Together Again

LUMMI NATION, WASHINGTON - Sometimes for internal reasons and sometimes for external ones and sometimes for both, families can fall to pieces. The good news is that they can put themselves back together again.

It's hard, painful work, each step forward risking one or two steps back and for families transitioning from homelessness or domestic violence or addiction or forced separation maybe three or four steps back.

With the help of friends or neighbors or extended family members or institutions in the community where they live the rebuilding of a family can be made easier and the prospects for success improved.

That's the vision which informs a brand-new $5.8 million, 45-unit housing development named Sche'lang'en just built, with assistance from HUD, by the Lummi Nation Housing Authority on the 20-square-mile reservation that is home to the Federally-recognized Lummi Tribe on the shores of the Salish Sea just west across a bay from Bellingham, Washington and 20 miles south of the border with Canada.

Make no mistake. The grand opening of 45 new units of affordable housing is, in and of itself, very big, very good news. Virtually every community in the megalopolis that stretches almost 150 miles from Bellingham in the north through Mount Vernon then Marysville then Everett then Seattle then Federal Way then Tacoma then, finally, Olympia at the southern end of the crescent that is the Puget Sound region faces an affordable housing crisis. As do the 6,500 tribal members who call the Lummi Reservation home.

But what makes Sche'lang'en Village especially newsworthy is not the building of new houses, but the rebuilding of families. Twenty-four of its 45 units have been designed and set-aside, the Authority explains, for families "making transformational life changes" from "homelessness to simply having a home," from "domestic violence to safety," from "addiction to sobriety" and from forced separation to the "reunification of parents with their children."

Like any family these 24 families need "a decent, safe, and healthy home where stability fosters habits that lead to core values of honesty, accountability, and personal responsibility for change." Just as important, they also need what the Authority calls "transformational wraparound" services - an array of housing, educational, social, and health services that will help sustain efforts made toward the transformational change they seek."

The Village is designed to provide exactly that. Families don't have to travel to distant offices, take a number and wait and wait some more, their fingers crossed that they're in the right place to see the right person to get the right service. To the contrary, like a refrigerator or a stove or a bathtub in a house, the "wraparound" services are built into the neighborhood, delivered by professional providers out of a community building that's an integral part of the neighborhood and that offers "activities such as men's and women's group meetings, supervised parental visitation, parenting classes, financial literacy, and children's afterschool education programs---in addition to its primary function as neighborhood gathering place and recreational facility."

Last but certainly not least, there are the elders, traditionally among the most important members of any tribe. Twenty-four of the Village's homes have been set-aside for families in transformation. Eleven others have been reserved for elders.

Living repositories of the Tribe's customs, shared experiences and wisdom, at Sche'lang'en elders are charged with providing "daily guidance for the residents" and, share stories "passed down from previous generations" that reflect the Tribe's core values. They also join in informal weekly meetings whereat families share "a personal update of where they are and where they are going" with the elders and professional providers can help them navigate any obstacles they may face.

Among the Lummi, "sche'lang'en" means "way of life." Among the Lummi, obviously, that way reflects a commitment to not just one's self, but also to the larger community, a commitment at the core of a new neighborhood named Sche'lang'en Village.

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