During
the day things weren’t so bad. Because I waited tables, I had the day free to take the kids to
the ocean, the library, the laundromat. We walked around town and
people smiled at us. They didn’t know how poor we were. They
didn’t know we lived in our car. I applied for food stamps,
but I didn’t qualify. I made too much money. Hah! I think
it’s more expensive to be poor than to be rich. I didn’t
have a refrigerator, so I couldn’t buy things like concentrated
juice for $1 and make a pitcher to last for a couple of days. I
had to buy individual servings at a $1 a piece. The kids developed
a taste for water.
I found a truck stop
that let me fill up my water jugs and had showers for the truckers.
I paid for one at a time and would alternate each day on who would
take one with me. We went there first thing every morning. I can’t
deal without a shower. The two things I wouldn’t even try
to skimp on were showers and laundry.
Finding an apartment
was a Catch-22. I could, after two months, afford a cheaper studio
or one-bedroom apartment, but landlords continually told me that
they “couldn’t let” me live in one. Just too small
for a family of four, they said. I should aim for a two-bedroom,
they told me. No one seemed to mind that four of us were living
in my car. A studio apartment would have seemed like the Taj Mahal
at that point.
I could not contain my
anger sometimes. I would watch as the kids—remarkably happy
with their “camp-out as life” arrangement—played
at the beach and scream in my head, “How is it possible that
this is what my life is supposed to be like? I went to college,
Goddamnit! I worked in the U.S. Senate! I am smarter than this...I
have to be.”
And that was the fundamental
issue then, just as it is now. It’s the thought that someone
must be lazy or stupid to end up homeless. It is a myth in our society
that the people who frequent soup kitchens and the free Thanksgiving
dinners at the local church are lazy men, likely drug addicts, who
live in boxes beneath a bridge. More and more, soup kitchens are
feeding families, with parents who both work. It is a myth that
two working parents, let alone one, can afford decent housing in
this day and age.
“The loss of affordable
housing in the United States, and the subsequent rise in homelessness,
is directly linked to the decline in federal support for low-income
housing as well as the recent and now deepening economic recession,”
reports the National
Low Income Housing Coalition. “The U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) refusal to support
the National Housing
Trust Fund or recognize the need to build more affordable housing
serves as evidence for the Bush administration’s attitude
toward addressing homelessness. The inability of anyone in this
country, who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage, to afford housing
at fair market rent is an alarming indicator and predictor of homelessness.
Additionally, the lack of affordable housing and the drastic funding
cuts that nonprofit and service providing agencies have received
lately has deepened the plight of people who are trying to find
housing and those who must live on the streets.”
Further, the Coalition
states that in no state or local jurisdiction can a person who works
a minimum wage job afford the Fair Market Rental Rates determined
by Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This fact is underscored
when it is learned that 42 percent of homeless people nationwide,
are indeed, employed.
Rep. Julia Carson (D-Indiana)
introduced the “Bringing America Home Act,” a bill designed
to end homelessness, in July 2003.
“In the United
States, 3.5 million people—almost 40 percent of them children—experience
homelessness each year. This national disgrace is unnecessary,”
said Carson. “Many of these families are supported by working
parents, but due to high rents, high unemployment, or low paying
jobs, they have found themselves living on the streets, in cars,
in shelters, in abandoned buildings, in motels, or in over-crowded,
temporary accommodations with others.”
The bill includes housing,
health, income and civil rights provisions, such as authorizing
a National Housing Trust Fund, a source of funds that would build
and preserve 1.5 million affordable homes over the next 10 years.
If passed, the Bringing America Home Act would also provide opportunities
for job training, vouchers for child-care and public transportation,
and emergency funds for families facing eviction.
But, as with any government
program, getting it to the people will be the main problem. I found
out only after my experience with homelessness that there were child
care programs available to me. I found out only after, and after
much independent research, that there were programs available to
help me get into an apartment much sooner than the three plus months
it took. When I applied for food stamps, and was subsequently turned
down, no one informed me of other opportunities I might be able
to take advantage of to make my life a little easier. They seemed
just happy to escort me on my way.
Then there are the many
homeless men and women who refuse to ask for help. They believe,
and sometimes rightly so, that their problems are their own fault
and that they don’t need nor deserve a hand up. Poverty and
homelessness are a state of mind as well as a state of being, but
they don’t have to be. And a long way toward curing the state
of mind, is to understand that the well-dressed mother strolling
her baby to the library could very well be living in her car. Or
that the nice young man who cashed your check for you at the bank
could very well have slept in a shelter last night, or in the lounge
of a truck stop.
mmo : july 2004 |
