Six years ago today, Jess and I - recently homeless - began squatting in this house, which - at the time - was a “trap house.” A house where narcotics and women are bought and sold, a house where murder, mayhem and violence aren’t just a regular occurrence, they’re a way of a life, a means to an end.
The house had no electricity, nor running water. It had holes in the floors that possums would come up through, bullet holes in the walls that the cold, biting wind whipped through, blood stains from unspeakable acts, and a reputation throughout the trust depleted Soulsville community as a single source of every bit of pain and suffering on the southern side of South Parkway.
I was arrested here many times prior, saw friends disappear from here only to be found murdered, saw hope lost and dreams die.
So why did we go back to that house after our addiction cost us everything?
Easy. It had what our addiction demanded - dope. We were slaves returning to our master, we knew no other way.
God saw fit to deliver us from that hell, but only after we’d made Him a repeat promise to come back for the ones we left behind - and He definitely made us honor that promise.
Two of the women we got out of that house later are over two years clean and sober today. One of the dope boys that used to run it let us help him get on a better path.
These aren’t insignificant things.
And the house itself? Well, you can see it’s got power today. On the other side of that front porch sits a family. A mama, her brother that helped us renovate the house, her baby girls, and members of a small army of men that come by regularly to make sure they have everything they need, get them to and from school, work, and other appointments.
The day we shut the trap house down, violent crime on this street STOPPED. Literally THAT day.
We’ve done this on a couple of other trap houses now, too.
We didn’t shoot anyone, we didn’t arrest anyone, we simply met them where they were at - not where we wanted them to be - and we waited with extended arms until, one by one, they were willing to accept that help we so desperately wanted to give them.
Society had written this street off.
Today, men and women whose lives were scarred by Woodward street are now ambassadors of hope, redemption and recovery - carrying our message and our mission into new trust-depleted blocks in America’s deadliest city.
This is how we change a place from the inside out - fixing the broken and empowering them to become agents of change themselves.