I never met Joan personally, but I did get to meet Nancy. The first time I saw Joan was at a City Council meeting. She was pleading for help from the council members because she was on the verge of losing her home. She swore she'd paid her mortgage faithfully and on time, but the company was going to take her home away. I believe the home had been fully paid for and Joan may have inherited it from her mother.
In Joan's case she'd gone through one of those programs supported by the federal government with funds sent down locally that allowed homeowners with low, moderate and fixed incomes to apply for low interest loans, allowing the homeowner to upgrade and make home repairs. Whatever happened in Joan's situation where she claimed to have faithfully made her monthly mortgage payments and her home being threatened into foreclosure, I'm not sure. What struck me as even more odd and disturbing when I attended those City Council meetings and hearing the mournful pleas of Joan was how she was treated by some members of the City Council during that time. Some of them would actually cover their mouths laughing and mocking Joan, even and including some African-American City Council members.
All of this went on, likely still do on some level, at the height of the so-called "weed 'n seed" initiative where Chattanooga's poor, moderate poor and marginalized citizens were losing their homes, kicked out of public housing for ridiculous, even manufactured, made up excuses. The lone individual who tried to take a stand and fight against what was taking place, a foreigner new to the country, found himself and his family in what appears to have been a target for retaliation after taking a stand on behalf of Chattanooga's most vulnerable citizens. He'd purchased a duplex on the southside via Chattanooga's back taxes for seized property. While in court appealing his case over a an alleged code violation after having purchased the duplex, the city sent a bulldozer out and demolished the duplex. Guess that was meant as a warning? That foreigner and his family left Chattanooga amid threats his wife felt placed their lives in danger. Chattanooga missed out on a valuable, honorable and phenomenal citizen. As the foreigner went on elsewhere and earned his law degree in another state. Joan had a beautiful large home. Someone wanted that home.
Ms. Nancy had a two-in-half, perhaps three-in-half level beautiful stucco style home on the east side of Chattanooga. I got to visit her in all the chaos that made the news back then. Ms. Nancy too had gone to that same city program that was suppose to help fixed, low and moderate income homeowner make home repairs by providing low interest loans. When you think of old European French, Italian, Spanish style stucco homes, that's what Nancy's home brought to mind. Nancy's husband, who'd died years before, was a WWII veteran who used the GI bill to purchase the home. There was an adult disabled son still living with her after her husband died. Nancy was having a water problem in her basement when she requested help with a low interest rate loan. The claim was the problem would be too costly to repair. That's where the scheme began to take Nancy's home away, but the issue made the news and it got too much public attention. The city tried to say Nancy home was leaking sewage in the basement, but Nancy was no fool. She told if the water problem was actually a sewage line problem her home would be smelling like sewage. Again, someone had their sights on Nancy's home, and wanted it for themselves, and they may have had someone working in cahoots from the inside to take the home.
Nancy, one might say was one of the lucky ones. If you can call losing such a beautiful home only to end up in public housing with the promise of being allowed to move back in when the home was fixed, lucky. I visited Nancy again after she and her disabled son had been moved to public housing. She told me again, "Brenda I'm not a fool. They're lying to me. I know I will never get to live in my home again." Nancy is probably no longer alive. What may have become of her grown disabled son, even if he's still alive, we'll never know.
I lost contact with both Joan and Nancy over the years. Whatever became of Joan, I don't know. But it was easy to see how stressful and broken she was watching her at those City Council meetings, begging and pleading for help only to be mocked and laughed at. And no one except for that lone foreigner and those of us who met and at least tried; no local organization that supposedly operate on behalf of the most vulnerable citizens among us stepped up to the plate to take a stand on what was happening here in Chattanooga as well as across the nation. One would have thought they'd have been on the frontline, fighting. But much of their budget depends on the very sources that constantly shafts those most vulnerable citizens.
The chaotic, exploding homeless situation didn't start overnight. It's been an ongoing problem, building to the nuclear size we're seeing today for the last two, three, plus decades ago. Not all homeless are drunks, drug addicts, ne'er do wells as some have been accused of being. Some once owned their homes, perhaps outright, same as you and me.
Brenda Washington