It Is Our Responsibility.

I’ve noticed, it would be almost impossible to ignore, that most efforts to combat homelessness don’t really address helping the homeless. It is as if the homeless and not homelessness is the real problem. They don’t mind the homeless, they would just like them to be less conspicuous about it. Maybe, they could be homeless someplace else, someplace not so obvious. Then the problem would be solved. Little real effort is made to fight the causes of homelessness. 

Nobody chooses to be homeless, sleeping under awnings hoping the rain doesn’t soak everything you own, pressed against the side of a building trying to find a little warmth or relief from the sweltering heat and humidity. Making sure you are up and have everything you owned stuffed into garbage bags and hidden from view before people arrive and force you to leave. Nobody chooses that. 

According to Reuters a U.N. Human Rights Investigator “Poverty in the United States is extensive and is deepening under the Trump administration whose policies seem aimed at removing the safety net from millions of poor, while rewarding the rich.” Welfare benefits and health insurance are being slashed, and more people are forced to choose between food and medicine and paying their rent. 

Almost 41 million Americans live in poverty, 18.5 million live in extreme poverty. Americans “live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies.” Of course, these are not new, nor are they exclusively the result of Trump’s policies, but his insistence on pulling the safety net out from under those who are most at risk has increased the number of people who can no longer afford a place to live. Since Johnson’s war on poverty American policy has been “neglectful, at best.” And, the Trump administration has promised to dismantle almost every benefit or promise of security. And with the republican majority there’s no reason to doubt his intentions.

On a more personal note, I have seen these people. I walk the streets of downtown, and I hand them a dollar, or a granola bar, sometimes a cup of coffee. I have looked into their eyes, and seen the absolute hopelessness that is consuming them. It drags them down, compresses them, making them fit into a small, easily ignored, stooped little package, sitting against the side of a huge building. 

They are dwarfed by the size of the surroundings, the flow of traffic, the immensity of their problem. They have been reduced to insignificance, and trivia. But, if you take a minute, and look they are people, people who at one time had dreams and hopes, a life.

What they have become lessens all of us. What has happened to them affects everybody. What drove them to this silent, desperate, hell belongs to our whole country. We, as a nation, need to do better. We need to vote in November with the goal of returning compassion to power. It is our duty, it may be our most important responsibility.

A New Empty Lot

Less than a block from the place I work was a building. Over the years it has had various incarnations as different night clubs. I can’t, for the life of me, remember any of the names. Over the years the economy got worse, and nobody wanted to roll the dice on an urban club, in a run-down building miles from where the clientele lived. It sat empty, and decaying. The roof began to cave in.

It was a grey, black stucco covered eye sore. But it was old, and it had a history. A history no one man probably knew. It had a house that was probably over a hundred years old, and at some point, probably 60 or 70 years ago someone had added a squat, rectangular, windowless building. Why is lost in the ages.

A family of feral cats moved in and sometimes if you looked out the kitchen window of our building at the right time you could see one of the homeless people sharing food and milk he got from the mission with the cats.

Since the economy is better, and people are willing to roll the dice they tore the building down. Some big moneyed investor is probably going to construct a new apartment building. A glorious marvel of profitability overlooking the scenic homeless shelter. Until the can find a way to relocate the shelter. As long as the economy stays strong, anyway.

I looked out the window and saw a guy standing there holding a garden-hose spraying water on the building. It seemed odd, he wasn’t a fire man, at least he wasn’t dressed like a fireman, the building didn’t appear to be on fire, and it was raining lightly. Then, in a display of raw machine anger and fury, a deliberate, malignant show of mechanical superiority a claw rose over the roof and smashed down. Puffs of dust rose, and were quickly extinguished by the rain and the guy with the hose.

In one day, one guy with a big tractor, and his side kick with a hose knocked the building down. It was an astonishingly efficient act of destruction. Now the cats and the homeless have to find someplace else. We never really try to do anything about homelessness just the homeless. They can live with the problem, just not the symptoms.

It was gone, years of memories, parties, and friendships, brought down to an elemental pile of splintered rubbish. To add insult to the injury they parked the tracked, claw wielding tractor on top of the heap. Just to make sure it didn’t reassemble itself overnight. Then they bought in a parade of dump trucks to haul the pile to some final resting place. 

Progress has to march on, I understand, but does it have to be so thorough, and so callous, so cruel? Months later it still sits, an empty lot filled with weeds.

 I can’t help but think this is how things will end for me, knocked flat in one ridiculously casual act of terrible, violent indifference. Moistened to avoid any flashes of brilliance, no chance for a final act of neon glory to offer hope to the disillusioned and lost, just torn to pieces and hauled away by a force much greater than my own. Turned into the moral equivalent of a parking garage, or office building.

Homelessness, an epidemic.

Fair warning, this is a reprint of an article the kind people at Street Speech published. More fair warning, if you are looking for my normal foolishness, you might want to take a pass, this is depressing stuff. If you are feeling a little too cheerful for a Monday, by all means, continue.

What happens when the system fails? How do you describe the worst possible outcome of the atrophy of a dream? It is easy to picture a catastrophic collapse, one final attempt as the circle fails to come around, a horrible vision where all of the moving parts slow before stopping completely. At least there is the almost romantic vision of a shared disaster. But, it doesn’t happen that way. It is a thousand small failures, the system sustains itself. But, it leaves parts behind, people who can’t find a fit. It leaves them homeless, living on the street, forgotten by almost everybody.

Of course, it is easy to overlook the failure when it is so third person, so distant. When you add a hint of mental illness, and possibly addiction all of the sudden it is almost predestined. Wash your hands, walk away, thinking there was nothing that could be done. However, there are no villains in this story. Only the unfortunate few who have suffered so much.

According to Greendoors.org (an organization striving to provide homes for those in need) 643,067 people are homeless in America on an average day. A horrifying number. Greater than the population of Wyoming. An epidemic that has swept across the country. It is not limited to metropolitan centers, rural areas, suburbs, all face the same crisis.

Breaking down the numbers, a bit further, Greendoors.org states 238,110 of these homeless people are in families. Children, without a home. According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, 2.5 million children are homeless every year. The most fragile component of our society, without a roof over their heads. Again, according to National Center on Family Homelessness, there are homeless children in every state, county, and city in our country.

Even if the people can enroll a child in school, no mean accomplishment, true education requires the building of a relationship between students and teachers. Students require a level of comfort with their classmates. A classroom requires a nurturing environment, a sense of trust, of continuity, long term relationships, only possible through stable family housing.

According to the Urban Institute family stress and instability can have deep and lasting impacts on children’s physical, emotional, and cognitive development. These children are being put through a meat grinder from which they may never recover. And if they do think of the scars left by nights of being cold, hungry, and afraid.

Personally, I have seen a small family, mother, father, son, gathering up their belongings, the chill of the morning causing their breath to steam white, as they shake the frost from their meager collection of blankets, and bags, packing up and moving along while they can still pretend it is a choice. Knowing full well that soon it will not be voluntary. And I thought, how can this happen? But, these people often have no choice. Recent studies indicate that nowhere in the US can a person working forty hours at a minimum wage job afford a single bedroom apartment at fair market rent.

In many cases, mental illness drags people into the tight grip of helpless despair. Greendoors.org estimates that 25% of homelessness is caused by this scourge. Living on the street is the only option for people with those demons. According to NationalHomeless.org mental illness denies people the ability to form lasting relationships, forces them to misinterpret guidance, and push away caregivers. Unable to care for themselves, or maintain a home they are left with only one option, the street. The street never turns anybody away.

It is an awful sight, on my daily strolls through downtown, watching a poor man digging cigarette butts out of public ashtrays. Smoking is bad, but this is worse. It is the only time I wished I hadn’t quit smoking, so I could give this poor man a cigarette.

The foundation of humanity is built on the love of fellow man, and the cracks and crumbling are obvious when you see these poor lost souls wandering alone in such terrible darkness in the glaring light of day. Even if these people were given homes they would not be able to master the basic skills needed to sustain even the most basic of homes without help through improved mental health care for the poor.

Domestic violence often drives victims to a life on the streets. According to the National Need to End Domestic Violence up to 57% of all homeless women report that domestic violence is the immediate cause of their homelessness. Moreover, 38% of all victims of domestic violence become homeless at some point in their life. Victims are forced to choose between the certain violence at home and the potential violence of the lonely life scrounging for change for on the sidewalks.

Evicted because of disturbances that left them battered and in no small way broken, they are left with no money, no home, and no hope. Going from bad to bad, life as a constant, an equation of agony with no solution.

Sometimes they are only children, late teens, early twenties. Sitting, legs crossed, a little sign laid across their knees plaintively asking for anything, any small donation. Sometimes you can see the bruises, sometimes you can’t, but you know they are there. Bruises that go beyond the motley, dark purple, green, and yellow blue. Bruises that will never heal, that you will never see, painful, permanent tattoos of betrayal.

I walk the streets, and I see. It is almost like walking through parallel dimensions on my lunch break. In one dimension are the people carrying purses, brief cases, carrying bags of hot carry out food, talking about a trip to Put-In-Bay, oil changes, the need for an effective method to combat crabgrass. All normal, routine, samples cut from the fabric of American life. On the B side are the lonely, the forgotten, carrying ratty back packs, wearing stocking caps, and jackets. There is something about sleeping on concrete, or asphalt, it drains the warmth from a person and never returns, not completely. When you look in their eyes you see the sorrow, the pain, suffering, the simple statement, “you could never imagine how tired I am.”

You can’t just walk away from a look like that. You carry it with you as you rush away to the safety of life. But you never really walk away at all. It goes with you. If you can’t take pity on these poor souls, these lost, lonely wraiths you have never really looked into their eyes at all.

Life goes on without slowing, but, there is hope, it will take everybody, our elected officials, our communities, our churches. It won’t be easy, but what choice do we have?