Alone

Today I spent the day alone.  In a Homeless Shelter, this is a difficult thing to do, but not impossible.  The life of our brothers and sisters out in the streets, the act of being alone is a constant, but within the walls of a shelter you rarely have a chance to be alone.

At the Old Savannah City Mission everything is corporate.  We ate together, shower together (and the water is generally cold unless you are one of the first few taking a shower), and slept together all in the same dorm room.  When I first became Homeless, Old Savannah was my starting point.  Broke and unemployed with no prospects, I remember being very skittish and close to tears many times that first night.  That night I felt utterly alone, like an astronaut adrift in space desperately calling out and no one hearing, no one listening.  At the Old Savannah City Mission, someone is always standing over you barking orders ushering you from fellowship hall to cafeteria to shower to bed. Vague memories of "Roots" and "Holocaust" flickered through my mind where people with frightened, shocked expressions were shuffled rudely from place to place, never sure of where they are going.  Within the system that is one of the first things you realize, there is no more autonomy of action.  Out in the world when you don't like a movie you can get up and leave.  Here the motto Go Along to Get Along is a stringently enforced mandate written on stone tablets 10 feet tall.  You are told when to come in, where to sit, when to eat, when to shower, when to sleep, when to get up and when to get out and there is no personal control of these activities. 

And those in power say that this is the way that it needs to be, the strict structure of the emergency shelter environment keeps people safe and relatively peaceful.  But the immediate stripping away of one's individuality is instantly attributable to the breakdown of self esteem and self reliance.  The real tragedy here is that the system does not necessarily have to work this way.  Just a few kind words and well intentioned courtesies could go miles in helping the residents of the system retain their self worth.  I am an advocate for sensitivity training for any and all people who work with the homeless and disenfranchised.  And I am not stating that some expensive program be put in place...just show people that saying "Hello, How are you?" and waiting and listening to the response is a kindness.  Saying please and thank you, calling people by their sir names and watching that "Brutally Honest" thing (which is often just an excuse to be cruel to someone else...you know what, the Homeless don't necessarily need your brand of "honesty" because, guess what, life is being BRUTALLY HONEST with them on a daily basis!)

There seems to be a feeling in the Homeless care community that the ways the homeless are engaged works.  Is there any other program that you can think of that believes that after 20 - 25- 30 years that some change is not warranted?  So many of the Homeless in the Streets (we say that they are 'In the Wind') don't want to deal with members of Savannah's Continuum of Care because they feel that they are looked down upon and made to feel like less than a person for asking for help.  When you have social workers telling clients that if they don't do such and such a thing "No one will save them." or have administrators continue to turn a deaf ear to the plight of clients and residents instead of letting go of staff, that are cited regularly for grievances, for their detrimental and demoralizing actions and words toward the people who have no choice but to come to them for services. But Go along to Get Along still is the prevailing wisdom used to quiet the rancor of the Homeless...the threat of removal from the line to get services is real and constant.  "You had better be humble and subservient to be deemed lucky enough to partake in the blessings I (personally) bestow." No one should feel beholden to a person or to a specific building/business to get the help that they need to live.  So many who help the Homeless have set up their own little 'office monarchies' that deliver services to the poor as if they were Yahweh sprinkling manna from Heaven...so superior, so untouchable...so sad. The Bible says "And be ye kind on to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake,  has forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32).  But so many who administer help to the disenfranchised forget that they were ever in need of help.

Today I was alone...by choice.  But so many of my Homeless brothers and Sisters (and their children) are alone because they don't feel that they are worthy to come in.

We Are The Lazarus Community

I have been struggling about what to write here for a few hours.  I sincerely want to open your eyes to what it truly is like to be Homeless, in particular what it is like to be Homeless in Savannah, GA. In telling this very personal story I will aim to be as objective as possible...which will not be possible.

What i pray will happen from this blog is that many of you non-Homeless people will be able to put aside prejudice and see that the Homeless are your brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles and neighbors down the street.  And hopefully, for the Homeless that will read this, you will put away your stigma and shame at being in this Homeless Condition...a condition that no more defines who you are and what you are capable of than does a sudden rain shower on a sunny day.  To everyone, Homelessness is something that a person, or persons or families go through...it is not a character trait. 

Oh, and why the Lazarus Community?  In the Bible, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead.  This is my ambition with the Homeless...to bring us all back from the 'living death' that is the situation of Homelessness and to reclaim our rightful places as citizens, and brothers and sisters in today's society.   Prayerfully, I hope to edify you and move you beyond pity to the point that real and effective change can happen to those who have been disenfranchised by the situation of Homelessness.

Here is my voice...part of The Vox Patria, the Voice of the Homeless;

Murdering Hope – The Life of the Homeless in America

“The Question Mark of Cain”

I’m not exactly sure how this works

Grieving I Grieve You

Last time I looked it was me that lost

But it seems my loss

Has inconvenienced you

I am bewildered by how this is

Hating myself you hate me

My face, my body, my breath is abhorrent

You detest my stink

My being & the thought of me

I’m unsure of how again to be sure

And in my confusion you are certain

That I and everything that has to do with me

Isn’t worth a moment

An inkling

The fleck of paint on the caboose

Of the thought train in your mind

And victimized

I feel I should apologize

S.Ladon Ware 2010

Who in their right mind asks to be homeless.

The plight of the homeless in America is not just the problem of lodging or a living wage to afford affordable housing. The main problem of the homeless is the stigma of homelessness. You see the perception of the homeless isn’t tender like poverty stricken children or heartbreaking like women suffering with cancer, or devastating like the victims of war (not taking anything away from these very worthy causes in saying this).

But the homeless suffer under the dark cloud of being ugly and in the way.  The impression many have is of the homeless standing on street  corners in tatters, selling papers and trinkets with scruffy beards, uncombed hair and dirty disgusting fingernails and OMG THE STINK! If you are lucky they will only smell of B.O. and maybe faintly of urine. Scabby, dirty, vile beggars that intrude on your clean life!   It’s all you can do to force down the bile in your throat at the sight of them. The homeless are the modern version of the lepers, soup lines & donations the Bethesda pool and shelters are the colonies, the Lo Debar that they need to be confined to.

So when some of you see them on the corners you don’t feel too bad if you can’t wrestle the change from the ashtray in time before the light turns green. Or when charities ask for your money and time...well... there are soccer games or sewing circles and other somethings to do.  So when legislation is proposed that can help curtail the relentless advance of unemployment, one of the leading causes of homelessness, (by giving substantial stimulus monies to help foster retraining programs and desperately needed infrastructure jobs) it is all too easy to vote no and turn thumbs down.  As the job market collapses & the housing market collapses and the ranks of the homeless swell like a blood-engorged tick you can kick your feet up on your desk, glad that you didn’t add another dime to the national debt (though if our kids starve to death today tomorrow’s debt seems like a moot point). OK, I’ll take a breath now.

Dirty, unsexy lepers. Question, if you don’t do what you can to help the poor & middle class build a solid foundation for this country’s future, what will happen to America’s future? Let’s look back in history – How many societies have survived without major upheaval if the middle class evaporates and the poor get trampled into the mud?

The Great Depression's galvanizing factors looked a whole lot like the factors we are dealing with today.  We didn’t learn from that,  our most recent past , obviously given our present situation. A house without a firm foundation (the underclass) and good sound walls (the middle class) just is not a house in any definition.  People, if we kick out the rest of the house and expect the roof to ‘magic’ itself upright somehow we are fooling ourselves and courting disaster (again).

As a country in 2001 President George W Bush commissioned a report on how to end chronic homelessness in America from several of our country’s major cities. Great information was gathered and it would have been an amazing aid in helping to bring down the ranks of the homeless had this program been able to proceed (unfortunately the events of Sept 11, 2001 halted most of the progress in this area).

But the past is the past. Now we have the opportunity to infuse our job market with a work force that is ready, willing & able (and statistically, the homeless & disenfranchised desire is to work instead of relying on unemployment benefits or welfare) to work. But obstructionists have fought tooth & nail to defer any change in the status quo no matter what the lingering  effects of homelessness does to those in its ranks.

The loss of self-esteem has seen a sharp increase in the rise of depression in the homeless. The homeless have a higher stress level, just living in their situation, not counting the daily grind of looking for work, housing and suitable meals especially if you have children to care for as well.

The homeless are susceptible to higher incidences of staff infection, tooth decay, respiratory & viral infections due to their situations.

Homelessness is draining emotionally, physically, mentally & spiritually.

And when you need to seek help, the number of hoops one has to jump through to find that help is daunting.  The red tape,  both necessary & extraneous, only aid in making a human being feel as inconsequential as ...the designated number on the top of the mountain of forms required to be filled out to get any aid.

The homeless feel helpless, hopeless, unwanted & unloved. A feeling only reinforced by the way they are treated, the vicious and thoughtless way they are talked about (and over and around) and sadly, the way some people look at the homeless with a mix of disgust folded in with a type of pity that doesn’t ever lend a hand out or a hand up.

The homeless only ask to be treated one way – as living, loving, loved, blessed brothers & sisters  – as fellow human beings.  Some of you know this and treat us fairly, other's of you seem to be on that old bandwagon with Ebenezer Scrooge...when confronted with the plight of the poor tenaciously hanging on to some pride and hope, not willing to go to the jails and workhouses, preferring to die instead "If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, `they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."