeful, we’re happier, we perform better in school, we even live longer. Hope gets us through tough times and helps us meet our goals, fulfill our dreams.
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I remember reading a study some years ago that concluded that hope accounts for 14% of productivity in the workplace — more than intelligence, optimism or self-efficacy and in fact a hopeful person does one day a week more work than a less hopeful person in a week.
Michelle Gerald knows something about that. It is why she founded Hope’s House in the first place, why she had to include the concept in the very name.
Hope, Gerald said, is what had been missing in the men and women she met over the years as a social worker.
Then after years as a mental health case manager, she was contemplating opening a boarding home when one day in October 2018 the passion for such a venture suddenly vanished.
“I had no understanding of why at the time, but it became clear about a week later during a session I had with an individual on my caseload that was homeless,” Gerald remembered recently. “We got into a discussion about the many resources available in Rome, and I questioned him about resources the homeless and underserved population would benefit from that Rome doesn’t have and then it all made sense.”
Because the vast majority of homeless shelters shut down between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. and don’t reopen until around 6 p.m., the need is great for a safe place to go, for constructive activities to engage in outside of searching for employment and housing as required by the homeless shelters.
For Rome’s homeless population, that’s changed. All are welcome to spend the day at Hope’s House, the day shelter that sits on the corner of North Fifth Avenue and West 12th Street near downtown.
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Gerald hopes this place, which operates on individual and private donations, will soon be known as the Walmart of support services for the homeless and underserved in Floyd County. For seven hours of every weekday, they’re encouraged not only to feel at home and all that that means, but access the resources they need to pull themselves up and out of their circumstance.
If they need help weaning themselves off drugs, Hope’s House wants to provide it. If they need help finding a job, they will get it here. If they need a dose of hope to feel good about themselves or a place just to sit and talk, of course, that’s here too.
Since its official opening on Dec. 10, more than 110 homeless men and women have sought refuge here, 34-year-old Carbone included.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When 56-year-old Gerald of Dallas decided to leave her work at Highland Rivers, a mental health agency, last year, she’d seen more than enough individuals “doing things they didn’t need to be engaged in — panhandling, being a nuisance, walking the street, getting high.”
She wanted desperately to somehow fix that, to close the gap in services her individuals had helped her see in this community.
“I was all about the need,” she said.
Carbone, who has been homeless on and off for 14 years, said he found his way to Hope’s House just two weeks ago when a friend shared the news.
“It’s better than any other place I’ve seen,” he said. “I just enjoy what Michelle is trying to do here.”
Before finding Hope’s House, he said, he had to leave the shelter every morning at 8:30 and couldn’t come back until 5:30 p.m.
“Instead of being out in the cold all day long, I come here and fill out job applications on my phone, engage in conversations and help out,” he said. “I take out the trash, help serve a meal, things like that.”
Carbone said that his greatest hope is to find a job, get his driver’s license reinstated and see his children again.
Gerald is trying to help him accomplish those goals.
Carbone is hopeful for the first time in a long while.
Gerald, too.
“This is a God thing,” she said. “Every time I questioned whether I’ve bit off more than I can chew, he has put what I need in place to reaffirm I am doing what he put me in a position to do.”
And every time she hears stories like Carbone’s and the hope he finds here, she can’t help but smile.
“That’s what I wanted to happen,” Gerald said. “That’s what I wanted people to feel.”
Hope.
Find Gracie on Facebook (www.facebook.com/graciestaplesajc/) and Twitter (@GStaples_AJC) or email her at gstaples@ajc.com.
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