There was a house. In Detroit. And a family. In Detroit. For decades, from the 1940s on, they were happy together, a small, tidy home filled with loving memories. The kids grew up and moved away, and when the mother passed and the house was empty, the two adult daughters went back and tended to it; a fix-up here, some landscaping there.
For nearly 20 years the house remained vacant. But they still visited. They still felt attached.
"We missed the old neighborhood," said Joanne Kowalczyk, 77.
"We had a very good life here," said her sister, Janice Snider, 69.
There was a different house. And a different family. A struggling single mother who hoped to rent the house and live there. She saved $1,500 from her job as a hotel housekeeper and gave it to the man who said he was the landlord.
She never saw him again.
"He took my deposit, gave me the keys, and when I went to the house, all of the locks were changed," said the woman, Ieisha Stevens, 34. "It turns out he'd done this to other people, too."
Without money, Ieisha and her baby son, Major, bounced from one family member to another. Finally they landed at Genesis House II, a transitional housing facility run by the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries.
And this is where the houses and families meet.
The first family wanted to pass on the home they loved, which had fallen into disrepair. They gave it to the charity I founded, S.A.Y. Detroit, and our Working Homes/Working Families program.
We fixed it up, thanks to hard working crews from DRMM. Another charity, Humble Design, furnished it beautifully. We connected with the second family.
And Friday, the two families came together, on the lawn of the tidy abode on Detroit's Northwest side. Tears were shed. Happy tears. And a home that had become an empty house became a home once more.
I was lucky. I got to hand the keys to Ieisha and watch her reaction. I admit to a few tears myself.
