Every major city in America has thousands of homeless people living on the streets. The homeless require our assistance and support, or they may never have the opportunity to improve their situation.
This was discovered by Elvis Summers when he came across Irene “Smokie” McGee dozing off outside his home. Summers saw the growing trend of people building tiny houses and decided to put his construction skills to use.
Summers met McGee after knocking on the door of his Los Angeles home in search of recyclables to exchange for money. When he saw the woman had neither a tarp nor a box to sleep on, he knew he had to do something to assist her.
For McGee, the man made the choice to construct a portable, small house. He immediately went to a hardware store and bought $500 worth of supplies. After several days of laborious work, the small house with a locked door so McGee could protect her possessions was completed.
Throughout the building of the house, Summers filmed his progress.
Later, in an effort to encourage others to assist the homeless in their neighborhoods, he uploaded this video to YouTube.
That and more were done by him.
Summers used the exposure from the video’s over 7.2 million views to introduce the Tiny House, Huge Purpose fundraising initiative. Learn more about Summers and McGee and how he is helping more people in his community by reading on.
Summers was completely unaware of how dire McGee’s circumstances were when they first met. He told The Independent, “I knew she was homeless, but I didn’t realize she didn’t even have a tarp or a cardboard box to sleep in until about three weeks ago.
Summers was in financial trouble, but he knew he had to assist McGee. He revealed that.
“I can hardly keep my lights on, but I saw a 60-year-old woman sleeping practically in the dirt next to a house — a house where everyone is happy and warm, enjoying their hot showers and toilets to use, the food in their fridge, clean water to drink, electricity, TV, and so on. ”.
Summers said, “I immediately went to the hardware store and decided to buy the materials to build her a tiny house so she could at least sleep in a warm, safe place rather than the dirt. A few bills that I know I can pay late and catch up on were less significant than it. ”.
After hearing what Summers did for McGee, a local church has offered their parking lot as a location for the Tiny Homes to stay overnight. Summers stated that “the church is willing to help with showers, food, and clothing to help all of the people in the tiny homes we put there climb back up.”.
The popularity of the video has caused Summers’ objective to change. He explained, “I’ve expanded my plan to help a few more people to help as many as I can.
My video went viral, and I’ve gotten such a huge global response.”.
Please share this with your friends and family so they can be inspired by what this man did.
