Local organizations help homeless veteran

Aslane’s Mission, Love Out Loud Meridian, and local pastor Dan Talley are helping one homeless man build a pallet house.

“You can go to other countries and build houses, but you can’t build houses here. The people of the United States are not as worthy as the people in Honduras are. People will load up and they’ll take off to Honduras and other places, but they won’t take a look in their own backyard and help the homeless here build a house.”

Charles Webb is a legally blind, homeless Marine veteran that has one small piece of land in which he currently lives on in a tarp shed. He has no running water or electricity.

“We see there’s a need in the community in our homeless population. Plus, even people that live on their own land, we have a lot of them living in sub-standard situations. You can go to Honduras and Guatemala and several other overseas and build one room sustainable housing, but it’s very difficult to think about that here. To me, this opportunity shows, ‘hey, this is feasible, we have people like this that need this here.’”

Aslane’s Mission along with Webb are hoping to start a trend with this project so that homeless people in the Meridian area can have a sustainable, permanent place to live versus living in tents in the woods or even being passed from shelter to shelter.

“They’re not animals. If they’re animals, lets put them in a cage, but they’re not animals. I’m not an animal. I had property, and it was taken away from me. There’s a lot of homeless people that’s had property that was taken away from them.”

Most of the materials for this pallet house have been donated, so if projects like this were to take place in the future, they would virtually be at no cost.

“I’m fixing to get emotional because they’re good people—people that’s lost everything they’ve had. When you go there, if they have food, they’ll break it off and give it to you. A lot of people don’t know this. I wanted something to where we could start, and I met Mrs. Rainer. Now, I could be staying in an apartment with air conditioning, but I need to do something to get started to help people that’s on the street to get a place of their own, because I know what they feel like.”

More insulation and a door is still needed to help finish this pallet house for Mr. Webb. More volunteers are needed as well. Contact Christie Rainer through the Aslane’s Mission page if you are interested in helping in any way.