Everybody needs a home
“Homes are where jobs go to sleep at night.”
– Allan Kingston, CEO, Century Housing (
It’s well known that the year’s busiest travel day is Thanksgiving Eve, as Americans by the millions take to the roads and skies to assemble their extended families in a time-honored ritual:
Freedom from Want, Norman Rockwell
Though we associate Thanksgiving with all that food, we should remember also that it’s a time when we visually demonstrate what home is, by who goes where and visits whom.
Homes come in all varieties:
Pre-1919 row house, Anfield,
Apartments in downtown
Informal settlement in Mavoko,
Striking to me is that no matter where I’ve gone, how rude the accommodations, all of these spaces are recognizably homes, across any gap of economics or culture or language, and their op,
Give people secure tenure in a place they call home, and they personalize it:
Wall clock, one-room house, Mavoko,
Give people a home they own, and they invest in it:
Riverside housing,
Rural self-built housing,
Give people a plot of ground, with services running to it and good title so they feel they own it, and they will build on it:
New construction subdivision,
Give people a chance to own, a promise of future ownership, and they will save for it:
Hand-drawn poster, Our Dream House, in the meeting room, Kibera co-operative
Give children a home to grow up in, and they’re more likely to become productive adults.
Children in in Mavoko,
The
So wherever you are, give thanks for your home, and wish a good home to others.
