“It’s been too hard living,
but I’m afraid to die,
Cause I don’t know what’s up there
beyond the sky.
It’s been a long, a long time coming,
But I know a change gonna come,
oh yes it will.” (Sam Cooke)
“You are not dying on the streets, Jim.” I surprised myself when I said it. As an outreach worker, I have been trained to “under-promise and over-deliver” when serving individuals experiencing homelessness. The idea is that you don’t want to promise permanent housing or seamless medical care when you can only guarantee emergency shelter or emergency room care. Not delivering on your promises results in a loss of trust in any community.
Jim really needed to hear that though. He knew things were dire, that if he stayed on the streets much longer, he would succumb to the elements, to the hepatitis C and alcoholism that wage war on his liver, to his other physical and mental distress. But, he needed to know that someone cared, was thinking about him, and listening.
After our conversation, Jim was determined to get housing. He got the necessary documents together – a valid state ID, a certified copy of his birth certificate, Social Security card – and submitted housing applications at various places. He qualified for subsidized housing, but so have hundreds of others, and Jim is waiting with them on a massive wait list while trying to keep his hope alive.
About a week or so ago, Jim’s hope waned. He is now in a state psychiatric hospital because he told a police officer that he wanted to jump in the street during rush hour or end the pain with his friend’s pistol. Some may say that Jim was just threatening to end his life to get a roof over his head, and they may be right. But, I don’t blame Jim. If I were on the streets, I would definitely be intoxicated and maybe suicidal. That’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s the truth.
I have witnessed so much suffering and death on the streets in my short tenure as a homeless service provider. If I found myself homeless now, I would luckily have many friends who are now my clients and I would know more about how to survive out there. But, man, I would be afraid. I wouldn’t be afraid of other homeless people. Most of the folks I meet out there are full of compassion and humor.
I would be afraid because being homeless is traumatic. It is war on the mind, body, and spirit. Comparing being homeless to “war” isn’t overly dramatic, and the leading researcher on war, trauma, and mental illness agrees with me. When Dr. Koshes was in medical school at the Uniformed Services University, he successfully argued that he should be able to complete a course elective at a homeless shelter because being homeless was “the closest approximation to combat conditions in peacetime.”
About six months after I started providing street outreach to the homeless, I was walking down an alley north of Broadway and saw a homeless man huddled on a stoop. There was something about his posture that was awkward, and when I approached him and saw his face, it was obvious that life had left him. I called the cops and they searched for identification in his pockets but found none. I imagine that this fellow is buried in the indigent cemetery out at Bordeaux next to the city’s wastewater treatment plant and mulch facilities.
I go to this cemetery once or twice per year. It’s actually a nice place. There are headstones that actually have names on them and a nice monument that reads: “Rest with us at this stone, where poverty and suffering are not now known.” Almost every time I visit, I discover a headstone with a name of a homeless person who had “disappeared.” Before I see a name I recognize, I can imagine that maybe so-and-so took the Greyhound to another city (also known as “Greyhound
therapy”) or got housing and that’s why I haven’t seen him or her in a while. But, sadly, sometimes the headstones tell me where these folks have gone, and I cry a bit knowing that we as a community can do better.