The Ugly Reality...Homelessness Never Far Away

One of the most difficult things I can imagine for the people I've known who experienced homelessness, especially families, is when they face returning to it. And this week I found out about a family that did.

Charlie, our HEAR US "poster child," the cute boy whose image was captured by photojournalist Pat Van Doren, a longtime friend and conspirator, and his mother, "Cookie," recently lost their home, for reasons that I'll keep private, but not unlike reasons of other vulnerable people. 20-year-old Charlie had been working, but got laid off and is now just trying to make ends meet by temp work, staying with a friend. His mom is staying with people she knows.

In our latest documentary, "It's All About the Children," each of the 7 women expresses some form of "I'd never want to be homeless again." It reminds me of Scarlett's quote from Gone With the Wind,

As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.  

I certainly don't mean to imply that Cookie or Charlie would ever "lie, steal, cheat or kill," but I could understand the sentiment. 

When I visited them in summer 2008 I was touched by Cookie's pride in showing me her blue glass collection. She beamed as she spoke about her "clowning" as Cookie the Clown, brightening kids and old folks' days with her routine. Charlie was finishing courses for his high school diploma and was working had his sights on getting in at Caterpillar, a great paying job.

Formerly homeless families face repeat bouts for any number of reasons. It's easy to slide down the slippery slope. It's much harder to get back up, and the thought of being homeless hangs like a dark cloud over your shoulder, even for those far removed, as this family was. Stigma, lack of resources, feelings of failure--all contribute to the trauma of the return trip.

Today as I drove across Texas' backroads, I saw lots of roadkill, including a wild boar. It got me to thinking about people in poverty--they are the roadkill on the Capitalism superhighway. 

Seems to me our way of dealing with poverty and homelessness needs drastic changes. It's bad enough to experience homelessness once, but you should be granted a "get out of jail (homelessness) free" card if facing it again, sort of like we gave those rich bankers and Wall Street scoundrels. 

Home Sweet Home, but Really...

For reasons far beyond my understanding, my path crosses with some very interesting people. I'm in Las Cruces, NM now, having shown our new documentary, "It's All About the Children," to one of the women in it and to a small group of educators. I'm also filming interviews with "non-homeless" homeless families/youth, those staying in motels or doubled up with others for the HEAR US Learning Curve Express project.

One of the outreach team put me in contact with a young mother with 5 little boys under the age of 7 staying in a local motel. Tina was more than willing and able to talk about her predicament.So I went to interview her imagining what a motel room with 5 young boys would be like.

This young mom with "deer-in-the-headlights" eyes and a soft voice let me in. As we introduced ourselves I saw 2 of her 5 asleep on the double beds. The other 3 were with her mother. She assured me the little guys would sleep through more noise than we'd make, so I set up and began the interview.

Domestic violence, no stranger to any income bracket, ethnicity, religion, education level, or part of the country, was the initial cause of homelessness. Last weekend she got tossed from the DV shelter, for reasons not relevant to this discussion. Tina's mother had packed up her life and moved here to be a support for her daughter. Something tells me she has some firsthand knowledge of these too-common struggles.

When Tina and the boys were ousted from the shelter, they had nowhere to go. Tina's mom was living in a 13' travel trailer, a humble abode if I ever saw one. So she bought another cheap one for herself and let Tina and the kids stay in the tiny one. All chilly weekend, no electricity or water. Propane-powered oven (DANGEROUS) providing some warmth, augmented by body heat. Someone from the school got wind of it, and the school put them in a motel for3 nights until a better plan materialized.

Friday noon was checkout time, and things got pretty dicey. Help for this family was slow to develop. Eventually donors came up with enough money to put the little trailer on a RV pad, with electric, water and sewer. Her mom lives nearby in the same park, close enough to help out with childcare, transportation and moral support. 

When faced with sleeping on the streets with her children, Tina scrounged for help. I verified, it was not available. The stimulus money for Rapid Rehousing--she was #90 on the list, a wait of between 3-9 months. The only other place was the mission, and I understand a shelter-shy Tina, especially because the mission, with mostly men, has had its share of troubles, including a murder of one woman resident by another last year.


Tina has plans to finish her GED, and get further training to get a good job. I don't want to discourage her. But according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, to afford fair market rent for a 3-bedroom apartment in Las Cruces she'll need an income of $30k+. 

Now, I know that's the theory, and the reality is different, and she'll probably be able to find something cheaper. But with the economy, the job market, the lack of child care, and what is likely her need for counseling, that's a pretty steep mountain to climb with 5 pairs of hands holding onto you. 

Seems to me a woman who tumbles from a horrible violent marriage should have it better than landing in a pile of rubble that makes her think going back to her abuser is a better option. She and the kids deserve a helping hand. I'm not begrudging the outpouring of compassion the long-suffering people of Haiti are receiving. I just think that ignoring the growing number of poor families in this country might be a disaster too big for us to dig out from under.  

Poverty and Homelessness: Call It What It Is!

A family having "hard times" (translation, homeless because they lost their housing due to hardship) in Starkville, MS was taken in by a mother who understood what "hard times" does to a family, as she was not far from that pernicious condition. On Monday, Dec. 28, in Starkville, a fire rooted in poverty and overcrowded living space took their lives, 3 women and 6 small children.

Having known "hard times," India Williams, the 25-year-old mother of 3 small children, squeezed the other 2 women and 3 children into her humble apartment because they needed a place to stay. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances, but having seen this tragic story unfold countless times, I would guess that a domestic disturbance, money problems, and/or neighborhood violence caused the loss of housing.

The fire that took their lives, sadly, is not unlike a mostly unnoticed nationwide house fire epidemic (certainly getting less attention than H1N1), as winter's wrath has frozen even Florida. The Red Cross reports a 200% increase in house fires in this country, and utility shut-offs cause a good number of those fires as impoverished and desperately cold households turn to unsafe methods to stay warm. (Does your Red Cross do more than put house fire survivors in a motel for just a few days? Enlighten me.)

I've noticed an interesting, and revealing, phenomenon when it comes to news stories about these tragedies. "Hard times" is a common term. The Tulsa World just ran a story with the headline "Tough Times" that described poverty among families in the OK state. The Denver Post just ran a superb feature on CO childhood poverty, people "trying to get by."

"Hard times," "tough times," "trying to get by," are euphemisms for abject poverty and homelessness. I want to call it what it is so thick-headed legislators and policymakers get a clue. Poverty causes a dreadful ripple effect through all communities. It costs more to maintain poverty than it does to holistically address it.

So HEAR US is launching a campaign, "Up the Food Chain," to challenge mayors to look at hard times for what it is--poverty. We're setting up a simple way for people to petition mayors to go up the "food chain" to urge legislators on state and national levels to seriously address poverty. We're targeting communities where poverty-related house fires occur, hoping to in some small way make sense out of these tragedies.

Why mayors? Well, the US Conference of Mayors is an influential body, and they have ties--formal and not--to other politicians. Petitions get mayors' attention, as demonstrated with the successful campaign HEAR US launched in Grand Junction, CO that improved daytime options for homeless families otherwise left out in the cold.

Seems to me that it's time to put significant energy--or at least a few keyboard clicks--into something worthwhile, reducing hard times, before we all get to know first-hand what it means to experience hard times. I urge you to join our effort, share this campaign, and do what you can in your community to make lives of homeless children, families living in poverty, and those having hard times just a little easier. We'll all be better for it.

Stepping Up: Stephanie, Courageous Champion

I love starting a new year with a new s-hero. Stephanie Burmudez, 13, started my year off right (It's not her fault my bliss will likely not last long.)

She was asked to write about her experience of being homeless for her North Philadelphia shelter's newspaper--one written by homeless children and adults to benefit homeless persons--and she first said no.

But the newspaper account of how she came around is worth reading. She closed her column with some profound observations:

You could be us. We could be you. It's just One Step Away . . .

We are all one step away . . . to getting a home. To losing a home. To rebuilding our lives. To destroying our lives. To retrieving our families. To losing our families.

I can't say anything to top that. If a 13-year-old girl with pretty much nothing to her name can figure this out, I'd like to think our political leaders can grasp what this really means.

Seems to me this new decade has a fresh slate. And it's up to us to let kids like Stephanie lead us on the path we should be on, one where kids count. Yeah, even kids without homes. Especially the more than 1.5 mil kids without homes. I hope to meet up with her some day. I hope to meet her expectations of us each and every day.

How Many Ways to Say 'We've Got a Problem'?

The old love poem starts, "How do I love you? Let me count the ways." I suggest an alternative, "How bad is homelessness among families and teens? Let me count noses..." and then I'd point to myriad ways the problem has been described....

Let's see...soaring, skyrocketing, surging, exploding, astronomical, rising, record levels...well, you get the point.

In the days of Phil Mangano (pre-Obama administration homelessness czar at the mic), we heard a great deal, ad nauseam, about the need for numbers to convince the administration that we have a problem. So, with a nationwide systemic effort, school districts began tallying, a homeless kid here, a homeless kid there.

Numbers, not my forte nor my favorite way of considering a problem that seems quite obvious, started adding up as this decade unfolded. 600k, 700k, and up. And then the econo-bubble burst and now we're up to more than a MILLION school kids, not counting pre-school or pre-adult siblings or parents. And that's just the kids identified. Some of us believe the million could truly be over 3 mil.

Every article I've seen, and I try to monitor nationwide news on this issue, refers to actual COUNTS of homeless kids in specific geographic areas of varying sizes--metro, suburban, rural--from Anchorage to Key West.

But now, with numbers "soaring, skyrocketing, surging, exploding, astronomical, rising, at record levels," our nation is distracted. Failed bombing attempt, Karl Rove's divorce, Charlie Sheen's probable divorce, you know, important things. Oh yeah, and the economy, health insurance, er, care, jobs....

Hey, that's not fair! We've counted. We've got lots of kids who don't know where they're going to lay their heads, eat their meals, find their mom/dad after school, do their homework; kids wondering if they'll get reunited with their friends from their old neighborhoods, get their pets back, get to try out for band or basketball. These kids count!

We're happy the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act gets/keeps them in school. And we've got a new and improved M-V bill that may someday make its way through Congress and become law. (To help, sign this petition to your Senator.)

HEAR US, my organization, works with schools and communities to help them identify and understand homelessness by letting them hear from the kids themselves, the experts. My Own Four Walls, our collection of documentaries (DVD), lets them rip on how it feels to be a kid without a home. They're powerful.

If we keep going the way we've been headed (no doubt we will), we'll have bunches of homelessness experts. Too many to count. And we'll have squandered the opportunity to make sure these kids had what they needed to be successful adults--simple things like a modest place to live with their families or on their own, adequate nutrition, health care. And we'll have a bumper crop of homeless adults.

Seems to me that between shenanigans and squandering, our nation is quite busy. Too busy to make sure homeless kids count? While the Obama administration is doing a little, it's way too little and will be too late if we don't ramp up those efforts NOW! Consider it a test of what's really important....

Little Reasons to Remember

One memory forever etched in my shelter director memory is a painful one--a funeral of a little baby whose life began at our shelter with his parents. The miniature white coffin, donated by a funeral home, held the tiny body that had brought so much joy to his parents just days before.

As I recall, the cause of death was SIDS. But the cause of death was lost in the heartache of parents and friends who gathered on the wintery day to say good-bye to this little loved one.

Some would be surprised to learn that people without homes have love. In society's bumbling way of handling challenges, we tend to dehumanize, reducing our guilt and feelings of inadequacy. When "John" and "Marie" buried their beloved baby, their uphill plans for a post-shelter future were shattered.

We lose the gruesome reality that in America, the land of plenty, probably over a million little ones--babies and tykes--face a life that starts with a great deficit. Even factoring in loving parent/s, when a baby's formation years--the most crucial time of an infant's development--are spent struggling for survival--the core of homelessness for children--then the playing field is mud-filled. Sure they can make it, but hardships take a devastating toll.

Poverty, the root cause of homelessness, continues to be the darkness in this great country. We allow it to sap the life from infants to elderly women and men. We find energy, attention and resources to expend on the trivial, and wonder why the substance of society crumbles around us.

Seems to me it's time to move forward to the LIGHT--a respect for life that includes people of all walks of life, the young, old and in-between. On this day marking the beginning of the season of light, each one of us can decide how important life is--for ourselves and for those around us. And, assuming each of us grasps the hope of Solstice, we can move forward, in whatever way our heart leads, to do whatever we can do to hold life sacred. We shouldn't have to prematurely bury babies, children, teens or adults who perish in our abundantly blessed land because they lacked the basics of life.

Sweet Victory for a Monday Morning!

Being connected is a good thing sometimes. This weekend I received an email via the HEAR US website.

Hello I currently reside in Houston Tx and I thought I had a clear understanding of a child with no permanent address being allowed to go to school where ever obviously I was wrong. On Dec 4 2009 my granddaughter was withdrawn from school after being interrogated and left tearful.Before the school year started my daughter checked with the district and they said it was fine for her to be enrolled in school out of the area where we were staying with no permanent address bu to notify them when we did have an address

It's these kind of situations that make me glad I do what I do, and that we a strong, simple law that guides school districts on the right course of action. After playing phone tag, we finally connected late Sunday evening, after midnight in Houston. I only hesitated a moment when calling that late, knowing this grandmother was going to need help in a few short hours.

She was awake and glad I called. She explained the situation, that she, her daughter, and granddaughter live together in an apartment temporarily provided by her pastor who couldn't stand the thought of them sleeping in their car. This arrangement is coming to an end soon; the place is being sold.

But in the meantime, in snowy Houston on Friday, the granddaughter's school made plans to close at noon so no one would be snowed in. Calls and emails went to parents to pick up the kids. The grandmother usually provided transportation but was unable to be reached, and some confusion unfolded at the school with the granddaughter and school staff.

It is usually the confusion that "tips off" the school that something is askew with residency. Evidently that's what happened. Sadly, I've seen this happen; vigilante mentality takes over. It can be ugly.

The grandmother she hid this withdrawal decision from her granddaughter and got on the Internet. Somehow she found the HEAR US website, and figured that HEAR US might be able to help, thus her email to me.

Talking to her that evening, she shared some of her struggles--loss of housing due to mental illness that caused her to lose a job. Both she and her daughter, the girl's mother, work. Between them they try to pull in enough to make housing payments, but once you get behind, it's tough to catch up.

They've stayed in her car, in motels, and with friends. Now they're in this apartment, outside the district where the girl attends school. GM drives her to school. I could tell school was important--to both of them.

Based on what the GM described and according to the McKinney-Vento law, the girl appeared to be homeless. Since this school was where she attended before, she should be able to stay there if the family chooses. And, the district should provide transportation, free lunch, and supplies, among other things. I directed the GM to our REACH film, available for free viewing online, which outlines the M-V law in a mere 11-minutes. And I gave her language to request the "dispute resolution" process if things went bad.

I wished her luck and asked her to call to let me either intervene if necessary or to tell me how it went. And I crawled into bed.

Early that morning, the GM called. She was ecstatic! She succeeded in asserting her granddaughter's rights. OH YEA! She felt so good about this, and was so grateful for my help. Me, I was extremely grateful that she found me, and delighted to help.

Such a sweet experience, which makes today's release of the 2009 US Conference of Mayors annual homeless/hunger report so pathetic.

Knowing what I do about how these things go, this report, for whatever good intention might be behind it, does nothing but add more confusion to the definition of homelessness.

You see, this GM's family doesn't fall under the definition of "homeless" because they're not staying at a HUD-funded shelter or sleeping on the streets. So they don't count.

Seems to me this nation's mayors need a lesson in Homelessness 101. I know just the teacher. She's a GM from Houston, and she knows her stuff. If you're so inclined, sign our online petition (and spread the word!) to strengthen this law further. You'll be easing the way for some grandparents, parents and caretakers have tools to fight for their kids' education. Maybe the kids will run for mayor....