September Updates
Hopes & Challenges
We asked neighbors at a recent community meal to name challenges they face & hopes they have for our neighborhood. Challenges fell into three buckets: not enough inclusive housing, threats to safety (mostly from cars but also drugs), and social isolation. Hopes naturally mirrored those: housing for all, freedom to move about the city safely, freedom from drugs, inclusive community spaces, connection with supportive and loving neighbors.
Those are big issues, and they’re all connected to each other. But that kind of community is totally realistic. A place where everyone’s included, where everyone’s free & empowered to move safely around their neighborhood. A place where everyone has opportunities to support themselves and their neighbors, where everyone’s seen, known, and loved.
Making connections
When we’re not hosting the community meal, the mini farmer’s market, clothing swaps, or hosting partner events, we’re open from 10-2 M-F as a third space: a community resource hub where everyone’s welcome. Neighbors stop by to meet up, work, find rest, and connect with local resources. The goal? Everyone’s included in the social and economic life of the community.
When neighbors stop by with needs beyond what they or Trinity can meet, we connect them with great neighbors and local organizations who can. Here are just a few of the partners we’re grateful to work with:
Housing for all
Open Table Nashville journeys alongside neighbors to find housing, which often feels frustrating and impossible. Open Table builds relationships with each neighbor as a person to be loved, someone with worth and potential, not a number to be moved. They also advocate for the kinds of structural changes we need so that all our neighbors have safe places to live. When we meet neighbors struggling to find housing and get off the street, Open Table is who we turn to first.
Own a house but struggling to maintain it? Rebuilding Together Nashville restores, rebuilds and performs essential repairs at homes of area residents. Dickerson Pike is one of their focus areas. RTN helps preserve affordable homeownership so neighbors can remain in their communities.
Rent too high? Connect with Renters Union Nashville - they’re organizing renters across Nashville to work together for more affordable rents.
Nothing affirms someone’s worth more than saying you belong here - and then working to make sure that’s possible. We want you in our lives and in our community.
Freedom to move & thrive
Walk Bike Nashville creates opportunities for people to learn, grow and feel safe to move through our city by foot, bicycle, and transit. The Dickerson Pike corridor we’re located along is one of the most dangerous places to move in Nashville. Walk Bike spends time listening to the neighbors who walk our streets the most so they can advocate for changes to make their lives safer, to help them get from home to work and to community.
Don’t know how to bike? Bike Fun empowers people to bike with confidence & joy. Many of my neighbors at Trinity can’t afford a car. Or they were bankrupted & stranded by a car accident. No one should need such an expensive thing to get around our city. I can’t tell you how many times transportation issues end up being the biggest barrier to flourishing or even the next right step in a journey.
Exercising our potential
It’s hard to support other neighbors if we can’t first support ourselves. Everyone in our community has gifts and strengths to share with their neighbors, even if those strengths aren’t valued by our current economy.
Daybreak Arts provides creative resources to people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity to create incredible works of art. They help artists build the economic resources to reclaim access to housing, health, and community. You can see some of their artists’ work at Trinity. You can buy some of their pieces, too!
Transformation Life Center works upstream with youth in underserved communities to develop their own literacy, leadership, and health & wellness skills.
Nothing is as empowering as exercising your own gifts and strengths. Nothing affirms someone’s potential more than contributing to something bigger than themselves. There are thousands of creative ways to use our gifts for good, to love and serve the needs of our neighbors.
Nashville’s got so many great organizations meeting specific needs, empowering neighbors, and advocating for systems level change. Trinity’s role isn’t to re-do something that’s already being done well. We want to host and partner with those incredible groups so we can work together for the good of our neighborhood.
Run a non-profit or community organization affirming or empowering neighbors? Looking for space to meet, organize, and act?
Email me (zach@trinitycommunitycommons.org), or forward this to friends looking for space. We’d love to partner with and host you here.
Building trust & belonging
Trinity’s role as a community space is in building trust and restoring connections within our neighborhood so that all people belong; so that everyone’s included in social and economic life of the community. Restoring trust takes time. You can’t trust someone you don’t know. And you can’t know someone you don’t slow down and connect with.
Charles Montgomery describes this well in Happy City (and I swapped out the line in bold):
“People who say they feel that they “belong” to their community are happier than those who do not. And people who trust their neighbors feel a greater sense of that belonging. And that sense of belonging is influenced by social contact. And casual encounters (such as, say, the kind that might happen around a community dinner table on Tuesday night) are just as important to belonging and trust as contact with family and close friends.”
Sharing a meal with neighbors is one simple way to build bonds of trust that can transform a neighborhood. If you’re looking to connect with some of the best, most generous, most life giving neighbors I know, come join us for dinner next Tuesday.
With love,
Zach
901-356-0297
PS - tomorrow’s a runoff election day. Don’t forget to vote! And if Trinity is your polling place, I’ll see you here tomorrow!
