A week ago it came to light that two San Francisco-based nuns, whose lives are almost entirely devoted to feeding the homeless and selling baked good to live, were facing eviction as their rent had suddenly been hiked by about $2,000 a month. They were in the process of fighting the eviction but did not feel particularly good about their prospects. There is some good news.
Under a deal struck Friday, the nuns of the Fraternite Notre Dame Mary of Nazareth Soup Kitchen at 54 Turk St. can stay for a year at their current rent. And the landlord won’t try to evict them.
“This is wonderful — now we don’t have to be in the street,” Sister Mary Valerie said when informed of the deal.
The deal was brokered with the help of famed-motivational speaker, Tony Robbins.
The man who made it happen was Robbins, who flew in for a Bay Area engagement this week and headed for the soup kitchen after reading of the nuns’ plight in The Chronicle. His secret hourlong meeting with them quickly turned from sympathy visit to business seminar to, finally, mutual admiration fest — and at the end of it, Robbins handed them a check for $25,000 to cover their troubles.
The nuns have no idea who Tony Robbins is—which is appropriate since they already have motivation. The good news is that the nuns will not be evicted. The bad news is that the solution is still very much within the framework of our current, no regulations for the elite classes, system of social inequality.
Robbins’ check was a first step toward resolution, he explained to the nuns — but he also told them it was just phase one of a business plan. The next step, he said, is to find a more permanent place. The third is to market their pastries to get a steadier income.
I do not fault Robbins his belief in our “free-market” system. He has risen up from very little and become very successful. I wish that more would be done to talk about why these nuns’ rent would even be allowed to be raised from the already intolerably high $3,465 a month to $5,500 a month in one fell swoop.
So, regardless of your feelings about Tony Robbins and his brand of motivational speaking, he does dedicate a considerable amount of energy and resources to helping others less fortunate than himself, and he has done so for many decades now. You can watch Tony Robbins’ TED-talk about motivation and his charity work, his history of receiving help, and how that changed his life forever below the fold.