The reason for the separation of the two sides for me is not that I forget my own experiences when dealing with the needs of those going through homelesness, but that my empathy and understanding create an intensity of devotion and feeling that is it seems very hard to deal with for others who have never been through such unpleasant preassures and conditions. I don't deal well with dilettantes and do-gooders, which is extremely unfortunate because they make up most of the helpout community. Precious few of the exhomeless want to go back and serve those who are currently at risk so horrendous are the terrors of this predicament, so daunting the threat of return, they can't spare a moment of new won selfsufficiency to look back, don't want to go back.
New Haven spends more than all the rest of Connecticut put together, but in the last several years, since 2002, there has been a wavering, a testing of the limits of the system that has served so many for some decades now. A young woman of color but not much experience took over the Department of Social Services and things began to grow dark for our most desperate. A limited stay policy was installed when she found out that some shelter residents had incomes. But the 90 day policy they passed doesn't target just those who have money coming in, it targets everybody. I went to a meeting by the Homeless Advisory Board, a committee of beaurocrats, politicians, students and one handpicked homeless person who decide on policy for the city, where a shelter administrator proundly described throwing out over twenty men for their inability to find adequate housing in three months or have the necessary requirements needed for extentions. I spoke up forthrightly saying that it was wicked, so much for my future application to join the board. Often social workers, the frontline interface for all programs of rescue, are not emotionally cut out for the work; so burdensome is the case load, difficult the strategies, and unstable the clients it becomes a nightmare for many, intensifying the already intolerable stresses for their clients already undergoing extreme trauma more often than not. Kids from impossible family situations, vets, battered husbands and wives, life sends us reeling and then provides little in the way of restoration institutionally. That there is a success rate is miraculous and bespeaks the tremendous ingenuity of our species. It seems we are going through a time of image over substance. Our town fathers don't appear to want to be the city who takes care of the bedraggled indigent anymore. The shelters have become impossible or closed, and once outside, the evicted many get rounded up in the Spring and Fall, pushed out of sight of the parents of the incoming classes of Yale, Albertus Magnus, Quinnapiac, and Southern Connecticut University, are vulnerable to all kinds of vagrancy laws, no public bathrooms, on and on. Local hospitals the ER waiting rooms of which were refuges of long standing in bad weather have become hostile over the last several years and chase people out now during freezing and wet days and nights. If all could see that such bad treatment only exacerbates the problems in every way. Give people your best and they will respond in kind. How can it be good to further brutalize our most damaged lives?
When I cooked for the Edge of the Woods soup kitchen and later a soup kitchen some of us organized to cover a two week summer vacation of a church organization usually providing lunch five days a week, I used all my expertise of diet and culinary nuance and the tiny budgets, donated food, my foodstamps and small allowance, or from Edge some of a $45 wk salary to serve up the most sumptuous of soups, salads, main dishes and deserts. In 2000 I was introduced to an activist who was selfless beyond all reason, but he left for Providence and from there Chicago leaving behind a very shakey deteriorating group of illfitting locals in search of a leader. Three groups initiated by him, Respectline, that two week soup kitchen and Inside at Night: non exsistent, non exsistent and just barely alive, respectively; all so embedded with Yale and the student version of activism, they drove me out. Inside at Night which attempts to raise the $240,000 6 month budget for The Overflow Shelter, housing 100 men, only functions within the timelimits of the very busy lives of the two men who remain.
I can't figure out how it is intelligent people arrange things so badly. There just can't be a personal perspective operating. I spoke to a woman who was living in a family shelter with her son. She worked and had to be at her job early, had to feed and deliver her son to school early enough to get to work, but shelter policy required her to follow rules that made her life impossible. She wasn't allowed to miss daily meetings during the day, not allowed to leave the building early enought to make her bus, was being threatened with expulsion. Huh?
Often at meetings for Respect Line, a group organized to air grievances and support the causes of shelter residents, people said they prefered jail to shelters as they couldn't be expelled from jail. Just a few years ago, a woman with a heart condition was asked to leave because she had to go out to obtain heart medication which literally kept her alive, after some heated discussion, she was permitted to stay, then the next day was thrown out. She died of exposure while sleeping in a cemetary that night. Staff are not known for their compassion, or accepting the obvious seriousness of their responsibility. Shelters are the bottom line, everything should be considered before throwing someone into the out of doors, especially an older woman in very poor health. But the attitudes are oppressive, often insulting.
I avoided shelters at all costs. As it happens, the New Haven shelters don't take pets, I always had animals so they weren't really an option anyway. Though I remember peoople advising me to "get rid" of my dogs and cats so to be more accomodatable, I couldn't go there, losing my home was bad enough, but to destroy my family too was unthinkable. I would do what ever I needed to do to keep us together and alive. Not always so possible. Once after a violent eviction, I had many cats and dogs and finally bought a dilapidated 12' trailer and lived in it for almost 6 months, leaving a trail of cats as we were asked to leave precipitously from here and there. That ended very badly with a lovely intervention by the police and courts for no real reason. Staying with friends or family can be extremely hairy especially with animals. The only advantage is the incipient attitude; shelters put you in an extremely low category, your friends won't place you quite that low, low none the less. No matter who takes you in the seismic register is always high, the possibility of eviction always prevalent. The shelter, however, must take you back after a short time, your friends or family usually won't. During the 6 month seige, I begged the New Haven Zen Center for help. We had 6 puppies with us by then. Even though I had given my life's blood to that group for years, they allowed me only 2 days and 2 nights sanctuary, and they had lots of very protected space to park, but lots! They loved the little ones, but decided for some reason to punish me. Though most of the people I know are what you might call "liberal", they aren't as a rule generous with their homes or property.
There is a campaign these days to build 10,000 units of public housing in the state, I think it's 1,000,000 units country wide, the Bush administration's version of ending homelessness. But they are locating the housing outside of cities, suburbians being so not into people in dire economic straights, didn't they move away from such unpleasant reminders of want and need? Of course housing is key, but it must meet the needs of the people it hopes to serve. If these 1,000,000 units of public housing are created with real living human beings in mind, it will work; if it is a project to build enough units to get unwanted people of the streets, out of sight, it won't. It needs to be understood that the homeless are us, valuable individuals, our relatives and friends, so much can be accomplished with this one adjustment. Homelessness is a circumstance, the cure for which is a change of heart, a redirection of attitude. The old phrase, "There but for the grace of God go I" needs to be widely resurrected. We are so distracted by our needs to succeed, efforts to ward off all avenues of disaster. Why is it not clear that the only way to ensure true security is to provide a beautiful, failsafe net for states of need, real help in times of loss and injury. Then what could frighten us?
1 comment:
This is so much better then I thought. With a little tweaking might be good enough to submit somewhere
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