First Home Visit

I am scheduled to go and perform a home visit today with one of our volunteers. This task is a first for me and I gotta say, I am a little nervous.

I know how uncomfortable it can feel to have strangers in your home even when they aren't doing an inspection, so I can only imagine how much more awkward it will feel to them to have these two people going through your home and asking you a bunch of questions about your life.

I just want the applicant to feel at ease. One of my biggest struggles here is in staying 100% objective in terms of qualifying factors. I have many applicants who don't qualify for one reason or another. These families all have the need, though, for decent housing, or they wouldn't have come to us. I want to be able to wave a magic wand and make all these families' troubles go away. I breaks my heart when I have to have the conversation with each family about why they don't qualify (yet). I worry so much about their feelings. I don't want them to feel judged in any way by our organization. I can and do empathize with them and their individual situations and I only hope that they feel that. Without divulging too much personal information, I try and let them know that I, too, am a single parent, am trying to make ends meet on a low income with poor credit and struggling with too small a living space so that they can see that we are on a level playing field.

Wish me luck.