Naomi Scott was to be presented with the key to the newly renovated apartment building by the mayor himself. The 63-year-old woman, who is barely five feet tall, was the smallest person on the platform among the assorted dignitaries. It was indeed an occasion to celebrate. After standing empty for more than four years, 2620 13th Street NW was being reopened for low-income people. Naomi, a former tenant, was coming home.
The building at 2620 had all the usual problems. The plumbing was terrible. Water damage had resulted in gaping holes in walls and ceilings. The landlord wouldn't put oil in the furnace, so the whole place often went without heat or hot water. Building code violations were rampant, as were the rats and roaches.
Finally the residents organized themselves to fight and win a rent strike. Naomi was the building's representative in the Southern Columbia Heights Tenants Union, which helped the building's residents, whose annual income was less than $6,000 per person, to purchase their building themselves and run it as a tenant-owned cooperative.
Hopes ran high as federal housing money was promised for the necessary renovations to make the building livable again and provide a modest subsidy for tenants. But then came the Reagan budget cuts (or budget transfers to the military, as they should have been called), and the building was foreclosed.
People who had helped themselves got no help from their government and lost their homes. Most of the residents had lived in that building for 10 to 20 years. Naomi had been there 14 years. The tenants had generously donated an empty apartment and some hall space to the Sojourners food distribution program, and the tenant union had moved its office to the building, too. But everybody had to leave.
The now-abandoned apartment building had its back adjacent to my own building, so that out of my back window I could see what happens -- drug deals, gambling, kids playing dangerously, muggings, and eventually a murder -- behind a lifeless, deteriorating shell that once had been home to people.
IN APRIL 1987 new signs of life began to emerge when a local community organization finally put together the public and private money necessary to renovate and reopen 2620 as an apartment building for low-income people. And on the last Saturday in October, the big day came.
The number of speakers and the content of their speeches were almost more than could be endured. Politicians seem unable to serve the poor without serving themselves even more. The bankers and real estate developers were, of course, quick to claim their credit and civic responsibility.
In the midst of all the self-congratulation and mutual back-patting by the rich and powerful, only one speaker told the truth. He said this project happened because government was challenged by the people of the community, and he encouraged us to keep it up. "We in government need to be challenged," he exhorted, while his fellow power-brokers looked disgruntled. But we survived the speechmaking, because Naomi wanted her friends to be there for the moment she was presented with her key.
At long last her time came. When the mayor put his arm around her, Naomi did her little jitterbug as she often does, momentarily startling Hizzonor. The mayor then gave her the key, hugged her and kissed her on the head, and sat down. Everyone else did, too, except Naomi. She wasn't scheduled to speak, but there she was, left all alone at the microphone. So she started talking.
The microphone was raised too high for people to hear until someone in the back yelled, "Put the mike down. We want to hear her." Someone did. Naomi then told how it felt to come home, and the tears choked her words. Finally she thanked everyone and said, "But most of all I want to thank God for bringing me home. I've been praying for a long, long time, and now I am so happy."
We were happy, too, and thankful. We were thankful for Naomi, for the other people who also now would have a new home, for our neighborhood, and mostly for a loving God who, despite the pretensions of power and the powerful, still looks after the little ones and the poor ones who trust in God.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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