Abel Najera-Banuelos, center, poses with his parents holding a certificate he received from the City of Salem for raising $100 for the city’s homeless rental assistance program. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)
As city officials work to house some of its most vulnerable homeless people, they’ve found an unlikely ally: 8-year-old Abel Najera-Banuelos.
Najera-Banuelos was the first private donor to the city’s homeless rental assistance program, which provides apartments and social services to people who have been on the streets for years.
He donated $100, the bulk of his proceeds from running a lemonade stand during National Lemonade Day earlier this year.
“I worked hard. It was actually pretty fun,” Najera-Banuelos said.
Najera-Banuelos was three the first time he tried to help someone homeless.
He was at a Salem Burger King with his mother when he saw a man asking for money outside.
“I was like, ‘Can I give him the Happy Meal?’” the boy said. His mother, Sosha Najera-Banuelos, told him okay.
But the man said he didn’t want the food, surprising Abel.
“I started crying,” he said.
For his mother, it was a teachable moment.
She grew up in foster care and bounced around, living in 10 homes before running away when she was 18 and pregnant. She was angry at the system, she said, and had grown up feeling like no one wanted her.
“I felt as if the street family were my only family. I felt like they were the only ones who cared,” she said. Soon, she began using methamphetamine.
After her daughter was born, she moved in with a cousin and tried to be a good parent, but soon went to prison for selling meth. She got clean while behind bars, but had nowhere to go on release, so she was back on the streets.
Eventually, she met Abel’s father, Abel Najera-Mendoza, who helped her get back on her feet.
When her son didn’t understand why someone might not want his help, she her past.
“We talked about my life being homeless,” she said. “I just tried to explain to him what they might be going through. Maybe they don’t need food at that moment.”
Najera-Banuelos kept his desire to help others but set his sights higher than a Happy Meal.
“I felt really bad for, like, the other ones. And my mom,” he said.
Najera-Banuelos is a third-grader at Grant Elementary School, where he’s in the gifted and talented program. This year, he’s made money door-to-door selling of extra produce from his father’s job as an agricultural worker.
He plans to keep working odd jobs during the school year to raise money for the city’s efforts.
His mother said they’re trying to figure out how to get a city permit so he can run the lemonade stand regularly.
Najera-Banuelos has contributed about 10 percent of the roughly $1,000 the city has received from private donors, said Kellie Battaglia, the client services manager for Salem Housing Authority.
“To me he’s the shining example of what we can do,” she said.
She said it’s especially rare to see children who are willing to give money to something intangible, like a rental assistance fund, rather than hosting a clothing drive.
“To do that and then contribute it to the effort, I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said.
That contribution earned him a certificate from the city and a chance to meet Mayor Chuck Bennett, who holds the job Najera-Banuelos said he wants when he grows up. (Eventually, he clarified, he’ll become president.)
Down the road, he wants to raise money to fund a new homeless shelter in Salem, an idea his mother said was entirely his own.
“I just thought. With my smart brain,” he said.
