by Kris de Luna ’20
One afternoon this summer, while she was the on-call clergy for the Waterville-Winslow Interfaith Council, Reverend Maureen Ausbrook received an emergency call about a homeless family living along the railroad tracks. This encounter was the genesis of Starfish Village Ministry.
Maureen Ausbrook, more often known and loved as Rev. Mo, quickly realized that the family needed more help than what the Interfaith Council was able to offer. She tried to get the family into a homeless shelter but found that all of the shelters from Bangor to Lewiston were full. So Rev. Mo decided to create a ministry that could provide help homeless families into a life of stability through one-on-one attention and fiercely advocacy. She soon realized that finding aid for homeless individuals was more challenging than she thought it would be.
“Let me tell you a story,” she said as she started to talk about the housing application process for the family. To qualify for a specific type of housing voucher, the family needed an interview at an agency in Augusta. Rev. Mo called the state agency to set up an appointment with the mother. That went smoothly enough; the woman was put on the list for a future appointment. When Rev. Mo asked for the date of that appointment, however, the representative told her that this information is not provided by phone: she’d have to wait for a letter to learn when the appointment was scheduled. Rev. Mo had heard that those letters had a way of getting “lost” in the mail or arriving days (even weeks) after the actual appointment date. So she stood her ground. After arguing with multiple different managers, the 3rd person finally gave her the appointment date over the phone.
The manager admitted to knowing the time and date for the mother’s appointment since the beginning of the phone call, but claimed it was just “policy” to mail a letter. Exactly as Rev. Mo expected, the letter with the date and time of the appointment in Augusta arrived 8 business days after the scheduled appointment. If Rev. Mo had not challenged the agency’s policy and demanded the date over the phone, the mother of this homeless family would have missed this appointment and suffered more delay in getting housing assistance. “Can you believe it?” Rev. Mo chuckled. “Just ridiculous. That was maybe one of twenty instances where I had to fight bureaucracy and absurd policies to get what I needed to help this family.”
Through experiences like like, Rev. Mo discovered that the key to Starfish Village Ministry was muscular advocacy, a term that she coined herself. There were multiple instances in which Rev. Mo simply had to stand her ground and not take no for an answer. “What it took was this intense advocacy of getting in people’s faces and saying ‘No, that policy doesn’t even make sense.’ It doesn’t take a Ph.D to do it. It was just muscular advocacy.”
Another problem Rev. Mo encountered was finding housing that meets government regulations. There isn’t enough housing in Waterville, and available units don’t fulfill the federal code requirements for subsidized housing. This means that homeless individuals can walk around with housing vouchers for years because they can’t find a home that meets the requirements. Homeless individuals are already in a vulnerable position, especially families, and housing is one of the most critical needs for stability and survival. Rev. Mo stressed that an individual can have a job or go to school, but if they don’t have somewhere to sleep, their life falls apart because they’re constantly worried about finding shelter.
Rev. Mo housed the Starfish Village family in her own home for nearly three months before they could find suitable housing. The family now resides in Waterville; the father has a job, and the daughter is thriving in school. Starfish Village Ministry began to work with a second homeless family this past October, and they too are on the path from absolute poverty to stability.
The model Rev. Mo built for Starfish Village Ministry can be implemented by any church or organization. It’s centered around the needs of the family and muscular advocacy. Rev. Mo didn’t plan to start Starfish Village Ministry, but she saw a need and couldn’t turn away from it. Though this organization first started off as a one-woman show, it is now a special ministry of the Waterville United Church of Christ with an experienced advisory committee. Though it has only existed for six months, Starfish Village Ministry has already impacted the lives of two families and will continue to do so as they make their way into the future.