For more information see our website at Readthebibleamerica.4t.com P.O. Box 8475; F.D.R. Station; NY, NY 10150-8475
E-mail: Readthebibleamerica@usa.com Program URL: http://www.readthebibleamerica.4t.com
Read the underlined words to get a quick summary of this document. Our non-profit tax-exempt organization owns a house in Harrisburg Pa. The local county government there has removed this house from having to pay real estate tax because it is used for Bridge housing for persons who were recently homeless. The house was being used. Now it needs some minor refurbishing in order to be opened back up for its intended purpose. It will provide housing for up to five persons who will come there from a larger metropolitan area, who were previously homeless and who have been relocated to this house so they can get back on their feet. Or it may help persons who have been in the Harrisburg, Pa. area shelters and or programs for the homeless.
The persons we will help there must be drug, alcohol and tobacco free and they must have been in a residential program for at least 6 months so we can have some certainty that they are free from the habits of using any of these products. The main purpose of our ministry is to teach persons how to manage money. Even if they have a low income they can get by and to prosper. If they are using drugs or alcohol we are neither skilled at nor proficient in helping them with those issues. If they smoke or use tobacco they will not be able to save money, as we would teach them and require them to do. We require them to contract with us that they will take responsibility for themselves to do certain things. They must make a commitment to work, save a substantial amount of their discretionary income and be seeking to get back on their feet. They must have as a goal to buy their own place. We then will help them to do that.
This is intended to be a model program which if it works will help many homeless persons with only a small initial outlay of cash. We believe it would be good for our nation if we can make this work well. They will pay rent to stay in this house. Which is where funds will come from for ongoing operation of the house and program and if successful there should be enough extra income to buy other properties and expand the program. Where other programs work to improve incomes of their clients we work to teach our clients how to get by even if they are unable to improve their education. Some persons are just not suited to that, however they can learn to be thrifty and they can get by. Our lead volunteer is an example of that. He tries to share what he knows through years of life experience with those willing and able to listen to him.
We offer lessons on how to manage and use money effectively, especially when you don't have much income. Richard Hobbs, the overseer and lead volunteer with the Help the Homeless Campaign a subsidiary of Read the Bible America, Inc. has been working with and helping homeless persons for over 30 years now. He started as a Boy Scout working to earn his Eagle Scout Badge, and has continued on his own and as a volunteer to our small organization for many years now. He tends to live on about four thousand dollars a year. Therefore he can show persons who are homeless because they are not able to earn much more than minimum wage that there are ways to manage and get by. In fact he has often had less income and money to work with than the homeless persons he helped so he could say to them, look at me, I have less money than you do but I am not homeless. He tells them,---“You do not have to be homeless. Let me show you how to manage your money."
For many years he helped persons who were homeless on the streets of New York to relocate to the Harrisburg, Pa. area. He has not helped very many but he was working form his own money and the little he could raise or collect by sitting in front of K-marts and other stores, which knew about what he did and wanted to help him. He would bring someone from NY, rent an apartment for them to live in, take them to find a job and spend a lot of time and effort making sure they succeeded. If they lost their job, understanding how much discouragement and depression was a factor in defeating them he would get them in his car the next day and go with them to find another job. So this is a very personalized ministry. It requires a lot of caring and being willing to help. More than anything else some homeless persons simply need to feel that the whole world has not forsaken them. They need to see someone care about them and work pro-actively to help them. He would subsidize their rent for six months or so. They had to save as he taught them and sometimes go without extras so they could get their feet on the ground. He would teach them how to avoid impulse purchases, which often cause persons who are at the low end of the income scale to become homeless. Then in most cases they would succeed and go on. In those days he was able to find rents for apartments for between and a month and he was able, out of his pocket and with the small funds raised to help them get back on their feet. Over time, rents in Harrisburg went up and he could no longer afford to subsidize rents on his very low budget. So, he considered the idea of buying a small inexpensive house in Harrisburg and using that for this ministry. There were houses in the inner city there, which sold for incredibly low prices. There was sort of an underground market, which he had heard of.
The ministry received a grant for the ---“Help The Homeless Campaign"----a subsidiary of Read the Bible America, Inc. from the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to help him buy a house. A house was purchased and used until some problems arose with it not meeting City codes. At about this same time he had a loss of his personal income and had to address some personal and family needs. Last year he had to decide whether to buy a house in Steubenville Ohio, which could be immediately lived in and was relatively sound or put his money into fixing this house that belongs to the ministry. He chose to buy the house in Ohio. Hoping that he could raise funds from some source to fix up the Harrisburg house, which we are now trying to do.
He purchased a small three-bedroom home in Steubenville, Ohio, which was on the open market for under nine thousand dollars. The money to purchase this house came partially through his years of savings even with his low income, partially with a grant he received for having been dislocated by a Federal Urban Renewal project and partially through a judgment he received over a First Amendment law suit which he brought against a local government and won. This was to correct a local law, which was unconstitutional. He tried to get the government to change the law without going to court. However they told him to sue then if he thought they were wrong. He did. He sued. He won.
Brother Hobbs also was an economic victim of the 9/11 World Trade Center Disaster. He received a small amount of help from the September 11th fund. But because his income was marginal before the disaster and because he worked out in the street or in parks as a professional Busker in Liberty Park, across the street from the WTC, it was very difficult to document the address of his business. However he was able to document it adequately to qualify for Disaster Unemployment Insurance. However, because he rang the Christmas Bell for the Salvation Army for two weeks in November and he was paid as a volunteer he lost those benefits after receiving only 4 weeks out of what would have been 26 weeks of unemployment benefits help. Brother Hobbs works as a professional Street Performer at festivals and fairs. As a direct result of the 9/11 disaster, fairs he had been scheduled to work at during the fall of 2001 were all cancelled and he ended up broke. The agency, which was supposed to help him relocate, which had taken his apartment in New York for urban renewal, failed to serve him properly and adequately. That is a personal issue he is trying to resolve. As a result of this, one, two punch, he become homeless himself something that had never happened to him in all the years that he has helped the homeless. Over the past many years, for the most part he worked and earned about four thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars a year, lived on four to five thousand dollars and used the rest in his ministry to the poor and homeless.
The house he bought in Ohio and is in his name he is holding in trust for the ministry as its overseer. It will be used to provide housing help to poor persons in Ohio, who need an inexpensive place to live, and who need help resolving personal life issues. They will pay a low rent. Basically, it will be used to provide the same program or type of program as explained above.
Now, Read the Bible America, Inc, a valid 501 c 3 Non for profit corporation seeks five thousand dollars which will be used to buy materials and provide some labor to do the following and to provide a small salary to our lead volunteer who has helped above and beyond the call of duty and who recently has suffered several calamities one after another, including being a World Trade Center Tragedy 9/11 economic victim, having his school bus catch on fire and being unfairly evicted.
One thousand dollars to get rid of termite infestation in the Steubenville, Ohio house. Three hundred dollars will supply gas money for Mr. Hobbs to drive between Steubenville, Harrisburg, and New York City. three thousand dollars will be used to make repairs to the House in Harrisburg, Pa. so it can be reopened and provide bridge housing. The three thousand for the repairs will be mainly for materials and for any licenses, which may be required to be able to do this work. Seven hundred dollars will be used for administrative purposes, possibly to provide a computer so we can have direct access to the Internet. (Presently the Internet is accessed through libraries, which is restrictive and cumbersome.) .
And up to an additinoal five thousand dollars to supply broither hobbs with a years income so he can get back on his feet. This would allow him a year to get himself re-established in his Busking (Street performing) activities. It takes about six months advance time to get booked at fairs and festivals. Which he would do from his house in Ohio. He would also be working on various projects for Read the Bible America, Inc. And for other non-profit or charitable causes.
There was a Jewish man who had had a business in Yonkers NY for 51 years. His landlord suddenly and abruptly evicted him from his place of business. The area his business was in had gone through a slump and was beginning to benefit from an improvement of use. The Landlord saw this as a good time to rent this space to some other business given the fact that this elderly man was unlikely to survive there for long. The man is over 70 years old. Because it was going to cost several thousand dollars for this man to ship his belongings to California, where he has moved to live near his daughter. And because the eviction basically made this man lose his business and tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise and equipment. Brother Hobbs agreed to put the belongings of this man in the School bus that had been purchased and used by this ministry to help persons who were being evicted to move and store their belongings. And to move them to Ohio and store them there until the spring at which time Brother Hobbs offered to drive them to California if the Man who owned them paid for the gas both ways, about . as we figure it. Unfortunately on February 15th the bus caught fire. The fire was quickly put out and only did a little damage to the school bus. But the fire fighters broke out all the windows, including the windshield, and all the glass on the school bus. The bus was impounded. It took two weeks fighting red tape to get the Police to tell us where it was. The towing cost plus they wanted to charge per day storage. The windshield cost to replace, the side windows cost about each (front drive side and passenger side) and we have not gotten an estimate yet for the glass all around or decided whether to replace it, or fix it another way.
We have put these things back into storage for this man as per his request. He is going to get them to California another way. We have driven the bus to OHio. Brother hobbs towed his caprice behind the bus on a tow dolly. He left on Friday nite bringing along a friend. A young man from Korea who is in the United States learning english. He was goping to show his frined harrisburg, hershey and gettysburg and then the friend would go by bus back to NY and Broigther Hobbs would go to Ohio. They got a flat on the tow dolly as they left the Ephrata toll booths of the pennsylvania turnpike. Brother hobbs had a series of calamities on top of those already suffered. He put the Koreean friend on a bus back to NY without ever having gotten to show him the landmarks, and had one prioblem after another. First he had to wait from Saturday afternoon until Monday to replace the tire on the tow dolly and justy as he replaced it the master cylinder of the brakles started to leak. Then he went to Kriesers fuel who had helped him in the past and they helped him replace the master cylynder but the part he bought did not fit exactly and it required and expert mechjanic to make it fit. On the way form the tire place to the krieders the tire he just had bought began to leak air and it was ruined so he had to go back and replace the tire again. When that was done having lost another night he went to get teh caprice station wagon he had been towing but had left in Ephrata and he got a flat tire on his truck just as he was traveling up route 501 near Shaferstown. BHe had taken a wrong turn a few miles back and was traveling in an area and direction hwe had not traveled in before. It turned out to be a mitsvah form the Lord. Just a hundred yards after he got the flat ( this is a van converted in to a short school bus type vehuicles with size 16.5 tires very rarwe and unussual today. ) there was a holt's auto sales yard.
Mr. Holt was understanding and very helpful. The small auto sales ( partly retired) had trucks in the rear which were gopgin to be junked. Mr. Holt gave Brother Hobbs the tires and used his companies tow truck to lift the truck so the tire could be changed.
Brother Hobbs having been overcome by so much diversity decided to leave the caprice in Ephrata and drivew the bus to OHio and then come back by Greyhound bus and get the car. He was gogin to drive his small car in Ohio to NY first for the Easter weekend. He likes to trry and do his entertainment balloon animal work on Fifth Avenue during the Easter PArade he ussually earns a few hundred dollars withoiut much hassel.
When BVrother Hobbs go tto Ohio he found the toilet tank had burst on the seciond floor toilet and water had been cascading down to the first floor and basement for who knows how long. He hasd to wade ankle deep in water thought the basement to turn off the water supply to the house. How foolish he felt about not having done that before he left in December. However in december he had only intended top be away for a week or two and had left the heat on and thought he had turned off the weater but aparently he didn;t. NOw he is overcome with regrets and greif. the walls and ceiling ion the first floor are mostly ruined, HE is gfopgin to have to replace much of it. He had a good usable hous. The house is still usable but now there is a lot more work to do.
The former paragraghs represent the sorts of thing we do and have done and will continue to do. The lastr two tell how many problems we seem to be encountering. It is as if the Lord himself has set himself against us but we know that this is not true. We trecognize that this is the Devil trying to discourage us and stop us becasue we have recently begubn some endeavors that will reck havoc in his kingdom. He is so subtle and he is so experienced. Even though there have been many problems there have alsop been many who have showed up unexpectedly to help. For example the truck getting the flat just near the Holt's Auto sales. Had it happpened any where else perhaps brother hobbs would nothave had enough mnoney to get a replacement tire and since the trucks in that yard were so Old they happened to have tires that fit. That size of tire is not copmmon any more.
We are suffering from very low funding. Normally most of what we do comes out of Brother HObbs own pocket but he has not had income for the past few years theorugh a combinatino of 9/11 and being relocated by an urban renewal project and by various other problems. It is all more that one person can bear. We need help. It is difficult to get funding even though we have a good plan and we accomplish a lot with the little we get. Foundations tend to support organizations, which are more substantial than us. However we want to do things without a lot of overhead. We like for our funds to go as straight as they can to actually helping someone.
We want to help homeless persons to permanently lose the their status as homeless by helping them in practical ways that solve the root cause of their homelessness. There are millions of dollars spent to help the homeless. However a lot of it does not address the root causes of homelessness. We do. It has been very hard for us to get a little of that money, and get enough of it together at one time to try and put this program back into business. Brother Hobbs has felt that in sending out requests for grant money we might end spending a lot of money on postage, a lot of time and a lot of trouble trying to get help from foundations which will show no interest or show a little and get our hopes up and in the end not help us because we are not big enough, or important enough and because we really don’t know anyone on these boards and have any connections to anyone in a position to advocate on our behalf. He has felt it is just better for us to take the time we would spend seeking grant money and going out and helping someone on the subways or the trains and trying our best. This way he has felt that at least we actually do something to help someone with our time rather than just be talking about it. We have convinced him to give grant seeking a try. We are using the Internet to approach you because we can not afford the postage. There are several other worthwhile activities we dream about doing but where can we get the support. All of our activities are things that once started would tend to pay their own way and fuel their own growth. You can see some of them on our web site.
With that said. We ask you. Would there be any interest by your Foundation to consider making a grant to this organization for this purpose.
