The Biggest Problem for the Homeless is the Homeless

The homeless issue is a tough one for me. Once you meet and become friends with people who are or have been homeless, and once you have been on the brink of it, you tend to have a more tolerant perspective. I own that perspective.

What I thought was a done deal is in the news once again. I received the following letter from a neighbor via email, and though I empathize with their concerns I can't get on board their train.

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"To ALL Residents:

As you may know, the City had temporarlly approved the opening of the former Fire Station #39 as a homeless shelter this last spring. This site sits adjacent to the new Fire Station and is close to Senior housing, library, residential apartments, and retail stores. The permit for Project Share/Wheel, which runs other Tent Cities through Seattle, ran out in May and the current building is empty, however there are plans afoot to re-open it as semi-permanent shelter.

Seattle area churches, led by leaders from Seattle Mennonite Church, have been quietly campaigning to get this site open permanently. They have faced little opposition in their efforts, however, this project is NOT A DONE DEAL. The City wants to hear from Lake City residents. and is holding Community Meeting on July 13th to get your input.

We have since learned that this site would be opened as a homeless shelter for approx. 100 people for 2-3 years at a cost of around $2 million dollars. The building then would be demolished. At the same time, the City of Seattle is cutting their police budget by $2 million. There are several reasons why this location doesn't make sense, whether PERMANENT or TEMPORARY.

Lake City seems to get the 'lion's share' of social services and homeless resources. Some of these are essential to low income and struggling individuals. McDermott House houses 75 homeless/chemically dependant veterans and others with chemcal additions. Seattle Mennonite church runs a soup kitchen/day lockers for the homeless. The VA's office of Community Outpatient Services is also quartered here. At the same time, we witness daily the repurcussions of having too many homeless resources concnetrated into 1 area--dirty/trash-littered sidewalks, human waste in storefront doorways, panhandlers, and people loitering the streets. This turns patrons away from businesses that are struggling to survive in an already challenging economy. While not unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless, some of these individuals appear to be the 'bottom of the barrel' in terms of not wanting to get off the streets or into treatment. They just want to do their thing and not be disburbed.

Apart from these reasons, there's also the question of zoning and safety--Fire stations normally house anywhere from 8-12 people. How can this building safely accommodate 100? Some of the churches that are campaigning for this shelter are not in the neighborhood, so the problem is 'out of sight, out of mind' for them, but is placed squarely right on to the residents and businesses that call Lake City home. When the 3 year term for vacating/demolishing this shelter is up, who's to say these churches won't lobby to keep it open? When someone is turned away or booted out of the shelter for bad behavior, where will they go? THE STREETS OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, that's where!

No other neighbohrood in Seattle has been asked to host a 3 year homeless shelter. This plan should be scrapped. It's the wrong plan, at the wrong time, and in the wrong place. There's other ways to address the needs of the homeless and balance the desires of the Community.

Please plan atttending this meeting with City officals and tell them enough is enough! The meeting will be held Wednesday, July 13th from 6PM - 8PM at the Lake City Community Center, 12531 28th Avenue NE (just north of the Lake City Library). If you can't attend the meeting, please consder signing the petition in the Luminaire lobby! We will present signed petitions to Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods.

Thanks for your consideration,
[names withheld]"

***

This is not only prejudicial, it points to its own inadequacies. No "other ideas" are listed because this isn't the type of problem that has a clean solution. We don't have any other way of housing people who don't have the means to pay rent. What we do have is a big, empty building that is serving no other purpose, and $2,000,000 isn't a lot of money to shelter and tend to 100 people for that amount of time.

The police funding woes are a separate issue and I'm having no luck finding a correlation. That doesn't mean there isn't one, nor does it mean they aren't pulled from completely different funding sources. I'll keep looking.

Meanwhile, the homeless are the least of our worries in this neighborhood. It's the guys selling drugs to the homeless then beating them up, stealing things, breaking into cars and robbing convenience stores with axes (see previous post link) that we need to address. These individuals are not homeless.

I'd like to hear some of the author's "ideas" that he didn't include, and perhaps offer to do some proofreading for him, so I think I'll audit the meeting with my snarky hat on.

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Blog post from a different party with a comment from our mayor:

http://lakecitylive.net/2011/07/06/lake-fire-station-39-to-become-homeless-shelter-community-meeting-being-held-july-13t

Sticks and Shadows

It's been six months since the condemned, rotting house was torn down and the rusted Ford station wagon was hauled off with promise of an apartment complex. The site is once again abandoned.

While the house stood, it was shelter for addicts and rodents. Sam-dog would root plastic packets out from under the overgrown shrubs. I'd look around and quickly kick them back.


Now it's nothing but sticks and shadows, dirt and orange survey tape. At least the grass refuses to stay dead.

Holes

She has every type of piercing imaginable, and that's just the ones she can show off in public. No need to know what's going on under her clothing. Much as I enjoy my own painful tatts and grown over multiple piercings, there is a point where it becomes pure self-destruction. I couldn't quite go there, even back when I loathed myself.

As the mutt and I were walking along, she was shadowing us from across the street. She does that. She fixates and follows until something distracts her.

Then, for reasons only the chicken knows, she crossed the road and was nearly obliterated by a truck going around 900 miles per hour. It took her a full minute to digest the perilous situation and come up with an appropriate comment.

"He was driving really fast."

"No shit," I replied.

The Man Who Hollahs "Hey!"

"Hey!"

From the street below my window I hear, "Hey! Hey! Hey hey!" At first it was loud, but it's fading into the distance. Phew.

That's all he says, while moving in groovy yet agitated circles. Pedestrians give him a wide berth, and don't make eye contact unless it's by accident. "Hey!" he'll say, abruptly pivoting to face them. He slides and glides like a Soul Train dancer.

I estimate his height to be around 6'5", and his weight at around 160. He's very dark skinned, wears a knit cap over his close-cropped knots of hair and his eyes reach out at you as if to grab you and pull you into his skull.

"Hey! Hey!" When I'm on the street, I give him a wide berth and do my best to avoid eye contact.

He's one of several overt schizophrenics wandering the city, unattended, unmedicated and under fed. There is no real way to keep them under control without violating their civil rights, and so we wait until something bad happens and then we jail or hospitalize them. Then comes a court order to medicate, and the long process of convincing someone in another reality to take their pills no matter how god awful the side effects.

One hallmark of the disease is self-isolation. They are alone in their world, often in darkness, yelling at passing shadows. "Where are you going? Get in here and keep me company, damn you! Help me!"

"Hey!" Here he comes again.

"Crap, that's annoying," I say to no one in particular, as I glide across the room and close the window.

Right to Heat

Seattle has a well-known, moving target of a homeless shelter called Nickelsville. It was sarcastically named after our former Mayor, who attempted to drive our homeless population out of the city by arresting the residents of a large cluster of tents. Ultimately the shelter was ordered to relocate every few months lieu of continuing this practice. If Hooverville comes to mind, well, you are historically correct and also an old fart like me.

Nickelsville is currently located in an abandoned fire station about four blocks from my place. There is a food bank within comfortable walking distance, and this happens to be my dog's most favored evening poop route. The food bank is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On those days, Sam and I are now joined by what can only be described as a pilgrimage of cackling drunks, limping disabled veterans and schizophrenic twenty-somethings, all headed toward their bi-weekly ration of stale hamburger buns and canned turnips.

There are those who think that beggars can't be choosers. But canned turnips?

Anyway, If you follow my blog you know that my neighborhood isn't exactly Beverly Hills. It's kind of a mixed bag. Some of my building mates have cars worth more than my 343 square foot condo. Some are barely hanging onto what they have, and steal what they don't have. It is, however, surrounded by large clusters of single family dwellings with landscaping, a Subaru in the driveway, a Grand Cherokee in the garage and an alarm system to keep out the riffraff.

Much of our canned-turnip-donating middle class votes liberal because they believe it's the right thing to do, so you'd think they would be open minded about a homeless shelter. You'd be wrong. In fact, there has been a surprising outcry against the current location of Nickelsville. Last week I read some op-ed pieces and responses to news blogs, by people who think their children are in danger from the influx of homeless. From my perspective somewhere between poor and middle class, I see fewer homeless people on the street than ever. They are spending most of the time inside. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the exceptions, and most are too busy trying to get to the food bank to bother terrorizing kids. You'd think opponents would have noticed the "improvement", but obviously not.

"Why don't they get jobs? They're just lazy drunks." The factors that go into making someone homeless are many and varied. It usually isn't one thing or another, but a series of events, that finally forces someone out their front door for the last time. To me this shows a strong will to live wherever they can. Let's face it, the other option is suicide. Survival is a full-time job for everyone.

This past week nighttime temperatures dipped into the low teens. Seattle rarely sees temperatures so low that exposure can be fatal within hours. Realizing what they were railing against, even the most public opponents of Nickelsville kept to themselves. Maybe a few of them learned that those "lazy drunks" don't deserve to freeze to death no matter why they're homeless.

Shelters exist to protect from the unexpected, not the expected.

Mr. Methadone Head

It's impossible to go more than five feet around here without rubbing elbows with desperation and depravity. There is a methadone clinic, several regular AA meeting spots, a couple of make-shift shelters, a popular food bank, homeless vets waiting outside the VA hospital and two bars--populated by prostitutes--that tolerate crack and heroin distribution. Poverty and violence are part of daily life. Someone is being torn apart by the excruciating pain and anxiety of withdrawals, hiding in a doorway in hopes that no one sees them cry. Someone else is hiding a gun. Most of my neighbors try not to notice, but I can't help myself.

Yes, it's true, I meet people more easily than most. If you start talking to me, I'll jump right in despite myself. The majority of the planet doesn't want to see or talk to the addicted or homeless, but there I am, yapping away. It's difficult to listen to some of these people talk. It exposes another world; one of hurt, fear, pain, hunger, abuse and cruelty that's frightening and baffling. Sadly, this means most of my neighbors will probably never meet Mr. Methadone Head.

I know his real name. It's a fine, solid name, given to him in infancy by a mom who loved him on sight. He's a nice, normal guy. Okay, he's a nice, normal guy with a serious addiction to methadone (to replace prescription painkillers) and methamphetamine (to stay awake).

His body and mind have likely sustained permanent damage from these two drugs. He can't remember my name to save his life. He knows he's lost name retention, and looks a bit uncomfortable when he has to ask again. He repeats my name over and over in the hopes that it will stick, while busily scratching one of the many open sores on his arms. He quotes John Lennon and Janice Joplin, but can't remember the source.

This morning we had our longest conversation, yet, and I learned that some of the kids in the local make-shift gang beat up a homeless guy who has a fine, solid name of his own. "They beat him up, and then they peed on him. You know the guy? He has one of those diseases that's one of the really bad ones, too. So he can't even walk." He meant muscular dystrophy.

"Then they kicked him out of the hospital after an hour. Sent him back here with blood still on his face. All over this side, especially," and he traced an area on his cheek and chin.

Mr. Methadone Head digressed to the topic of the methadone clinic. "'People say I'm crazy, doing what I'm doing.' You know, W...W...Wanina..da? Did I get it? I do my thing and get out. Dealers hang out there, too. Mean fuckers. And those kids that hurt that guy, or maybe similar. They act tough. It's fucked there. Those people steal shit. I do my thing and get out."

It's good to know that even Mr. Methadone Head has standards.

Pleasantries with a Bum

"I'm sorry, ma'am. He didn't make it."

Those were the words spoken to me by a police officer, yesterday, about a homeless man who lived on my street. Before I was close enough to see anything, I already knew what had happened. A small, curious crowd had gathered on a grassy area where he drank during the day, and police were busily shooing and interviewing.

I took a photo of him a little over a month ago and posted it to this blog (see previous). He didn't know he was the subject of my prying iPhone, as he was fast asleep next to what was his make-shift toilet. I didn't include his face. No matter what our circumstances we all cling to a certain amount of pride, and invading someone's privacy is still possible in a public place.

Whenever I'd walk past him with my dog in tow, we'd exchange a few garbled pleasantries. Alcohol had stolen most of his ability to speak. Wheelchair-bound with Parkinson's, bending to pet Sam was a difficult task for him--but he always tried.

Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry

For Quick Sale

this
mer-
chan-
dise
has
been
re-
duced
to
tears.






Regrade

The constructive crane-neck
Of brontosaurus
Came before us
To nuzzle a weighty head
Into a lake bottom.
The slam-walk and ram-top
Of triceratops
Leveled levees of the past.
The final thrash
Of tyrannosaurus rex
Wrecked an acreage
Not in defiance of nature
But in compliance with stature.
We who lack such strength
Make up for it in steel.





The Unfriendly Takeover

...almost forgetting
the sting for the prickling
of tiny steps

tripping over hairs
and dodging moles

insipid trolls
of the animal kingdom

striving up the food
chain link by swarming
crawling link

beasts without
burden being
light as air

the burdened ones to
be their daily giant-fare

as they grow
with poverty
and breed in filth

in a world shrinking
from its insect wealth