Mecklenburg Ministries board member Ken Garfield, director of communications at Myers Park United Methodist Church, reports on Mecklenburg Ministries’ recent lunch program at Covenant Presbyterian Church: Homelessness To Housing – Models That Work And Why We Must Do More.

November is Homelessness Awareness Month across America, the perfect time to think about this issue while too many of our neighbors try to endure the season’s chill in some empty field. In Charlotte alone, there are 6,500 homeless men, women and children and 1,075 shelter beds during the cold season. Do the math: Who knows how many are left out in the cold, huddled under a highway overpass if they’re fortunate enough to find one that isn’t occupied.

So this month and all months, pray for the homeless and poor. Serve a meal at a shelter. Donate winter clothing to Crisis Assistance Ministry. Prod your house of worship to get involved if it isn’t already. At Myers Park United Methodist Church, where I serve, we’ve made affordable housing part of the long-range strategic plan. In this nation of great riches, push your political leaders to see homelessness for the scandal that is and then do something about it.

On the edge of winter, I’m warmed by the belief that we’re starting to get it, especially in Charlotte. Our newspaper has made fighting poverty a priority, in part a response to the United Way scandal that has put more pressure on the community to lift up the needy. Our shelters are expanding, though not nearly enough. On a variety of fronts, Charlotte is addressing the issue in a way that goes deeper than handing a blanket to a neighbor whose life has been shattered by mental illness, addiction or some other hell.

Such vision fueled a Mecklenburg Ministries gathering at Covenant Presbyterian Church that brought together 100 ministry leaders and laypersons to learn more about three trailblazing efforts. Alone, each campaign tackles a different part of homelessness and poverty. Together, they can make a profound dent in the problem, if we give it the necessary support financial and otherwise.

Long-term help to move the working poor toward self-sufficiency: WISH (Workforce Initiative for Supporting Housing) helps working families move into affordable housing, providing not just a rent subsidy and other practical help but a HOPE team to build a long-term relationship with them. WISH looks to congregations to establish these HOPE Teams to help nurture, guide and love families.

Getting the chronically homeless into homes: Moore Place will transform a junkyard into an 85-unit apartment complex for single men and women who have a disability and have experienced homelessness for more than one year or four episodes in the last three years. About $7.6 million of the $10 million needed has been raised, Urban Ministry Center’s Dale Mullennix told the group. This project, he added, is far less costly to the community than housing the homeless in jails, detox centers, shelters and mental hospitals. Moore Place won’t get all the chronically homeless off the street. But it can serve as a model for more places that one day might accomplish that great feat.

Developing mixed income communities in which the poor have a better shot at success: Calling it more a matter of social justice than charity, Michael Marsicano of Foundation For The Carolinas offered a bold finale – an effort to begin developing mixed income communities in Charlotte, so that the rich aren’t way over here while the poor are way over there. Developing neighborhoods that bring us together in an attractive way, he said, can break the cycle that segregates so many into a life of poverty. Reporting that such a plan is gathering momentum in town, Marsicano said it’ll take incentives for developers and a demand from the public for it to be so. Build one financially successful mixed income community and how long before developers and communities demand another and another?

We are called this month to have a heart for the homeless.

These three big ideas, and the fact we are taking them seriously in Charlotte, should make our hearts beat with hope.