There but for the grace of god go I vs. not in my backyard.
I came perilously close to being homeless myself. I was on food stamps and my applications for welfare and Medicaid were rejected because I didn’t have an address. I ended up living with my parents and they let me stay as long as it took to get myself together, get healthy, and get back on my feet. This took years, and only the blessing of a cohesive, loving, capable family kept me off the street.
I know how few of the homeless in my neighborhood have this opportunity, this level of care or this level of support.
Now I’m way beyond homelessness. I live in a house my wife owns in one of the best neighborhoods in Philadelphia. We have cars and jobs and possibility. Our daughter goes to a private school. Our dogs eat high-end dog food. With more than a twinge of guilt I think the homeless in our neighborhood are a pain in the ass.
Some are threatening, even when I’m out walking an aggressive, unfriendly dog. Others rip apart the trash bags for food and metal. One walks up and down the street cursing at the top of her lungs, and the addicts leave spent hypodermic needles all over the place. On a walk to pick up my daughter from school, while one homeless man hung from the front of a bus, pounding on the windshield insisting the driver take him to 2nd and Market (not a stop on that bus route), another who may have had a bad experience in the military followed me. I had on a camouflage jacket and he stayed with me, howling threats, for two blocks. He remembers me even now. No matter what I’m wearing it seems he’s always down the street yelling threats at me. Itching for a fight.
Then there’s the nuisance. The trash everywhere, the nearly unconscious people crossing against the light or riding rusted old bikes the wrong way down the street nearly causing accidents. The smell. The stuff that wasn’t there just a few years ago. I tell myself that these are people, most of them with mental illness just like me. It’s ungodly that I hold anything against them. But I do.
Layoffs and evictions during the pandemic put a lot of new people on the street, and shelters closed or limited services, and mental health support was severely restricted. Homeless rates soared, and today we have more people living on the street than living in shelters. Here in Philadelphia we have a city in the top ten in the country for number of shelters and strong advocacy for safe-injection sites. Yet tent cities pop up on vacant land, people live with shopping carts and sleeping bags under every underpass of I-95 in my neighborhood, and people camp and shit between cars in the community parking lot. In the neighborhood the problem is quickly going beyond nuisance and when asked about the homeless many people wish they would just go away.
But to where?
I went to the funeral of a woman who lived much of her life in shelters or on the street. She came from a prominent family and was loved and supported. There were plenty of places she could have gone for a more comfortable life. But she struggled with mental illness and chose to stay on the street. Her adult children were at the Mass, as well as my friend, her sister, who stayed in close touch and offered selfless help. In one way, with support possible, this woman named Peggy’s life was atypical for many homeless people. In another way it was not that different from most. Families struggle to help amidst a system that is strained and unprepared for the explosion in mental illness and homelessness we see in the United States.
When we stood during Mass I leaned against the back of the oak pew in front of me. The wood was worn smooth and silky from all the people who stood before me since the church opened in 1908. From the pastor and from the eulogy, for the first time ever, I heard the words mental illness spoken in a Catholic service. It was enlightening and sad, as people spoke of a life of both struggle and joy of a person that most of us would just step over.
Walking the dogs later I paused at the shopping cart of a person who was wrapped in torn sheets on a park bench on a cold morning as winter came early. Attached to the back of the cart was the picture of a woman with a teenage boy, and laying in the treasured trash in the basket was a children’s spelling book. These are lives here, real, valuable lives, and no one is sure how to help, if help is even possible, and most people who walked by this person that morning wished they would all go somewhere else.
My feelings are so complicated. Problems are ignored until they get too big and complex for anyone to generally and effectively address them. The homeless people continue to crowd in, churches and charities feed who they can, the convenience store always has a homeless doorman asking for change, the path along the river behind the sheet metal workers union building, the path where we used to run, skate and cycle, has been taken over by a tent city with people shouting obscenities from bushes that shake like they’re messaging some lost Moses and men walk past with machetes strapped to their belts. We don’t go there anymore. Still, the woman who used to pace the block shouting fuck you hasn’t been heard from for weeks and we kind of miss her, and certainly worry about her.
Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” and these homeless individuals are each a testament to the failures of access and results in our current approach to mental health. My great grandfather founded a homeless shelter in the depression. The shelter is long gone, but the homeless aren’t. Because of their diversity of health, reason and lifestyle no one really knows how to address the issue.
Perhaps we should begin with honesty. Honesty is hard and uncomfortable, as it gets us deep under what we think we should think and plunges us into how we really feel. I write about mental illness, have a severe mental illness, and have risked career and security because of my writing. When it comes to the homeless in my neighborhood I’d honestly like to help. But on a deeper visceral level where honesty causes pain and rings even more true, I want to cry. I want them gone.
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Thanks Tim.
George, your words as so blisteringly honest. Yes, how do we begin to look at the problem on homelessness when we can hardly bear to look at those who are homeless? I have no clue. But the honesty would be a good place to start. Thank you.