WELCOME FROM HAYWOOD STREET:
UPDATES:
1. New Employment Opportunities at Haywood Street Respite! Deadline to apply is Friday, December 10th.
click here.
2. Available now! 14-page, digital cookbook featuring photos, stories, and recipes from companions, partner restaurants, and Miss Mary herself! Click here.
A generous note from our friends at French Broad Chiropractic:
“Tis the season for our annual Gift of Health! 🎄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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This is such a great way to get started in our office! As well as help out our local community as we are set to donate the proceeds to Haywood Street Congregation 😊⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We are also accepting donations to bless Haywood Congregation with. This ministry does so much for the homeless and the drug abused here in Asheville and they always have opportunities to serve or help those in need 🙌🏼⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Our Gift of Health runs through the end of January and we are very excited to see God move through the lives of so many this Holiday Season ❤️”
ANOUNCEMENTS:
COMPANION CORNER:
1. Click to access this week’s newsletter.
A Letter From: Rev. Brian Combs
Enduring poverty is relentlessly invalidating. The profound biographies unlearned, the guttural pleas unheard, the weather-beaten faces unseen, each aggression against humanity more soul nullifying than the last. This past week, several stories were published about our neighbors camping on the Department of Transportation parcel beside Haywood St. For the journalistic care and airtime given to these children of God, for the amplification of their routinely silenced stories, we’re grateful.
The media coverage, however, did provoke a series of conflations that require correction. Homeward Bound did not issue notices of eviction. Instead, they connected campers with resources and transported people elsewhere. The Asheville Police Department did not arrest anyone or use force. Instead, their Community Engagement Division practiced radical patience and gentleness, offering a promising glimpse into profoundly reimagined law enforcement. And Haywood St. did not issue a complaint or initiate the forced removal of our unhoused neighbors.
Instead, since the encampment started with one residence months ago, we’ve been in daily communion. As the tents grew in number, so did our relational response: sharing life together in nylon living rooms, marveling at the sun setting west, de-escalating bare-knuckled domestic disputes, passing heaping plates of Thanksgiving lunch, speculating about when the excavator might show up, and discovering a lifeless body.
What began yesterday as a tent city, ended as a mass displacement, crime scene, unrehearsed funeral, and a fatal reminder that the need for a low barrier shelter and affordable housing is now.
