I drove over last April to confirm the costs to repair the house. I turned off US49 and drove down a side street that became increasingly unkempt. After a few more turns and literally crossing the railroad tracks, I came into a neighborhood where there were driveways and bare lots, some of them had trash, an upside down sofa or a mattress, but no houses.
By now I can recognize the trash and bulldozed lots. The trash is detritus left after the winds and water of Katrina shredded the neighborhood. I could tell the houses on the empty lots had been razed, probably condemned due to the damage of Katrina.
This carnage went on for several blocks. On one lot I noted that two or three rough looking guys had taken over a trailer. A long electrical cord was strung on the ground, across the road and off into the property half a block away. They eyed me suspiciously as I drove by.
I turned down a final side street where some of the houses have bars on the windows or tall fences. I drove up and stopped by the mailbox carrying Christina’s address. The house was painted in a loud color and it had a new roof. Two cars were parked in the tight driveway and the yard was full of semi-tropical plants. A stack of drywall about a foot high rested in the carport.
Sunrise through Christina’s Palm
I knocked on the door. A youngish woman came to the door and I introduced myself. Christina invited me in. I was struck immediately by the interior. There was no kitchen, only an unfinished room that had been added on, with old cabinets but no sink. A gas stove stood in the dining room.
What bothered me was the interior bathroom adjoining the dining room. Someone had framed in a wall but there was no drywall. The only privacy for the bathroom was a three mil thick plastic sheet nailed to the studs.
She walked me through to the rear door through a hallway where a laundry room was partly framed in and a bathroom. At the opposite end of this hallway was a large plywood sheet. Christina said there is supposed to be a door there and asked if we would be able to install it. I found gutters in the back yard but the soffit and fascia boards still needed repair.
We went back into the house and sat in her living room. I went over her situation. She lived here with her elderly mother and father. The mother was an invalid and needed constant care to help her get in and out of bed and to attend to her personal needs. Her mother and father, both in their eighties and married over sixty years lived with Christina. Christina’s daughter lives there, as does her erstwhile boy friend. Her brother lived in the house, as did a fellow who had been badly injured in an automobile accident who needed a place to stay. Christina is the only person with a job.
She tells me Katrina blew most of her roof away. She had to bring her mother and father to he home because the other is so ill. She decided to add a room for the kitchen so they could make a bathroom large enough to accommodate her mother in a wheel chair. Doing this entailed tearing out the old kitchen and framing in some walls Christina paid a contractor ten thousand dollars to do this job and the guy left it half done.
I knew our case manager had verified the basic qualification of Christina for help and realized immediately we had to get people working on this house as soon as we could get funding and volunteers.
Christina's Father
As I left to go back to my office and start working on an estimate her father came out of the house. He asked me who I was, and what I was doing. I explained my job with PDA and we talked at length about how the church was helping and so important. We had a discussion that ranged widely about faith, the role of the family and his situation. We talked about his wife. He told me she was almost blind and depended on him or everything. If he left the bedroom she would begin to call out, “where is my Robert, where is my Robert?” He said he was pretty much tied down to the house because if he left for vey long mother would get too overwrought with concern.
He talked to me about his daughter. He said she was a good woman but facing a lot of temptations. He constantly encourages her to keep straight, especially when there is the temptation to stray. It is clear that Robert and Christina hold a lot of family together, people on the edge of slipping into that sea of alcohol, drugs and alienation. Amazed at how these two were holding an entire family together, I left very intent on getting back to this house as soon as I could.Things didn’t work too well. We have been short on volunteers the last month. Only late Monday of last week when we had a work assignment fall through during the first day of youth week was I able to use this home as a fall back.
I called Christina late Monday and set up a time to come by to see what work remained. Then at 7:30AM Tuesday morning, I drove out Tuesday morning to meet Christina. The stack of drywall in the carport was gone. The kitchen was still absent. I walked into the laundry area and looked into the adjoining bathroom. A 5-gallon plastic can holding sudsy water and some dishes stood in a plastic chair in the shower stall. They had finished the hallway with the drywall in the carport but the wall between the master bathroom and dining room still needed drywall. The master bathroom still needed drywall. The fascia and soffits were not repaired.
I asked Christina if we could start today and overjoyed she said of course! That excitement was tempered almost immediately. Christina said how happy she was that the bathroom would get finished and how she wanted her mother to see it done and get to use its privacy. Christina continued to say that that wouldn’t happen now because her mother died on July 4, a week after I last visited her house.
This is why I need you to volunteer every hour you can to this effort.
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