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Whatever is said about homeless today, will be different in the future if our present economic problems continue to spiral out of control, the subject of homelessness is no longer that person we don't know, but the people we do know, our friends and family and even ourselves. I know because I remember the 1970-1980 "recession" and went from being one of those "nice people" who helped others, to being one of "those people". In the 1960's I thought poverty was a "meaningful experience" that those of us born White and Middle class could never have. I came of age in southern California with a booming economy and opportunity all around me. It was easy to get a job within a day or two. All one had to do was show up at the employment department and ask for a job. No resume required, no criminal check, no credit check, not even a high school diploma. Anyone willing to work would put to work that day or the next working day. I was totally unprepared for the reality of economic collapse.

The recession taught me, poverty is not a personal choice when there is no opportunity and it takes at least 5 years "professional" shoe shining experience to be referred to shoe shining Job. Poverty is not meaningful, but destroys us emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, and it destroys families and the future of both young and old. Today's retired people who had good paying jobs before the recession, and poorly paying jobs after the recession, have very low Social Security benefits, and those who came of age when we could not assimilate them fast enough, lost their opportunity for the good life, or learned to become good liars, to employers who thought anyone out of work for more than 6 months, wasn't serious about working, or something was so wrong with a homeless person, they shouldn't be hired. They abandoned their families so their wives and children could get help, and went into the hills. Some never made it back to main stream society, and unless you have had the experience, you can not understand why. It is such a different reality from the one you know. I am praying if things get that bad again, we remember the Great Depression and all the ways to help people, instead of facing the denial and almost complete social breakdown, of all charity organizations running in the red, and serious failure to meet human needs. The time to talk about this is now, when we speak of the homeless we have today. Now is when to plan and put systems in order, not when everything is out of control, as it was during the last recession.

I am more than willing to participate on any committee addressing this problem, or to speak to any group wanting more information. We have laws on the books to protect an affluent way of life, that seriously hurt the poor. Government services and extended services such as public transportation, must not operate as individual unites, shrinking to survive budget cuts, but must co-ordinated to work together to diminsh the problem of economic collapse, so it does not spin out of control like it did last time. We seriously need to look at housing laws, especially public housing policies that prevent family from helping family.

And when my daugther asked me, why I wasn't cooking the food we had, and wasn't burning the wood we had, I slumped to the floor in front of the cold wood stove, holding my head in my hands, as my mind clawed the walls of my sanity. I realized, I was having that experience of poverty that I thought I could never have, and I realized why those funny old people who had gone through the Great Depression, still horded. Poverty is not a meaningful experience, but a very destructive one. It destroys individuals, families and communities.


Like a prisoner once told me, you may think shit taste bad, but until you eat it, you don't how bad". Those who experience the reality of being on the bottom and marginalized by our laws and policies, and the homelessness, and loosing everything, even hope, are not the ones represented in government. And the "nice people" who mean well, can not represent them, because they just don't know the reality of how people become so bad off and how hard it is to function at this level. And when these "nice people" become one of "those people" they are the least apt to know how to manage. It is so overwhelming, we can expect the "nice people" to become dysfunctional and the toll on their families will be great. This economic problem will become a long term social problem, unless we manage much better than we did last time.

During the recession I participated in Housing Now, and while fund raising, a visiting professor angerily yelled at me. He said the homeless do not need housing, but freedom. He was angry that the US which should be the leader of democracy and freedom, drove the homeless away and did not even give them the freedom of staying near the cities that could provide them jobs. That is when I fully realized our attitude toward the homeless is one built on afluence. Poor countries do not hold the same attitude about homelessness and people doing what have to do. We do not allow our homeless people the freedom to do what they have to do, to have a chance of getting a job and making their lives better. We caste them out and force them into hiding. This is not freedom and equal opportunity, add to this all the files we hold on people, and how we have started judging people by what is in a file, and how we marginalize those with something bad in a file, and this is not the great country we once were, but a country dehumanized by its afluence, and the technology to keep records on everyone. Fortunately I am not one of them, but to my horror I have seen how many laws and policies are working against people who are just trying to have a decent life.

posted 5 years ago
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