We begin with an excerpt from an article published by the Arizona Republic, appearing last July.
A homeless man sleeping in a gated park was run over by a maintenance vehicle Friday morning and later died from his injuries. Sgt. Steve Martos of the Phoenix Police Department said two transient men were sleeping in University Park near 11th Avenue and Van Buren Street when a pool company employee came to do maintenance on the park’s pool at about 5 a.m. The maintenance man had to unlock the gate, meaning the two transients must have jumped the fence, Martos said.
While the maintenance vehicle was backing up, it struck one of the two transients, police said. The driver is not a city employee. It was still dark out at the time, Martos said, but he wasn’t sure if the two men were covered or hidden in some way. The driver called for help, and the injured transient man was later taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, Martos said. The other transient man was not injured.
No other information was available.
I referred to this as an excerpt. In fact, that was the complete article. I have been planning for some time now to write a short piece on the subject of the homeless. It is a matter near and dear to me for the worst of all possible reasons. You see, in August 2004, I began an eight month adventure called NO PLACE TO GO. I have written about many of the specifics elsewhere and I have no interest in repeating them now. But because of what I endured, I have taken special interest in some facts and figures which I will now share.
Each year, more than 3.5 million Americans suffer from homelessness. Here in Arizona, the figures are quite bleak. 30,000 people in Maricopa County are without a home at any given time. 20% of these are children. 27% are women who have been the victims of domestic violence. 12% are veterans.
And yet those numbers do nothing to explain the horrors of waking up one morning beneath a bridge, wondering where you will eat today, or how. It says nothing to the babies screaming and old women panhandling and young boys robbing. The reason it says nothing is because we as a society have kidded ourselves into believing that the majority of homeless people have brought their circumstances upon themselves. And that is a lie.
The number one reason for people living in shelters or city parks or in abandoned basements is poverty. That's right. It isn't drug abuse or laziness or craziness. It is the much simpler condition of having nowhere to go because of a lack of funds.
It is true that a lot of homeless people are substance abusers or suffer from some degree of psychiatric symptoms. There's no question about that. The question, however, is which came first? Try living in Boxville for eight months and see how attractive crack cocaine becomes, or how tempting it is to give into the pull of mental illness.
Even in America we have begun to give up on the illusion that we want to take care of the weak and fragile. What some people actually want to do is kill them. The shelters are overflowing, transitional housing units have a two-year waiting list, and behavioral health hospitals are full of folks who are just too exhausted to live another day under conditions like this: You wake up just before dawn because a policeman is kicking your bed roll. You stagger off to an orange grove and swipe a couple fresh citrus products to help you wake up. Just as you are crossing the street to go hide in the city park, a car full of imbeciles roars by and the guy riding shotgun hits you between the shoulder blades with an unopened soda can. You fall in the mud, ruining the only pair of pants you own. And it isn't even nine in the morning.
Even though you are too weak, you take a job doing day labor. The job pays $55 for eight hours. You are tired but happy because this should allow you to sleep indoors tonight. Except: The employer charges you a five dollar fee to print your check. Don't like it? Fuck you. The check cashing place next door charges five dollars to cash your check. Don't like it? Fuck you. The sign outside the hotel says rooms are $29.95 but it turns out all of THOSE rooms are already taken, so yours will be $35 plus tax, which uses up every dime you worked all day to make. Don't like it? Fuck you.
And then you repeat the dance.
So my advice to you is this: Never lose your job, never lose your house, never lose your partner or spouse or family, never get depressed, never take drugs or drink too much, never find yourself in a situation that is strange to you even if you can't help it because if any of these perfectly common things should happen to you, you may wake up one morning with a cop's boot in your face while the emptiness in your stomach screams for relief.
For me it happened a long time ago. It is even fair to say that I was a completely different person then. It is also fair to say that most homeless people in this country do get back on their feet within a year and a half. (Guess that makes me lucky.) But for anyone who has ever experienced this condition for any length of time, their view of the world hardens a bit, calcifies, rottens and decays. So just because you don't think you see homelessness around you, that doesn't mean it isn't there. Hey, it could be as close as your mirror.