I am in awe of the generosity and compassion of Good People (Fund). Your efforts help to save people’s lives. By standing with families in their darkest and most humiliating moments you give people the strength and the grace to surmount obstacles.

Thank you, thank you.

No doubt the news that comes from our nation’s capital these past few weeks have left most of us scratching our heads in disbelief and frustration.

An email that arrived late last night has served as a stark reminder of how difficult life can be for families living “in the corners”— where each step is a struggle and where the slightest upset can bring down a tenuous stability.

The request came from an attorney who works as a public defender. We have interacted with her several times and are always stunned by the needs she comes across and how relatively small sums of money can have such a profound impact. This situation was no different. A single father raising three young children on his own, one of whom has a serious mental illness, is evicted from his apartment and forced to bring his young family to a homeless shelter. In the rush to relocate he is forced to place some of the family’s belongings in a storage facility since the shelter limits personal items. Under normal circumstances, public assistance will pay for the storage costs but in this case the bureaucracy failed when the caseworker who handled the claim never filed for payment. With a notice from the storage company that all of his personal items were to be auctioned off in a few days, it seemed as if there was no solution — until we were called and asked if we could help. Within two hours we had all of the documentation we needed and called the storage company to pay the outstanding balance.

 Some might say the  items in storage were only “things.” When you have lost just about everything else sometimes “things” are really so much more.