Tyler Place Presbyterian Church has begun a new program in which the parish nurse helps seniors start work on their houses.
A Presbyterian church has a jump on the Biblical mandate to help provide shelter for the needy. It has just started a new program to repair the homes of the elderly before severe damage causes housing problems.
This month, Tyler Place Presbyterian Church in the city’s Shaw neighborhood began helping elderly members and neighbors get honest repair work.
“We want people to stay in their homes and live independently as long as they can,” said the Rev. Muriel Burrows, acting pastor and minister of youth of the 140-member Presbyterian church at 2109 South Spring Avenue and Russell Boulevard.
Its parish nurse got a St. Louis Community Foundation grant for $2,500 in seed money. The church will use the grant to pay its first seniors home repair consultant, Jeff Lueken. This week, he started supervising the taking of bids and the signing of repair contracts among older residents. He will check back to see that the repair work needed – and only the work needed – is properly done.
“Finding good repair people is one of the things that older people find most difficult,” said Becky Valicoff, 45, Tyler Place Presbyterian’s parish nurse.
Few elderly people are nimble enough to climb a ladder to check their roofs or gutters. Dishonest repair workers can con them into feeling foolish if they don’t sign up to repair their houses.
Valicoff, a registered nurse, is one of about 50 parish nurses in the region who put the Gospel message of healing to work for their congregation. After more than a dozen years working in operating rooms and doctors’ offices, she studied parish nursing as a way of using faith and health care to heal the whole person. Prayer ends her every session with a church member.
One of her most important tasks is screening church members and neighbors who live alone. Often she suggests they get a necklace with an alarm button called Life Line, she said. She makes sure their environment is safe. She regularly changes light bulbs.
“We don’t want them to have accidents. . . . The older houses have such high ceilings that some of them can’t risk changing a light bulb,” Valicoff said.
Helping them repair their homes and stay in that safe environment is just the next step, she said. One woman needed a door handle replaced on her front door to secure her house.
“Often if we can help them with just little problems we can keep them striving to stay independent in their house,” she said.
Valicoff got the idea for the home improvement program because she realized many of her patients talked less about their ailments and more about their gutters, furnaces and crumbling ceilings.
For nearly five years she has led a health ministry at the church. Each Wednesday at 8 a.m., she strides out with the walking club in the neighborhood beauty spot – the Missouri Botanical Garden. Every month, she eats homemade angel food cake with the church’s “Over 50” social club. She organizes regular health screenings, home safety surveys, nutrition assessments and a memory support program. The church has two volunteers – and wants more – who take the elderly to buy groceries.
“The bulk of a parish nurse’s work is providing the elderly with programs to decrease isolation, and access health care. . . . and information,” she said.
But house repair horror stories haunt her. A roofer told a neighbor who lives in a handsome 1890s house on Flora Place that she needed a new roof. By the time he finished the work she had to get a loan to pay his bill. Now her neighbors question that the house needed extensive roof repla cement, much less new gutters and other extras.
Another neighbor was intimidated by a notice from the city saying her garage was violating a city code. She had it torn down at considerable expense, without being told she needed a city demolition permit.
Many who live in the Shaw neighborhood can afford to pay fair prices for repairs, she said. However, Valicoff will help low-income elderly people by getting help from special programs like the business-backed “Christmas in April” repair program and the city of St. Louis’ home security program. She has found some volunteer groups, including St. Louis University students who live at Micah House, a residential community of students committed to three hours of community service a week. She is seeking painters and craftsmen who will work for free.
She meets monthly with 50 other parish nurses. None of them had a program for home repair, she said.
Then, Valicoff found her role model. She went to the Carondelet Community Betterment Federation Inc. to learn about its 21-year-old senior house repair program. It has a staff of five full-time carpenters. Repair consultants supervise that work and any contracts worked out with union plumbers and electricians.
“We started small, but last year we worked on 80 houses,” said Sister Marie Charles, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet at the federation. “The program helps keep seniors in their homes, improves property standards and property values.”
Although it is run by a nun, with strong backing from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, it is not a religious group. It gets money from the city’s Community Development Agency’s block grant funds. Those grants restrict the federation to help those over 55, with low to moderate income, who own and occupy their homes in the city’s 11th ward.
Valicoff visited Sister Marie Charles last month, who explained that much of the work was in painting window frames and porches, tearing off old porches and putting on decks. Making ramps for the disabled is a priority.
Tyler Place Presbyterian’s first repair assignment is to help a nonmember whose porch gutter sags so deeply Valicoff must duck to enter it. Lueken is looking for bids to get the gutter replaced.
“I am not doing this for the money,” Lueken said. “It does not matter what church we belong to – we are helping the neighborhood.” He is a member of Mount Tabor United Church of Christ and works nights as a pressman at the Post-Dispatch’s northwest plant. Valicoff is a Catholic.
“The health and repair ministry is open to all Shaw neighbors,” said Valicoff. The program’s Shaw boundaries are: De Tonty Street on the north to Magnolia Boulevard on the south, and Grand Boulevard on the east to Tower Grove Boulevard on the west.
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