Presence and Perspective

There’s this video of my daughters about 3 years ago to the day. They’re jumping happily on a pull-out couch mattress, one of them is holding an apple as she jumps, and after 7 bounces, and lots of giggles, they sit cross-legged after their final jump and each take a bite of the apple.

It was warmish fall November day in 2019.

There was not yet a global pandemic.

The economy had not risen and then fallen.

Grandpa was still alive.

Yes, on this warmish November day in 2019–I was full of hope.

How could I not be with their infectious joy bursting forth as they jump on a sleeper sofa I found that day? 

As these beams of light jumped and shared an apple? 

They didn’t need much. 

Just each other. 

A bed to jump on. 

An apple to share. 

There was lots of hope.

In 2019, Coram was just this one house. 

Barely enough room for that sleeper sofa to open…and the basis was this:

We don’t need much.

By minimizing space and stuff, we’d have greater capacity for reality, for love, for being.

Not that we can’t have those things without a lot of stuff—but the pathway to peace is far crowded without it.

I would rent it real cheap, and someone would have a place to lay their head. 

A place to figure out what mattered to them. 

The process of building it was a place of figuring out what mattered to me. 

It’s where the name Coram came from.

It was a place to be present to reality. 

Present to all that was shifting around me at the time. Shifting faith, shifting relationships, shifting responsibilities, shifting visions of the future and of justice.

Down there at the bottom of everything, I saw the capacity for love within simplicity. 

When the soul wasn’t crowded by want, there was so much space for love. 

In 2019, I was just starting my journey on how our systems are designed to make us want and want, and that path to getting is often a competitive, exploitative path, but we must get. And I strived to get…only to learn that the game is rigged. 

The path to getting (to build wealth, have a bunch of nice things, be financially free, etc.) is not just about hard work, but largely a combo of luck, timing, geography, and biology—none of which we create for ourselves.

Now, heading into 2023, I’m further recognizing reality is that there is an abundant world out there—and the work, my work, Coram’s work, and the work thankfully of many many others is unshackling that abundance, breaking the barriers to that abundance, and allowing it to flow to those who’ve not had access before. 

And for me, I have an insatiable curiosity for what a world looks like where the marginalized, oppressed, neglected peoples don’t have their backs against wall. 

What if we could collectively link the creative residue that runs through all of us, and envisioned a shared future together?

What is something or someone accumulating value didn’t have to come at the expense of another?

What if renters were able to build wealth at a rate similar to homeowners?

What if those with access to capital refused to build further wealth until the systems that build their wealth did so equitably?

It’s hard enough to see the brokenness for a system that benefits you, let alone to dismantle and change it.

Hmmmmm

The commercial material capitalistic high holy days of discounts and marketing are upon us—Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday—Coram wants millions to reinvest in people, in communities that have been overlooked and extracted from. 

We’re still working out what a sustainable fund looks like that invests specifically in those folks traditional financial institutions deem uninvestable, or too risky. 

The riskiest move from my vantage is to continue as we have. To continue to extract.

I’ll probably make a plea for money on giving Tuesday, actually, if you’re up for it, go to our website and give now (https://coramhouses.org/give:)

It’s not 2019, but I am still full of hope. 

Over the last few years I’ve met many many many people who see our separation crisis, our knowledge crisis, our exploitation crisis, our ecological crisis—and either are doing something or want to be.

The Spirit is moving. Bringing to pass the better world we know is possible. And until I die I’ll be gently walking toward that world with lots of hope.

What Do We Share?

“Things cannot continue as they have.”

This thought has been rattling around my brain the last few months.

Those with mammon wielding it like the sword their ancestors wielded as they slaughtered indigenous peoples with the backing of God Himself in full confidence that their genocide was warranted. And not just warranted, salvific. 

Who’s God? 

My God?

It is from such a taking, and a knowing that our American system of relating, owning, exchanging at the expense of the other was birthed. 

Ours is a system born of robbery and false presuppositions, and an extended belief in a lie that the wealth I have is mine and I built it. I earned it. 

It is mine. 

The mine that lives in the DNA of America, it feels to me, has separated us—I don’t know all the layers of the separation. 

I know I feel my skin and the eyes that gaze and see a history of a color long despised.

We need new stories.

I know I feel the distance between the debtor and the lender and the money meant to heal becomes a whip used to force surrender.

Why do we live this way?

I feel the fences that we build, and the barriers we create—barriers of entry, barriers of participation, barriers of access to schools, to neighborhoods, to capital… barriers of being, of existing as we were made to exist. 

These barriers are racial, economic, intellectual, emotional, and more…they are physical and metaphysical and they separate us.

We live in a moment of unprecedented connectivity and absolute transcendental loneliness. 

I am alone. 

And we cannot shake the feeling of it. We cannot because we were born into a system built upon separation. Property lines, interest rates, pay me, or I’ll kill you. Not physically, but it’s the threat we all live with. Pay on time, or die. Pay on time, or feel the hands of global capitalism wrap around your neck until your hands are cold and you have nothing left. 

I feel these hands on my shoulders.

I say this as capitalist. I’ve not run out of hope.

We go along with it, though.

Yet deep deep within me, there is a knocking, a hum, a whisper:

“Things cannot continue as they have.”

The money that separates us, the identities that separate us, the ideologies that separate us, the property lines that separate us—they are all imagined. Yet this undefined imaginary beast wreaks devastating havoc on us all, 

…on me…

I’m tired. I’m so tired of the world as it is, and I know I’m not alone in that. Things must be different. There must be a better world waiting to be birthed. A world beyond war, and taking, and debt, and separation. 

I’ve caught glimpses of it. We all have. We feel it.

There is not one path to where we want to go, but it’s there we must head. 

It will be slow, because the imagined beast lives in the hearts of most, blinding us to a better way, trapping us, forcing us to run a race we never quite consented to. 

We go along with it, though.

New forces are needed to push back, and they are coming. 

Forces of love and anti-separation. 

Forces of sharing and mutuality. 

Forces of holding the commons in common—the water, the land, the energy—we are not owners of them, but holders, the beholders of them. 

They are not commodities to sold, they are a part of us as we are a part of them. 

How do we shift toward sharing?

Toward belonging?

These thoughts, and these questions led me to build a small house in my small backyard, and then to form an organization that built small houses in backyards. 

A small small way to gently push against the forces of separation. 

For when you share the land you formally called “yours”, you inevitably shift toward seeing said land as “ours”.

ADUs will not solve our deep separation problem, nor will any “new” thing, not that ADUs are even a new thing. 

There lies before us the opportunity for ADUs to counter in a small way the forces of separation, and continue the ancient conversation of how we all move forward together, how we restore what’s been broken, how we bring about the world we all hope for. 

A year ago when I started Coram Houses the mission was simple—break cycles of injustice through creative affordable housing. 

ADUs we’re a way to break cycles. 

Cycles of eviction, cycles of separation, cycles of uneven wealth generation, cycles of death. 

The hope was to incentivize the creation of ADUs for the purpose of safe, stable affordable housing and the knitting together of neighbors.

In one year, we’ve nearly built 5 ADUs, with more on the way. And we have tripped, and fallen, and apologized, and tried again, over and over. I imagine there is much more falling to do.

Only time will tell if our work is truly anti-separation work, unjust cycle breaking work. I hope it is. It feels like a good step, and yet I know, only time will tell.

The Partnership

With the first ADU build, the super tiny Coram House, it would have been impossible to get it done without partners. I don’t have wealth, I didn’t know where I was going to come up with the funds, but I began the project anyway with a hope and a prayer. A few weeks in, I was having coffee with a new friend, and shared my project idea. On the spot, he offered to help financially. On the spot, I said no. But a seed was planted. I thought about his offer, I thought about why I denied it, and I reckoned with my own pride. My own sickness, that I believe to be a shared sickness, the belief that we don’t need help, that the highest ideal is to make it on my own, to do it my way… I reckoned with the fact that self-sufficiency was the god I worshipped, and how problematic that is. A few weeks past, and I called him back, and accepted his offer. He told me that he’d been really successful, and had plenty of help along the way. It was a good reminder that no one “makes it” on their own. He and I are splitting the rent profits until he recoups his investment. His help sparked this idea. If the people who are able decide to partner, together we can all rise and grow together.

The Hope

I don’t know what I’m doing. Seriously, if I’m honest with myself, and with you—I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea if this idea will work, yet here we are, going forward. I’d like to think out loud for a minute about the idea, and try to understand the problem and the hope. For me, writing has often resulted in clarity, and until I write things remain fuzzy. The fuzziness doesn’t always fade after writing, but when clarity comes, it comes by facing the thing in writing.

The problem began personally as problems often do. I found myself working increasingly harder for less and less. For 11 years, I’ve been a teacher. I started that career as a single man living with my parents, and my salary was 40K. It was plenty for me. For a few years, I lived with almost no financial stress or strain, and could easily live within my means. 3 years into my career, I get married, and a few months later my wife gets pregnant. Suddenly, my 40K is being split 3 ways. Suddenly, 40K just doesn’t cut it. I get a 2nd job, and then a 3rd job, and none of it seems to make a difference. Today, I’m up to 60K a year, but when you factor for inflation, that 60K would have been 48K in 2010. In my 11 years in teaching, I got married, got a masters, had 2 kids, bought a house, and continue to live paycheck to paycheck. It feels like it shouldn’t be that way.

An idea came to mind—why not get some passive income flowing by building a backyard tiny home. It seemed simple enough, so I went for it. The process was arduous. It was full of mistakes, and mishaps, but in 2020, I got it done. I was going to use Airbnb to rent it out, and it would bring in $1000-2000 a month. Woohoo! Then an issue was brought to my attention, a neighbor was being displaced from their home. Property values were going up, and their landlord wanted to cash in. No shame or shade on that landlord, we’re all trying to make it. And that got me thinking, can we all make it? Seriously, is there enough for everyone to have enough?

I began to educate myself on housing insecurity and homelessness. I looked at the numbers in my city. In 2019, about 40,000 homes were cost-burdened, meaning 40,000 homes were having to scrap to pay their rent or mortgage each month in Durham alone. That financial stress dries up the creative spirit, and demoralizes the soul. I want a world full of people who have come alive, and can go after what makes them come alive. I want that for myself. The question then popped in my mind, “what if you gave people ADUs for free?” An ADU is an accessory dwelling unit, it’s a backyard tiny house, if you were wondering. Well, I thought, no way, that’s a crazy idea… but let’s explore it. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It would be hard, but it seems doable.

The focus would be on underserved areas, to give folks access to an asset they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. The extra cash each month would help lift the homeowner from being cost-burdened, and hopefully for the tenant they too would benefit from rent that was far less than the city average, and hopefully the team of builders and administrative folks would be from the community gaining skills and a liveable wage providing this service. Every ADU would be a partnership between Coram Houses, the homeowner, and the tenant, everyone benefiting together.

Our cheapest ADU would cost 30,000 to build. The homeowner would partially own the ADU when it’s built, and they would split the profit with Coram Houses until it was fully paid. Hopefully, this model would allow us to remain financially afloat. The goal isn’t to get rich, but to have enough.

Coram

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone wrote or said something like, “A fragmented life is disintegration. An integrated life is peace.” Life is so many things, we as human beings are so many things, and when there are parts of ourselves that we have to hide, it causes us to disintegrate. When our interior life is fragmented, it just makes living hard. “Coram,” for me, has been the journey toward integration. I learned it through my theological training in the phrase “coram deo”. It carries the notion that god is in all and through all, and to live coram deo is to live present to all that god is doing in the moment. It is a radical call to be present, and not a cheap idea of present where we don’t care about the past or future, but we carry it fully into the moment, and let the weight of the past and opportunity of the future fuel our being in the present. Starting in 2018, I began to experience all sorts of internal struggles, and developing practices that helped grounded me in the present really gave me life. They gave me the heart to never give in to hate and hopelessness, and the creative energy to begin looking at issues and putting myself into uncomfortable spaces and feeling at home there. This has been vague, I know, but life is often like that. “Coram,” for me, has been a journey of being at home in uncertainty, at home knowing that I can’t always know. We’re not wired for tons of uncertainty, but when we can get used to it, when we can face it, and still get up and love and be and do, well… that’s courage. And I think ultimately, that is what “coram” is for me… it’s courage.