Hope is not a strategy. You hear that first commandment of business planning wherever you go.
But when the alternative is real, and growing by the minute, hope is the plan of first and last resort.
Now, for many of us in housing’s multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem, we may have awakened to a Thursday morning that looks and feels like any other late summer morning.
It’s not. Not for a population in Houston and 53 counties in Texas, and now, Louisiana–that collectively exceeds 12 million.
If today feels like a normal day for you, think about this.
Think about the last time you needed help with something. Then, remind yourself of the time it took for that help to show up.
It can feel like an eternity.
Now, think of many, many, many of the 12 million or more people who have been living under the lash of storm Harvey, some of them since last Friday, and some of them just beginning to feel the punishment of a Mother Nature who’s got nothing but disdain for human rules as to how she should behave.
Think of what it must be like.
That eternity between feeling need for help and help arriving.
That eternity of phones that have long run out of juice. Of water and food supplies running low, or running out. Of meds that are gone, and not renewable.
And that eternity seems to move into even slower motion when the rest of the world wakes up to a relatively normal morning, and thinks, well, at least the sun is shining again in Houston, “the worst must be over.”
For some, or for many, the worst starts now. It’s when the adrenaline to survive the hour, the night, the next day, runs out. It’s when patience has been mostly used up. It’s when physical tolerance for stress gives way to pure exhaustion and collapse. It’s when resilience starts to feel like somebody else’s fantasy-world description of things, when the real world hardly works that way at all.
Hearts may break, and bodies may capitulate to stresses and strains of physical deprivation and sustained fear and anxiety. But spirits need to stay strong. Especially now. Now, when it’s almost, but not quite, the moment to feel relief, the absence and alternative to hope crescendos to full intensity.
So, then, hope becomes the strategy.
All of us who have computer screens that work and phones that are fully charged and offices and homes with HVAC systems that are functional, and water to drink, and food to eat, and our normal routines to follow, … we’re all part of that strategy of hope.
We have links to charitable sites that can speed necessities–water, trauma care, health services, safety, and shelter–to where it’s most needed. Where despair is on the verge of taking hold.
Here, again, is a list of sites the National Association of Home Builders has offered, with links to resources and organizations that are in the best position to let your voices be heard among those struggling for necessities and for the encouragement to battle on.
Home builders, single- and multifamily developers, real estate investors, manufacturers, everybody will tell you, “this is a people business.”
One respected strategic leader among home builders describes housing as a “noble business.” Why? It’s about improving people’s lives with homes and communities that care for individuals and the neighborhoods they live in and the cultural and societal building blocks they unite to form.
The essential purpose motivating many of the people in our business community is one of trying to make the world a better place, one home, one apartment, one day, one community at a time.
Now, think about that last instant you really felt a need for help, and about that eternity that passed before help came. Chances are that an instant or two before assistance showed up, the feeling you felt might have been that it would never come at all.
To the degree we can, we must let those 12 million people in those 53 counties know as soon and as persuasively and as loudly as possible that people all over the nation care, and are acting to show that with “love, generosity and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
Thank you, leaders and home building associates who’ve gotten the ball rolling. Let’s hear it. Let’s give Houston, and all of those towns and communities in Harvey’s harsh pathway cause to hope, because, right now, its absence is real. #HopeForHouston.
