We have cause for celebration this week. Last Monday, The Gathering Place held its inaugural golf tournament. It was held at the Highland Green golf course through the generosity of John Wasileski, developer of Highland Green, and it was a great success.

It appeared that everyone there had fun, the players and the volunteers who helped to make the tournament come together. It raised significant funds for The Gathering Place, real help for all the things that we offer. We are grateful to our many financial donors, to John Wasileski, to those who played in the tournament, and those who volunteered to help.

Only a few days after the tournament, the organizers and volunteers and some of the players got together to share notes of what had been successful and areas we need to improve. We plan and we look forward to another successful tournament, our second annual, to be held next summer.

I’ve been involved with the Gathering Place in one form or another for close to 12 years, and I recently have given some thought to the rewards that our volunteers have received, as well as the rewards to the guests to whom we offer help. Certainly, helping others has been our main goal, and has been a source of aid and relief to our guests and a source of satisfaction to our guests, volunteers and staff. But also, as volunteers, we receive another very major satisfaction from what we do. That is, we ourselves, those who volunteer and our regular small staff, also receive in so many ways.

It would be accurate to say that most of us have learned a lot from many of our guests, those whose lives are mostly ones of basic simplicity as well as of need. When I began serving at the Gathering Place, when it first opened, my expectation was that our guests would be people whose lives were difficult, and who desperately needed help. For many or most of our guests, that is true. They do grapple with illness, extreme poverty, addictions, mental illness, and, unfortunately, the prejudices shown to them by the outside world, the world you and I inhabit. And yet the great majority of our guests manage to lead lives in which they are friendly towards others, generous, and receptive to the needs of others.

I have learned, and my fellow volunteers have learned from our guests the ability to not only survive but to lead lives that are themselves of help to others. Is life at The Gathering Place, completely sunny, a paradise of good feeling to others? No, of course not; these are people like the rest of us, sometimes selfish, sometimes focused on what they themselves want. But what makes them special to me is they are able mostly to be of help to others, despite having grappled with problems and troubles so severe, one might expect they would put them into a
fit of despair.

If I were to sum up in two words what we volunteers have received from everyone at The Gathering Place, both the volunteers and the guests, those words would be family and community. Although The Gathering Place was initially supported by a number of churches, it is not a religious organization, but it runs on spiritual principals. Our goal is to function in the ways of a spiritually healthy, family or close community, with compassion and dignity toward all who enter through our doors.

One of the things our TGP family has to worry about these days is something new. It is housing, or more precisely the staggering lack of affordable housing. Yes, staggering. Until the pandemic, for the last more than 50 years, affordable housing has been available to people
who had received a housing voucher that entitled them to rental of a participating apartment or house at reduced rent.

Under this program, the landlord receives payment from federal funds for the difference between what the tenant can pay, and regular market rental rates. Since the pandemic began, vouchers have continued to be available. But apartments and houses have not. The result has been an increase in homelessness, or as they called today, “unhoused” people.

One temporary impact has been that large numbers of folks without a place to live have been placed in motels at subsidized winter rates. Another has been that there are hundreds of apartments in the Brunswick area under development or construction, some becoming available soon. Unfortunately, even those called “Affordable” will rent at rates beyond what any of our guests can afford without subsidy help.

Not surprisingly, the extreme low-income housing shortage is not only a local problem. Homelessness has become an endemic problem. Low-income people in large urban areas suffer especially, as do those areas themselves, but smaller towns like ours will suffer as well. Major local, state and federal resources will be needed to make even a dent in the problem of the unhoused. Stay tuned.

Giving Voice is a weekly collaboration among four local nonprofit service agencies to share information and stories about their work in the community.

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