Our Experience with Homelessness

I have debated sharing this. There are parts of my life I prefer to keep private, as well as parts I should. This is neither. In service to Christ and community, sometimes it is essential to share our struggles as a means of helping those who are facing many of the same things.

For seven months of 2017, we were technically homeless. For the final 3 ½ of that stretch, we had no physical address, and for the final 5 weeks of that stretch, we resided in a transitional housing situation where we currently live.

It is embarrassing to admit, but over the final stretch, I have to admit, I lost any pride I might once have had. And my embarrassment was eased a good deal when I read the story of Father Damien, the priest canonized in 2009 who served a leper colony in Hawaii for 16 years, eventually succumbing to leprosy himself. And it occurred to me that to truly serve, sometimes it helps to have a firsthand understanding of the situation.

At first it was easy; we were renting space where we could place our bus and had access to all of the amenities. And there was good money to be made busking in Santa Fe. And I made good money, but it seemed could never stay out as long as I had hoped because of conflicting interests back home. We even made a trip out to see the total solar eclipse, paying for the journey with contract work on the way back.
It was pretty sweet, in fact, until we made a trip out to Boulder, Colorado in mid August. We were tipped off to it being a good place to busk, and our sources were not wrong – it was. But on our second day out, we headed into the mountains to scout out a free campground, and our water pump went out. We had just replaced the part in February.

So we limped our way down the mountain to find ourselves facing an astronomical repair bill. We also were not able to find cheap housing, and had to appeal to the community resources just to get a place to stay for the night while we waited on work to be done. We put an appeal online about our situation, and received help, along with the criticism as to why we had not taken more money and why we had gone off to see the eclipse. Feedback that taught us that a broad based appeal for assistance was probably not the best course for us.

We headed back home to deal with the fallout back home. Our landlady had left her husband and the new guy wanted us out. We had a place to stay, temporarily, but that fell through quickly, as they didn’t control the land. Then we received an offer – paint the bus and we had a place to put it. We mustered up some volunteer labor, and painted the bus, only to have the offer retracted. We finally found a place to put it.

Right about that time, I had some minor, but painful, medical issues that could well lead to more serious issues. As we pondered the future in Oklahoma, where medical care is not a priority, coupled with my wife’s inability to find work, we decided it was in our best interests to move.

We moved, initially on the back of several good contract jobs. Half of the work cancelled out, and at the end of our two weeks at the motel, when the money was exhausted, I had nothing on the horizon. I had tried one of the day labor places, but they were in transition and had nothing local to offer.
And so it was on to transitional living. Only it was still structured like a homeless shelter, we still had to be on the streets by 7:30 and not return until 5, which made things difficult. My wife quickly found work, and ultimately we both began bellringing for the Salvation Army, filling out housing applications and SNAP applications in the meantime. Our SNAP application took 6 weeks to be approved.

We also had a lost social security card to deal with, an essential element to complete our housing application. This involved a half day waiting in line to submit documents, only to be told that no, we didn’t have everything needed, to come back with the missing information.

All of this took its toll. But on December 6, 2017, our homeless stretch ended as we moved into Section 8 housing. We had no tree, we had few presents, but as I type this, there is a lovely polar vortex moving in, and I can be thankful that we are not worried about having to be out in it.

All of this brought about a large number of thoughts on what we need to change. Here are some of mine, and I am hoping we can elicit discussion from others for more:

1. Stop stigmatizing homelessness. We have reached the point to where merely saying the word implies that you are unfit for the rest of humanity and undeserving of help. We have to stop seeing the homeless as subhumans and start realizing this is a condition that could potentially affect any of us. The stigma can often prevent people from seeking help when the problem can be solved fairly easily.

2. Stop stigmatizing and deleting support services. We’ve all heard of the mythical “welfare queen”, or the panhandler who allegedly makes six figures. Having spent more time around panhandlers than most I can tell you that IF those examples exist, they are the outliers and not in any way typical.

3. Identify service gaps. Much of the problem comes from those who “slip between the cracks”. In our case, for instance, a major obstacle involved some property that had to be sold before we could qualify for certain types of aid. Eventually we took care of this, although at a loss that was greater than if we would have been able to sort through our options. But it was necessary for the short term.

4. Provide people on the streets with support information. You can get a list of services from your local United Way. A lot of people have taken to making bags packed with snacks and toiletries to hand out, and these are great. One helpful addition would be this list of support services.

5. Work better across ideological lines. Right now, one of the most functional cities I have found in this regard is Amarillo, Texas. They have grassroots organizers working together because this is what we need to do to make lives better for our invisible friends.

This article is just a beginning. I will share more in the future.