ScottSevener.com

My wife and I had just bought a new house.

It was considerably bigger than our current home and located in a fairly upscale neighborhood, but there were a couple of areas of the house that needed some work – namely, the driveway, which was just this weird, single-car path that winded all over the place between the street and the house, and the garage, which looked kind of shabby on the outside but in reality was pretty huge on the inside.

We were showing some friends the new house when I started to explore the garage – we hadn’t parked in it yet, but it was easily 3 cars wide and almost double the depth of your usual garage, too. It was huge, and in the back corner there was a door that led into another room off of the garage that was kind of an open-air workshop or something. It was kind of weird, but what really stood out as I was giving my tour was a bunch of stuff that had been left in the garage – almost to imply that someone had been living in there. A number of pallets had been laid out across the dirt floor along with a surprising number of cots and mattresses stacked up off to the side, and there were even remnants of a small fire in the middle along with some clothes.

I remembered the real estate agent citing that the house had had issues while it was on the market of homeless people living in it, but he had said that they would all be shooed out after the sale had completed.

Our guests were very quick to agree that these people had to go, and we were a little concerned too about the thought of random strangers living under our roof without our knowledge. But instead of just cleaning the area up and throwing all of their “stuff” away, I made a plan to show up after dark (we hadn’t actually moved in yet) and confront whoever had been staying there that they weren’t welcome…

…but when I actually saw the people face to face, I just couldn’t do it.

It was more than just one or two – it had actually been dozens of people who were flocking to our gigantic garage in search of refuge in this affluent neighborhood that was far too well-off for anything like homeless shelters or anyplace that could try to give them some assistance. I just didn’t have the heart to kick them all out with nowhere to go, and I really didn’t have any idea what I was going to use all of that extra space for anyways, so I guess I did what any kindhearted, apparently fairly rich person would do.

I had my chef cook for them!

Steak and potatoes, veggies, and all sorts of other goodies – for once, the focus of the dream wasn’t actually on food so I don’t recall all of the details, but I do recall all of the people being very happy and very grateful for a hot meal and not having to hide in fear of getting kicked out. As the word got out, more and more homeless people began to show up, but there was plenty of food and lots of room, and we all ate together in my ridiculously-oversized garage.

I woke up before I ultimately decided what to do with them long-term, but I’d like to think that I figured out some way to help.