The State Of The Homeless In America
My recent story about the "dog woman" has led me down the dark trail of how we are dealing with
the homeless in America. And the picture I am getting is ugly.
If you recall, the woman I refer to is a 73-year-old who had her dogs destroyed and her home taken
away from her. This happened because she could not afford to fix her broken water and sewer lines, pay the cost of having
her garbage removed, or pay to license her animals. Instead of helping her, the police and civil authorities in Michigan made
this elderly woman homeless and destitute.
I fear this is not an isolated case.
Bad enough that so many people lack the means to seek proper dental and medical care that failing
health and missing or blackened teeth are commonplace among people on American streets. Tragic is the fact that these same
people are now going homeless . . . and I think it may be by the thousands.
The complacency by the general public, government leaders, police and even our churches to this
national disaster is alarming. Even though I, as a working newsman, am seeing first hand the growing desperation, there is
a tendency by those who still have jobs, who still can manage their house and utility payments, to look the other way. They
want to say the problem does not exist.
This is not a new phenomenon. I remember walking the streets of San Francisco at least 30 years
ago and seeing homeless people sleeping under cardboard boxes in parks, abandoned cars and under bridges. I remember how some
southern cities like San Francisco, where the homeless were gathering to escape the harsh cold winters, tried to make laws
banning homelessness. The police were actually trying to drive them away rather than offer help.
I remember one winter in the late 1980s, when I used to drive into downtown Detroit on Saturdays
to research the library microfilm files for historical news stories for a book I was writing. To assure a place at one of
the readers I would arrive just before the library opened its doors for the day. Most of the people waiting at the door with
me were homeless. Wrapped in heavy winter garb, they had been walking the streets all night waiting for a warm place. Once
the library was open, they planted themselves in chairs and tables throughout the building to sleep.
My wife and I became accidentally and temporarily homeless a few years ago after we sold our house,
paid off all of our bills and moved to Arizona. Doris, a licensed hospital medical technologist, had supposedly landed a job
in a government hospital on the Hopi Reservation. The facility promised us a house to live in and good wages. Our plan was
to live among the Hopi, learn the culture, and I was going to do some writing.
Somewhere between the time we left Michigan and arrived in Arizona a few days later, our legislators
in Washington became engaged in a fight over the next year's budget. President Bill Clinton put a freeze on all spending,
including new job hires. When we arrived at the reservation, the job Doris was promised no longer existed. Even though she
was badly needed, the laboratory director was forbidden to hire her. We moved to nearby Holbrook, Arizona, and quickly spent
our cash reserves on motels and restaurant food while we waited for a job that never happened.
It took us about a year before we both landed jobs and started crawling out of that mess. During
that time, we discovered resourcefulness. We found an abandoned motel along the old Route 66, that the new I-40 passed by,
where the owner let us stay for something like $12 a night. We were not as bad off as the new homeless. The employment picture
in America was still healthy in those days; just not in Arizona. But we were determined to try to make it in that beautiful
place and stayed on.
I remember the desperate feeling of not having a home. In that period I think Doris and I would
have given anything for a place of our own. We remember driving down some of those lonely desert roads and looking at abandoned
buildings, thinking how tragic it was that someone let them go to ruin.
I think we were allowed to live in that homeless state for a few months so we would have some kind
of an understanding of just what it feels like to be really homeless. Now as jobs continue to dry up and people are running
out of unemployment benefits, the homeless are showing up everywhere.
Even people working at jobs paying only minimum wage are starting to lose their homes. They just
don't make enough money to cover the cost of living.
I was recently in court to hear criminal matters for my newspaper. I was shocked when one defendant
pleaded with the judge to put him in jail. He said he was homeless and didn't have any place to go if he was released on probation.
I am working on another story where a rural Michigan farm family is struggling to keep their home
and the mortgage holder is using every legal means possible to take it away. That family is in desperate straits. He is driving
truck to supplement the meager income from the farm. The family got behind in the mortgage payments and the bank started foreclosure
before these people had the presence of mind to go into bankruptcy court. The local sheriff held a bankruptcy sale after the
bankruptcy judge ordered a freeze on the property. My news story about this mess stopped that bank from illegally seizing
the property and putting this family on the street. But the drama continues even as I write these words.
This is a large family. These people have eight children. When I visited the home recently I counted
11 children. I learned that they were allowing a second, already homeless family to stay with them in an old mobile home parked
in the yard. Thus if the bank wins this battle, and I have every reason to believe it will, two more families in the county
where I live will be made homeless.
I have examined the government agencies in place to supposedly help the homeless. There is a county
group of noble business people, county officials and bureaucrats that meet monthly to discuss the problem. Yet talking to
any of them gave me no answers. They believe homelessness exists, but don't know how to find these families. They refer me
to a lady in the mental health agency who is supposed to be dealing with the homeless.
This lady was very friendly over the telephone. She agreed to send me a "packet" of information
and statistics about the state of homelessness in our area. The packet never arrived. When I called back she said a study
was being done in a three-county area by the Regional Human Development Commission and that I would be getting a report in
a few days.
The report arrived last week; two months after I asked for the information. It said a questionnaire
sent to police, pastors, and all government agencies revealed the existence of only six homeless people in my county. It said
four more adults were in "danger" of becoming homeless. If this is true, then I think I have personally met all of them.
I wonder how much the taxpayers paid these idiots to do this ridiculous study. The money might have
been better spent helping a few of these desperate people find shelter.
