Help Ms Engle-Harris Get a New Home
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Recently, the Washington Post profiled Ms. Engle-Harris as she struggles to fix her home and take care of her brother in Tunica, Mississippi.
Known as "Miss Educator" to her neighbors, Linda Fay Engle-Harris has a Master's degree in education and has held teaching jobs across the South, mostly in the outskirts of Atlanta. She returned to Tunica for good in 2008 to take care of her brother, Johnny, who was struggling with mental-health issues. This time, she got a job at a school district one county to the south, teaching teenagers about Newton’s laws of motion and parasites, and moved back into the family home.
Now, her one-story house isslumping inch by inch, day by day, into the wet ground of the Mississippi Delta. Rot climbs up the wooden beams and mildew crept across the ceiling. Soft spots spread across the damp and buckling plywood floor. Holes open up that led straight to the soil.
Ms. Engle-Harris had always tried to manage on her own, and so when she found new openings in the floor, she crumpled paper into tight wads and jammed them into the gaps. When she awoke to find slugs oozing across her living room, she fetched a dustpan, opened the front door, and gently ushered them back into what she called “their natural ecosystem.” One night, when she grew particularly panicked about the future of her home, she handwrote four pages in a notebook left over from her teaching days, trying to gather her thoughts.
As her home fell apart, she dove into her own savings — built up over years as a public school teacher — to pay for the repairs herself. But then, nearly $20,000 was gone, used to pay for new flooring, a new roof and shingles, new linoleum in the bathroom. Engle-Harris had $1,400 left in the bank, and was forced to retire from her middle school teaching job last December when old hip pain grew to be excruciating.
Tunica, Mississippi severely mismanaged its gambling windfall, putting the money back into vanity projects and tax cuts that have not benefited its impoverished citizens like Ms. Engle-Harris. There is a program to repair senior citizens homes, or if they are too dilapidated to provide a mobile home, but there is a minimum five year wait for Ms. Engle-Harris.
While we cannot fix the problems of all of Tunica County, we can help Ms. Engle-Harris and her brother get the home they deserve.
Known as "Miss Educator" to her neighbors, Linda Fay Engle-Harris has a Master's degree in education and has held teaching jobs across the South, mostly in the outskirts of Atlanta. She returned to Tunica for good in 2008 to take care of her brother, Johnny, who was struggling with mental-health issues. This time, she got a job at a school district one county to the south, teaching teenagers about Newton’s laws of motion and parasites, and moved back into the family home.
Now, her one-story house isslumping inch by inch, day by day, into the wet ground of the Mississippi Delta. Rot climbs up the wooden beams and mildew crept across the ceiling. Soft spots spread across the damp and buckling plywood floor. Holes open up that led straight to the soil.
Ms. Engle-Harris had always tried to manage on her own, and so when she found new openings in the floor, she crumpled paper into tight wads and jammed them into the gaps. When she awoke to find slugs oozing across her living room, she fetched a dustpan, opened the front door, and gently ushered them back into what she called “their natural ecosystem.” One night, when she grew particularly panicked about the future of her home, she handwrote four pages in a notebook left over from her teaching days, trying to gather her thoughts.
As her home fell apart, she dove into her own savings — built up over years as a public school teacher — to pay for the repairs herself. But then, nearly $20,000 was gone, used to pay for new flooring, a new roof and shingles, new linoleum in the bathroom. Engle-Harris had $1,400 left in the bank, and was forced to retire from her middle school teaching job last December when old hip pain grew to be excruciating.
Tunica, Mississippi severely mismanaged its gambling windfall, putting the money back into vanity projects and tax cuts that have not benefited its impoverished citizens like Ms. Engle-Harris. There is a program to repair senior citizens homes, or if they are too dilapidated to provide a mobile home, but there is a minimum five year wait for Ms. Engle-Harris.
While we cannot fix the problems of all of Tunica County, we can help Ms. Engle-Harris and her brother get the home they deserve.
Organizer and beneficiary
John Ryan
Organizer
Tunica, MS
Linda Engle-Harris
Beneficiary
