Today is the United Nations’ World Habitat Day, dedicated to the principle that affordable, adequate housing should be a priority everywhere. Take a moment today to be grateful for your home, for the warmth and comfort it provides for you and your family. Talk about ways you can help others in your community or elsewhere to ensure adequate shelter. And make time for one or more of these movies about what home means:
1. A Home of our Own Kathy Bates plays an indomitable mother of five who builds a home for her family despite enormous obstacles and difficulties.
2. Places in the Heart Sally Field won an Oscar for this fact-based portrayal of a Depression-era widow who will do whatever is necessary to keep her home.
3. The Wizard of Oz Dorothy learns that there’s no place like home and that even a technicolor land filled with magic cannot compare to a small farmhouse in Kansas.
4. It’s a Wonderful Life George and Mary Bailey (James Stewart and Donna Reed) take a ramshackle abandoned house and make it into a home. The newel post may not stay on the banister but everyone in the Bailey household feels safe and secure and George, whose profession is in helping others to be able to afford a home, learns how lucky he is.
5. Annie A plucky little orphan girl and a wealthy industrialist both learn that it takes more than a house to make a home in this tuneful family treat.