Homeless

September 30, 2008

I called Tim the other night. You know, my long-lost brother in upstate New York. We talked quite a while, about 45 minutes to an hour. He has moved out of Emergency Housing and is in a home now – he said it’s like foster care for adults – at 35 Horton Avenue in Middletown, NY.

He’s not working, so I asked him what he’s keeping himself busy with. He has group sessions 2 hours, 5 days a week, and 1 hour 1 day a week. Besides that, he says he walks and hikes, watches the deer… Says he gets clothes from Salvation Army; Tuesdays are half off so he can get clothes real cheap. I can identify with that; I told him it’s like Uptown Bargains in Yukon where I find nice, sometimes brand-name, work dresses for $5 or $6.

I asked him if he could use some reading material; I’ve got a stack of National Geographic magazines sitting on a shelf somewhere. He said he can get magazines for 10¢ at the Used Book store. He’s got a TV that he found – not sure if it was Spring Cleaning or in the trash or what. He says the town has “Spring Cleaning” every April, where anyone can get rid of large, unwanted items like furniture and appliances by placing them by the curb, and after a while a truck hauls it off. He says you can find some really nice things, especially in the more wealthy areas. They get rid of stuff that is like new. He says it’s like shopping. So he’s got lots of stuff, he said, that he paid not more than $100 for.

Which raises the next question -- where does he get this spending money? It could be that he stashed money away while he was working. He said he was working in Goshen, at the Historic Track, when he went to the hospital. I asked him if he needed anything, like new glasses or dental work. He said Medicaid pays for all of that. He talked about needing more minutes on his phone and that he could use food stamps to buy more minutes at some places.

Hearing that made me feel bad. My brother on food stamps (the Salvation Army thing didn’t bother me; I go to the thrift store in Yukon myself about once a month!).

It all makes me think about the transients that I drive by on Classen and Sheridan on the way home from work. I look at them knowing that they are people with the same needs as myself – enough food to eat, warm clothing to wear, a place to sleep, healthcare and medication, acknowledgement, acceptance, friendship, respect.

I wonder if they could use a hot meal or a cup of coffee. I wonder where their families are, or if they even have any living family members. I wonder how long it has been since they’ve seen their parents. I wonder if they have children, and will those children have a better life or will they end up on the streets too.

I wonder what brought each of them to be where they are. They each have a story. It’s easy to disdain the homeless and transients, as if they somehow don’t deserve the same comforts in life as the rest of us. And I’m sure that there are some that are living off the system and won’t do what they can for themselves. But there are probably just as many whose circumstances have left them there and maybe they just don’t know what to do or where to turn.

I wonder if people think of my brother in the same way. Do they acknowledge him as a human being deserving of simple respect, or do they diss him for “living off the system”? My brother has a family. He grew up in a stereotypical home of the 1960s and 1970s. He learned to hunt and fish like most of the other boys in our hometown. He played trumpet in the school band. He learned the skill of machining and had a successful career for several years.

In all honesty though, he made his choices. His choices led him to where he is now and he can make the choice to have a better life. But the lesson to be learned here is, don’t judge. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Because you just never know how or why a person came to be homeless.