While waiting at a traffic light with her parents in Atlanta, Georgia, Kevin and Joan Salwen’s 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other. Hannah turned to her father and said, “Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.”
The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah continued to talk about the car and the man. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something. “What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”
Oops.
Eventually, that’s what the Salwens did. They sold their luxurious $1.6 million 6,000 square-foot Atlanta mansion, donated half the proceeds to charity, and bought a modest replacement home. (It wasn’t quite as neat as that – the mansion took two years to sell, and the daughter was adamant they keep their pledge to the charity, so they borrowed from her college fund to keep their commitment.)
Though the sacrifice was great, the benefits have been greater still. A smaller house has meant a more family-friendly house. “We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness,” Kevin says. “I can’t figure out why everybody wouldn’t want that deal.”
The entire project is chronicled in a book by Kevin and his daughter, entitled The Power of Half . The aim of the book isn’t to get people to sell their houses, but simply to encourage them to step off the “treadmill of accumulation” — to define themselves by what they give, and not just by what they possess. Hannah says, “For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent, or treasure. Everyone does have their own half; you just have to find it.”
Reaction to their decision has been interesting. One website that covered the story has plenty of readers who thought they were promoting liberal godless socialism – that homeless person needed to get a job, not a handout. One person commented, “If only Mr. Mercedes had less so Mr. Homeless could have more? All coming from a sweet, innocent child. What’s next? The big purple dinosaur having a ‘Let’s make Communism Fun’ special on TV? Mr. Mercedes may have worked 3 jobs for ten years to get where he is today. Why should he have to give up any of his hard-earned spoils? Isn’t that what America is all about?”
Another reaction is that the issue is not with the homeless, but the affluent. The Salwens advocate voluntary generosity, not government-dictated socialism. One person said, “The Salwens don’t expect other people to sell their homes and donate half the profit. Their story is about the power of half; rather than say ‘I should do something’ or ‘we should give more,’ they’re suggesting that you quantify that ‘more’ with ‘half.’ For example, one could take half the money he spends on coffee in a year, and donate it to an addiction center; or halve the time spent playing computer games and use that time to teach basic software skills at a senior center; or count the number of books you buy in a year and spend half that number of hours reading to home-bound people.”
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Adapted from an illustration by Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; source: Nicholas Kristof, “What Could You Live Without?” nytimes.com (1-24-10)