This is the fifth and final article in a series reporting on the experience of @NoShelterDog, a homeless bulldog living in San Diego. This time, we look at homelessness through the stark light of statistics, learn something about how @NoShelterDog’s experience ends, then ruminate on it.

What to make of this experience? What can we learn?  What’s the take-away? Or perhaps it must simply be enough for knowledge to assuage ignorance and compassion to mitigate  judgement. Perhaps it may be enough to do nothing– and simply understand.

Heavy, Deep And Real

Homelessness is a plague that continues to be the shame of our society. Homeless statistics show their numbers remain stubbornly high. Between five and six hundred thousand people are considered “homeless” at any given time.

According to the Stewart B. McKinney Act, 42 U.S.C. § 11301, et seq. (1994), a person is considered homeless who ”lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence; and… has a primary night time residency that is: (A) a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations… (B) an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized, or (C) a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.” Like a car, for instance. Like (C).

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), interpret the McKinney-Vento definition to include only those persons who are on the streets or in shelters and persons who face imminent eviction (within a week) from a private dwelling or institution and who have no subsequent residence or resources to obtain housing.

This interpretation of homelessness serves large, urban communities where tens of thousands of people are literally homeless. However, it may not adequately take into account People who are homeless in areas of the country, such as rural areas, where there are few shelters. People experiencing homelessness in these areas are less likely to live on the street or in a shelter, and more likely to live with relatives in overcrowded or substandard housing (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1996).

They Used To Look Like This

Many very nice, very– nice People view the homeless with jaundiced eyes. In the mid-seventies and throughout the eighties, they saw People exceedingly sloven, living on the streets, folded in public door ways or sprawled out on benches in public parks mostly drunk or intoxicated by some illegal drug.

Or they witnessed homeless mentally ill patients with no place else to go, who had been unceremoniously dumped into neighborhoods by state psychiatric hospitals or overcrowded, under staffed nursing homes as a result of the rescinding of the of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Homeless ex-offenders rudely startling motorists waiting in their vehicles at traffic lights threatening to squeegie wash their windshields further eroded compassion for homeless People and resulted in resurrecting a plethora of archaic vagrancy, loitering and public assembly laws. That’s just about the time they ceased being People without homes and were transformed into “The Homeless.” The homeless “theys.”

A seemingly endless succession of marathon, star-studded, simulcasted beg-a-thons, heavy-handed “awareness” campaigns and mass, 60s like demonstrations resulted in a kind of national “homeless fatigue,” particularly when all the money raised appeared to do little to diminish the nauseating sight (and smells) of the growing number of America’s homeless.

But Now They Look Like This

Presently, single men constitute seventy-sixty percent (76%) of homeless populations surveyed. This is an interesting statistic because it explains the virtual absence of homeless programs specifically oriented toward women, even those who are ex-offenders, drug addicted, substance abusers, battered or who fall in any category of social nihilism.

Today, the most neglected, the most silent, the most invisible homeless group is also the one hardest to find let alone serve:  the one fourth of homeless who have been homeless five years and more. The hardcore homeless.

Not even George Clooney can throw enough cash at this cow.

Which Brings Us Back To…

And now we have another epidemic on the rise:  The creeping increase of skilled, educated People made homeless because of long-term unemployment (defined as being out of work six consecutive months or longer) coupled with the audacity of hopelessness–  a palpable lack of confidence about the auspiciousness of future employment prospects.

Since my last report, @NoShelterDog and his Person, MsSD have lost their cell phone service which means the disconnectedness and isolation they dreaded may have indeed come to pass.  They no longer park at the CVS three miles away.

They began sleeping in the car in February 2010.  The third and final unemployment benefit extension had been received three weeks earlier in January. If everything continued as it had, it’s unlikely the car is still insured. Or if they even still have it at all. I have not seen either of them since June.

The school where I work as a Triple A Reader dog is located in the same industrial park in a building almost directly behind Brother Benno’s Center where @NoShelterDog used to wait for his Person to get breakfast, a hot shower and a sack lunch. I’m normally there once a week and far too late to run into them, so I was really surprised when I did run into them again. Once. Toward the end of May. In front of Brother Benno’s. It was maybe 1pm.

It’s More About Paper

“She’s avoiding you because you betrayed her confidence!” @NoShelterDog fairly hissed.  His undercoat and happy, good-naturedness all but gone.

I was stunned. How had I betrayed her confidence? As if reading my racing thoughts, @NoShelterDog continued:

“She said no handouts. No charity. No sad tales of woe. She does not want to be the poster child for homelessness in the 21st century! You were supposed to tell them it ain’ so tragic! You used me!”

I opened my mouth to say something. I can’t remember what.

“You’re tellin’ her all about gift cards and stuff like that. She doesn’t want a gift card! She doesn’t want to go shopping! She doesn’t want People wringing their hands and talkin’ about her like she’s some sort’a project. She wants a job! That’s all she would ever condescend to ask for but all everybody wants to do is give her a sandwich and a gift card and then send her on her way, feelin’ happy about how they ‘helped’.”

I ask:  If it were up to you, then, what would you like People to do to help? His wrinkly scowl all but disappears as he thinks on this for half a minute.

“Instead of organizing donations, and food and clothes drives, or sending her to this state supported jobs program and that federally-funded so-called Career Center– which, by the way really does not help the jobless get jobs, only the People working in those offices to document how busy they are lookin’ like they’re ‘helpin’ people get jobs. ’Look at me! Look at the files and piles of paper I’m managing!’

He makes a grand gesture of wiping sweat from his brow, then sardonically shakes the imaginary moisture from his filthy paw. ‘Whew!’ Those places are more about paper than People!” He grouses.

Give a man a fish and you feed him…

“Why don’t you use that same organizing energy to connect People with jobs?  Have a jobs pawty. Anipal employers and business owners, or anipals with hiring power and influence at their jobs could post or donate positions they know are ready and available for People to do right now!

Somethin’ like that would really be the gift that keeps on giving– one that would benefit and support communities and small business as well. And animals! We don’t want to leave our People just as much as they don’t want to part with us.

PawPosts, that’s a catchy name to call it, right, would not only help somebully’s Person become employed in this economy, it would make People feel good while actually doing good. Whatever happened to give a man a fish..?”

OK. Maybe a bit of a malapropism. MsSD herself never even looked at me.

Teach A Man To Fish…

When we first met @NoShelterDog, he was upbeat about his present. He had a regular routine. He was clean and healthy. As long as they could hold onto hope, they were gonna be all right. They reasoned their situation “wasn’t so tragic.” It could have been a lot worse. At least they had their car. And each other. 

I think MsSD hoped this exposure would benefit her. It could not. Maybe she hoped I could help her. I could not. Not in the way she’s decided she needs help.

She understands some things we will neither fully know nor fully understand. She understands the longer you are unemployed, the more likely it is you will remain that way. She knows every day they awake from a night in their car, they are one day further away from the finish line of ever sleeping in a real home in a real bed again. Wisdom, borne of pain.

She understands she’s in a race against time; running in place with the weight of isolation, shame, fear and worry shrink-wrapped in exhaustion strapped around her ankles. Picture a Hanna-Barbera cartoon where the characters run as fast as they can while passing the same rock over, and over and over again. They’re both tiring out. It’s hard to keep your game face on when you choke whenever anyone asks the simple question: “Where do you live?”

It’s Not About “Them”

This series is not about “them:” the drug addicted, the battered, the mentally ill. While we are not indifferent, those are separate and distinct issues with separate and distinct approaches and barriers to solutions. Also I have no experience with any of that.

It’s about one woman I met living in her car with her dog. A smart, articulate, healthy, vibrant, energetic Person who is ready, willing and able to work.

If a mind is a terrible thing to waste, then the wholesale waste of a valuable human resource, a healthy body, and time is just egregious. The most terrible thing about this whole situation is the tragic death of a human spirit.

Every Day I Have The Blues

This is not a Person who has done anything illegal. She just caught a motherlode of bad breaks and probably made some not-so-smart decisions. Mostly, she just caught some bad breaks. Sometimes bad things happen to People with good intentions. It’s not a moral indictment or an indicator of spiritual weakness. She hasn’t killed anybody or slept with anybody’s famous husband.

She’s homeless, not diseased. She’s homeless, not invisible. She homeless, not useless. She’s homeless. And her little dog, too. Try to remember that the next time you see someone like her walkin’ down the street. That is, of course, if you even see her coming.

Like this article?  Want to learn more? Click on the links below for information and ideas to help:

• The National Coalition for the Homeless
• How to Help Pets of Homeless People
• the Girl’s Guide to Homelessness

 

Nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Nobody loves me, nobody seems to care
Well bad luck and trouble, babe you know I’ve had my share– Every Day I Have The Blues | lyrics by B. B. King

Tagged as: Billy Stewart, homeless dogs, homelessness, joblessness, Unemployment