In 2006, radio personalities Opie and Anthony, whose audience feels cult-like devotion, attracted negative attention for a street performance. Andrew, a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, offered them some cake. Anthony declined to touch it, and Opie jumped on it with both feet.

A media ruckus ensued. Fans familiar with the entertainers’ style realized that it was a “bit,” though, years later, others still dispute the point. Also, Andrew made some money. An online commenter noted that the radio guys had been giving him donations for years. Other listeners were totally condemnatory.

In the summer of 2013 Opie and Anthony focused public attention on the incident again. It was not, incidentally, a cake stomping, as some media would have us believe. That would imply repeated action with one or both feet. The assault on the cake was a single, two-footed landing.

Social media had grown a lot in those seven years, and Opie reaped a whirlwind. People were upset. One commenter wrote,

There’s nothing good that can come out of something like this.

The entertainers professed amazement that people could still want to discuss the cake incident, or remain so upset about it. Opie never apologized or justified, because didn’t think he had to.

But they talked about it on the show (strong language warning), covering the variety of relationships that can develop between street people and media people in New York City. Here is a condensed interpretation with no cussing:

Back when the cake thing happened, Opie and Anthony routinely walked along the same route every day, and interacted with two kinds of people. According to their narrative (and there is no reason to doubt them), their fans would gravitate to the area, and give generously to the local people who held out cups. Word gets around about that sort of thing, and it tends to attract more people. Opie (or perhaps Anthony) asks, “Does anyone else out there know a homeless guy by name? We probably know 20 of ’em.” As for Andrew, Opie says, “We messed with him every day. We goofed on him every day.”

Another side of the story

More than likely, a staff member bought the cake, and gave it to Andrew, with instructions to offer some to Opie and Anthony. And, if anyone asked, to say he found it in a dumpster. Because the optics are suspicious. It’s a full-size cheesecake or similar, in a box, with tissue between the slices, and clear plastic wrap stretched over the top. If it ever was in a dumpster, it was both placed there and retrieved with extreme care.

Anyway, Opie knew the cake-squashing would make even his co-hosts cringe. On the other hand, professional comedians routinely play pranks, some offensive and cruel, on their friends.

Opie and Anthony have also angered the citizenry by taking a bus full of men to a suburban New Jersey mall and supplying them with gift cards and a ride back to the city. This actually doesn’t sound so bad, but critics have found plenty of reasons to complain, and called the field trip “publicly degrading and humiliating” for people experiencing homelessness.

But other news sources viewed it through a different lens, for instance:

Opie and Anthony’s annual event provides a busload of homeless people money to shop at an upscale mall, and about 2,200 O&A fans came out not only to see the show but to provide the homeless with extra shopping money.

It also sounds like the mall food courts sold a few more sodas and fries that day. But the event has been called inhumane and shameful. These are the kinds of questions that society could greatly benefit from discussing in nuanced ways, but somehow the avalanche of events prohibits it.

Shame on so many levels

A Instagram video clip is going around, that features a woman seated on a step, surrounded by belongings. A man’s voice starts out by complimenting her, and by any objective standard, she does have a beautiful smile. Then he starts “negging” her, a technique that men actually pay money and attend classes to study. The insults revert to sweet talk, then back and forth a couple more times, and he closes with “I’m bipolar, so I don’t know if you’re ugly or cute.”

An online comment defended the woman, but made the assumption that she was addicted and mentally ill, though we have no proof either way. But other assumptions might not be off base. Quite possibly, this woman has discovered that no matter what she needs, some level of government seems determined to never let her have it, including the ID that would enable her to vote. Or maybe after a long ordeal, she finally got her “papers,” only to lose them to police confiscation during a “sweep.” We don’t know.

Among other things, this incident illustrates one of the problems inherent in having to carry all your stuff around with you. When pestered, it’s not that easy to slip away. From the aggressors’ viewpoint, it brings to mind the expressions “sitting duck” and “shooting fish in a barrel.”

At the same time, this behavior happens every day, and across all demographics. Any woman who works in contact with the general public is a captive audience for acting out by random men, and is faced with the choice between the constant threat of humiliation, or quitting. Quitting a job is the sort of decision that can lead to homelessness, so it is almost impossible to avoid the philosophical position that everything matters.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Cake Stomp — Is this okay?,” IGN.com, 2013
Source: “Boston Mayor Angry Over O&A Homeless Shopping Spree,” AllAccess.com, 12/18/06
Images (top to bottom) by @kolikole37, @nattywest, goodiesfirst via Visualhunt

In describing The Home Coming, the group of figures envisioned by Richard R. Troxell and currently in the studio of Timothy P. Schmalz, we have talked about different varieties of people experiencing homelessness: military veterans, TBI and PTSD victims; members of racial and ethnic minorities; children; women; and even animal companions.

Richard describes some dimensions of the sculpture’s symbolism. The father is a veteran whose idealism led him to the military: “As a young man, he really didn’t understand the dynamics of war and the forces behind it… that our republic is based in capitalism.”

No matter what capitalism was meant or intended to be, it has devolved into a “waste product economy” driven by built-in, planned obsolescence. “If you make a bullet, you have to expend it… so you can make another bullet,” Richard says.

“Now, John’s young daughter Colleen sees a different path, one of sharing, offering comfort with another human being… a stranger just like everyone her father ever met on the battlefield. But unlike her father, she greets the stranger with open arms…,” says Richard. The young take the lead and show the way, and hopefully, will continue lighting the path ahead.

The Home Coming celebrates the moment in which Ms. Anateen Tyson, homeless, depressed and with night vision impaired by cataracts, stumbles into the radius of warmth, the circle of not just acceptance but welcome, and realizes that life — complete with a tail-wagging dog named Joey — is taking a turn for the better. Another section of the House the Homeless website contains an expanded version of the imagined histories of the figures represented here.

Another aspect of the project

Now let’s move to the creation of the object itself. Several years ago, Richard R. Troxell, most habitually known as co-founder and President of House the Homeless, also took on the role of artist, and studied sculpture for a year under Steve Dubov of Austin’s Atelier 3-D. News of the project stirred interest among some local institutions and segments of the press. The American-Statesman printed an interview with Richard (front page of the Metro section, above the fold, thank you very much!). Then, there was another interview, by Andrea Ball, on the front page of the paper itself.

Internationally renowned sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz got involved. During the time when interest from many quarters was focused on Schmalz’s glorious and often notorious Homeless Jesus sculpture, the maestro also collaborated long-distance with Richard on developing his concept. This was not a project to be rushed, and they explored more than one avenue, modifying and refining the vision as they went along.

Throughout the early stages, all the usual toil and turmoil continued, of course, notably the ongoing effort to ameliorate the devastating effects of the local No Sit/No Lie ordinance. The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum hosted a knock-your-socks off fundraiser, where a smaller version of the group of figures was unveiled. The list of supporters grew explosively, and donations accumulated.

For a number of tediously bureaucratic reasons, The Home Coming cannot be placed at the originally intended site, and we urge interested Austinites and indeed everybody to follow the saga of finding a home for The Homecoming. Appropriately locating this work could help it become a tremendous example to the rest of the nation. You, dear reader, might be the one who suggests a brilliant solution that will allow for happiness all around!

If the spirit behind The Home Coming were to be boiled down into one statement, the work is an homage to people who have little or nothing, and who are still willing to share with others whatever they can. That’s what it’s all about. That, and the belief that tomorrow will be a better day, and the determination to make it so.

Reactions?

Image by House the Homeless

This photo shows an intermediate stage in the creation of one of the figures in The Home Coming. The fictitious Ms. Anateen Tyson represents women, people of color, and the elderly, but her symbolism does not stop there because, as we have learned, she also endures health problems.

A couple of years ago there was a rabidly publicized mess in New York City. The New York Post, which writer John Del Signore calls “America’s foulest tabloid,” devoted its cover to a homeless woman who had been shepherding her caravan of shopping carts around the city for years. Mayor de Blasio directed sanitation workers and the police to roll her up, and amid plenty of additional publicity, they did so. Her belongings were reduced to a single bag, and the authorities discarded the rest of her possessions.

A friend of House the Homeless wrote,

My experiences in senior low-income housing have been so horrific as to leave me actually contemplating storing my things and sleeping at a shelter. I have never felt less safe in all of my life and to my amazement I fear the women here every bit as much as the men. My apartment itself is a delight, but what lies outside my front door is the stuff of nightmares… The reason for my fear is 100% based on the high ratio of mentally ill inmates… I mean tenants!

How bad must senior housing conditions be, to inspire someone to contemplate giving up an apartment for space in a shelter? And the final sentence is chilling. The building is mostly tenanted by people who are just barely holding on, and who display enough bizarre and dangerous behavior to terrify a woman who merely suffers from multiple physical problems.

And where are the damaged senior citizens who can’t even keep it together sufficiently to manage living in such a building? A lot of them are on the streets, because there is no place else for them to be.

Older people become homeless in many ways. Job loss, divorce, death of spouse. A reverse mortgage didn’t work out, or some other unwise financial decision went bad. There is a foreclosure. Medical bills lead to bankruptcy. Greedy or desperate relatives drain their resources. Trying to do something they used to be able to do leads to disabling injury. The rent goes up and there is nowhere affordable to live.

When anyone transitions from housed to homeless, a phenomenon called “age acceleration” kicks in. Living on the streets has a prematurely aging effect, which exacerbates whatever age-related problems a person already has.

To take one obvious and widespread example, no patient’s arthritis has ever improved from spending the day on a bus bench in freezing weather. There are shelters where people in their 70s, 80s and 90s sleep on mattresses on floors. It’s pretty hard for some of them to get up and down, and even harder if they are one notch less fortunate, and sleep outside on cardboard.

Among Americans age 65 and older, in 2016 more than 7 million had incomes below the poverty line, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure. That metric is different from what the government uses, and results in a number that exceeds the official count by 2.6 million. Alana Semuels says,

While poverty fell among people 18 and under and people 18 to 64 between 2015 and 2016, it rose to 14.5 percent for people over 65. In America in 2016, nearly half of all single homeless adults were aged 50 and older, compared to 11 percent in 1990.

Run that by us again? In the most recent year for which statistics have been compiled, nearly half of all single homeless adults were aged 50 and older. The housed people who confidently advise, “They should just get a job” are oblivious to the fact that few jobs are available for people over 50 who do not possess the means to keep themselves and their clothes clean, or even get a good night’s sleep. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of senior citizens are scraping by, wondering where the next dollar will come from, teetering on the very edge of a chasm, praying they will not be pitched down into homelessness.

For The Atlantic, Semuels chronicled the misfortunes of a 76-year-old Californian, Roberta Gordon, who received $915 per month from Social Security and SSI (insufficient to pay her $1,040 monthly rent). A roommate who shared the costs had recently died, so Ms. Gordon was taking on credit card debt and eating from a local church’s food pantry.

However much a person made during their working years, they are said to need 70% of their pre-retirement income to live “comfortably,” and being as how Social Security usually only supplies 40%, they’d better have something else going for them. Semuels writes that women…

[…] typically receive lower benefits than men do. In 2014, older women received on average $4,500 less annually in Social Security benefits than men did. They received lower wages when they worked, which leads to smaller monthly checks from Social Security. They also are more likely to take time off from work to care for children or aging parents, which translates to less time contributing to Social Security and thus lower monthly benefit amounts.

 

In Riverside County, CA, Rose Mayes, executive director of the Fair Housing Council, told the press that her organization is seeing more homeless seniors than ever before. Some places are more seriously affected than others. In the state of Massachusetts as a whole, 16% of the people are over 65, but in Cape Cod, it’s more like 30%, and a great many individuals in that demographic are in danger of losing their homes.

Journalist Cynthia McCormick spoke with Elizabeth Albert, the county’s executive director of human services, who was greatly alarmed by the annual “point-in-time” count and told the reporter,

Forty-two percent of the unsheltered — meaning people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, on the street and in cars — were between the ages of 50 and 64, and 5 percent were over the age of 65.

In nearby Fall River, shelter coordinator Karen Ready described conditions at St. Joseph’s House, where elderly individuals may be dealing with issues of balance, weakness, incontinence, hearing loss, deteriorating vision, and dementia.

From the left coast, Gale Holland told LATimes.com readers that among people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, the 62+ age group grew by 22% since the last count, and now encompasses almost 5,000 senior Americans. She adds a reminder that shelters are not equipped, or adequately staffed, for the needs of frail elderly people.

Furthermore, “emergency housing is focused on families going through a rough patch, who can recover financially and move on.” In other words, resources are invested in those who have a future.

Reactions?

Source: “NY Post Wins Decisive Victory Against Elderly Homeless Woman,” Gothamist.com, 03/10/16
Source: “How Many Seniors Are Living in Poverty?,” KFF.org, 03/02/18
Source: “This Is What Life Without Retirement Savings Looks Like,” TheAtlantic.com, 02/22/18
Source: “Aging Homeless Population Poses New Challenges for Shelters,” USNews.com, 22/27/17
Source: “22% surge in number of older homeless people catches L.A. officials off guard,” LATimes.com, 07/19/18
Image by House the Homeless

Here at House the Homeless we are still working our way through all the symbolism encapsulated in the figures of The Home Coming sculpture. In addition to being female, the elderly woman represents two other groups, one of which we look at today.

The creator of the artwork, Richard R. Troxell, has names for all the characters, and this lady is Anateen Tyson. Like the others, she has an entire backstory.

Her husband became disabled and unemployable, and finally went missing. The kids drifted away too, and the family dissolved. With only what she could carry, Ms. Tyson came to Austin hoping to stay with relatives, but similar misfortunes have befallen them, too, and they have no help to give.

Forlorn, depressed, and with vision clouded by cataracts, this woman wanders through the night with no destination and no hope. The statue captures the moment when she encounters a returned veteran named John and his daughter Colleen and their dog Joey. They welcome her to share the warmth of their fire, and we are warmed too, at the thought of the three displaced humans and one animal companion, forming an alliance that could lead to all kinds of beneficial results. Their commonality is stronger than their differences, and they bond.

The really sad part

But… the wonderful human moment depicted by the statue almost doesn’t happen. Because Ms. Tyson is a person of color, and John and Colleen are not, she initially hesitates, and almost fades back into the night without approaching them. We know this because it is part of the richly textured context of story behind this artwork. It rings true because real life unfortunately contains a lot of racism.

The people who in America are often known as Indians are known up north as Aboriginal Canadians (which only indicates that they were there first, since ab origine means “from the start”). Keeping in mind that the U.S. is very similar to Canada, we read the findings of a significant 2013 study of people experiencing homelessness in Calgary:

Aboriginal participants were found to be younger, less educated, more likely to be unemployed, to have experienced foster care, and to have been the victim of an attack. They tended to use health services more. These results are discussed in light of the social and political challenges facing Aboriginal people. They point to the need for attention to the special needs of Aboriginal people in plans to end homelessness.

In his short story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” from the collection Blasphemy, Sherman Alexie relates details about being down-and-out in Washington state. He remarks among the large number of homeless Indians in Seattle, who mostly came from Alaska looking for opportunity that is seldom found in the Lower 48, either.

The author assumes the persona of a young Spokane Indian with six years on the streets, a man who is not without self-respect, and who has his standards:

I’ve made friends with restaurant and convenience-store managers who let me use their bathrooms. I don’t mean the public bathrooms, either. I mean the employees’ bathrooms, the ones hidden in the back of the kitchen or the pantry or the cooler. I know it sounds strange to be proud of, but it means a lot to me.

Many Anglos tend not to understand the particular challenges presented by racism in every area of American life. For instance, take the childhood obesity epidemic. Parents are advised to let their children play outside and get plenty of exercise. But the nonprofit organization Salud America! completed a study on race, ethnicity, and access to public recreational space. In four out of five predominantly Latino neighborhoods there is no access to parks or recreation facilities.

It’s bigger than parks

Others may shake their heads and say, “If they don’t want their kids to be fat, they should just send them to the park to run off the extra pounds.” Easy advice to give, but not easy advice to follow when the circumstances simply don’t support it. It’s like advice about how to avoid homelessness, or how to escape homelessness. Tactics that work for one person, or type of person, are not always guaranteed to bring success to someone else, or to a whole different ethnic group.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, most minority groups make up a larger share of the homeless population than they do of the general population. For instance,

American Indians/Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and those of more than one race each make up less than 5 percent of the general population. But each group’s share of the homeless population is more than double their share of the general population.

Despite numerous socio-economic disadvantages, in this one respect, Hispanic Americans are relatively well off. They are 18% of the entire populace, but 21% of people experiencing homelessness, so that’s not too awful of a discrepancy. African Americans, on the other hand, are 13% of the American population, but 40% of the homeless population — a shockingly large discrepancy. The Alliance goes on to say,

Any effort to end homelessness in the United States must address the range of issues that have resulted from racial inequity. This includes assuring affordable, stable housing for all.

Reactions?

Source: “Are There Differences between the Aboriginal Homeless Population and the non-Aboriginal Homeless Population in Calgary?”, HomelessHub.ca, 2013
Source: “The Insidious Reason Latino Kids Are More Obese Than Their Peers,” TakePart.com, 01/12/16
Source: “Racial Disparities in Homelessness in the United States,” EndHomelessness.org, 06/06/18
Photo credit: Mahalie Stackpole on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

The figures in The Home Coming sculpture represent various demographics, and today we consider the elderly woman who is being welcomed to share the warmth. Along with consulting past posts, here is another way to appreciate the project, as conceived by House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell.

In this video, “Home Coming Model,” (3:02), sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz talks about the artistic challenges and rewards of bringing Richard’s vision into three dimensions. During the time when the two were collaborating on The Home Coming, Schmalz visited Rome to meet Pope Francis, in conjunction to donating to the Vatican one of his original sculptures, Homeless Jesus. (See photos at top of page.)

Life’s hostages

Experiencing homelessness is so much more complicated for most women than for most men, because women are more likely to have human connections they view as crucial. There might be a child or several children, and for most mothers, a squadron of demons can’t separate them from their kids.

Remember the story from Arizona, of how Shanesha Taylor left two children in a car for less than an hour to go for a job interview? She was arrested, convicted of child abuse, and sentenced to 18 years of supervised probation.

Remember Tanya McDowell, who was accused of stealing educational services because while homeless, she enrolled her son in the wrong school?

Amber Mehta had her three children taken by Child Protective Services and distributed to three different foster homes, because she and her husband lived with them in a recreational vehicle. It was particularly traumatic because two of the children were still breastfeeding. It’s a long and complicated story, but basically, too many mothers are losing their kids to the system for unjustifiable reasons.

Basic nature

Anatomy is a huge handicap for a woman with nowhere to legally exist. If there is no restroom or portable toilet in the area, a man can at least pee with relative stealth. For a woman, a lot more disrobing is involved, which is awkward, embarrassing, and dangerous under the best of circumstances, and complicated horrendously by winter weather. As for Number Two, that contingency is easy for no one. You not only have to find a concealed space to do your business, but a place to safely leave your belongings.

But back to inequality again. Not all, but most women have to contend with monthly periods, a subject that has only recently come to public awareness. Over the past couple of years, a tremendous amount of press attention has been focused on this problem. “No More Taboo” is an in-depth and scholarly report on the subject from Britain.

Men: can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em

A woman might avoid the system, including shelters, to prevent being separated from a man, legally wed or not, whose support and protection she unequivocally needs. Or, at the opposite end of that spectrum, the man whose domestic violence forced her to leave home might be out there looking for her, and avoiding him is at least as important as avoiding the street’s regular predators, and the police, and the child welfare authorities.

In California, The Mercury News headline read, “Facing additional threats, San Jose homeless women often stay hidden from safety net” —  which pretty much tells the whole story. For many women, traditional shelters equal potential victimization. It hurts to say this, but there are even persistent rumors that some male social workers cannot be trusted.

In the process of concealing themselves for the sake of safety, another thing that women stay hidden from is the official homeless count that is used to allocate federal funding. Journalist Ramona Giwargis indicated the scope of the problem:

A survey last year found that about a third of Santa Clara County’s 6,556 homeless were women, echoing a San Jose survey of the city’s 4,063 homeless in 2015. But another study by the county and the nonprofit Destination: Home reported that half of the people on the streets are women.

The discrepancy between the reports revealed a troubling trend: Homeless women don’t go to shelters as often as men… That’s because a coed shelter can be a terrifying place for a woman who’s been raped. It can trigger fears or bring back traumatic memories.

Homelessness is not an equal-opportunity condition, and being female has its own set of hazards. For many women experiencing homelessness, there is constant temptation to trade intimate favors for a place to crash while saving up for the deposit on an apartment — or even just for a night’s lodging. On the other hand, the woman may be too old and/or disabled and/or sick to attract helpful male attention. Which condition is more to be dreaded?

Another ugly aspect is that a woman is never too much of a mess to attract vicious, violent male attention. There is no such thing as being too unattractive to be raped or killed. When a 16-year-old boy raped a 68-year-old woman in a train station, for instance, threatening her with a gun, that was a crime of sheer violence. She was just trying to get out of the rain.

Of course, not all attacks against women experiencing homelessness are sexual or deadly. Ask the 60-year-old who was praying — did you get that? Praying — on a public sidewalk when a teenage boy hit her with eggs.

Injustice of many kinds

Recently, a heartbreaking story made national news when Zaviona Woodruff completed the requirements to receive a college scholarship, but…

[…] she didn’t receive the Kalamazoo Promise, a scholarship guaranteed to any city student who remains in the Kalamazoo Public School system from kindergarten through 12th grade, because she didn’t live in the KPS district. Prior to 2016, she did. However that year she and her family became homeless.

 

The family stayed in a shelter, then moved to an apartment without being aware that it was outside some arbitrary line. A technicality turned into an issue, and the fact that any of this happened stinks. Even though it could have happened to a male student too, and even though apparently the official guidelines were violated, the spirit of the whole altruistic endeavor was violated much more grievously.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Mother Gets Job Interview But Doesn’t Have Childcare, Ends Up In Jail,” ThinkProgress.org, 03/27/14
Source: “Breastfed Babies Kidnapped by CPS Because Parents were ‘Homeless”Living out of RV’,” MedicalKidnap.com
Source: “Facing additional threats, San Jose homeless women often stay hidden from safety net,” MercuryNews.com, 07/03/16
Source: “Indiana teenager arrested for raping homeless woman,” ImperfectParent.com, 08/25/11
Source: “Praying homeless woman egged on sidewalk; three teens arrested,” LATimes.com, 04/15/14
Source: “KPS graduate ‘crushed’ after she was denied Kalamazoo Promise,” Fox17Online.com, 07/25/18
Image credit Timothy P. Schmalz

We are meditating on the various figures of the Home Coming sculpture, and what they represent. Last week, we focused on the veterans who are also parents, and this week it is the veterans again, because there is more to say about them.

Looking for statistics, a seeker finds plenty of interesting details. For a lot of people who are still living, Vietnam was “our war.” The veteran depicted in the Home Coming grouping? It was his war, too.

So here is an interesting paragraph from a 2015 report assembled from studies done by the RAND Corporation, the Congressional Research Service, the Veterans Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. Surgeon General, and others:

The findings from the National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study […] in the 1980s initially found that for “Vietnam theater veterans” 15% of men had PTSD at the time of the study and 30% of men had PTSD at some point in their life. But a 2003 re-analysis found that “contrary to the initial analysis of the NVVRS data, a large majority of Vietnam Veterans struggled with chronic PTSD symptoms, with four out of five reporting recent symptoms when interviewed 20-25 years after Vietnam.”

One lesson to take away is that obtaining the numbers is a dicey proposition, for reasons House the Homeless has discussed before. One reason for that is, each human research subject is part of a cohort and a demographic and whole lot of other subcategories, in a place, within a certain time period. Are we going to talk about every vet who was ever diagnosed with PTSD, or the undiagnosed cases too? But if they are not recognized and identified, then how can they be counted?

The same is true of veteran suicides. Even when everyone has the best intentions, there is plenty of room, and incentive, for fuzziness and fudging. If a life insurance policy is involved, but it has a no-suicide clause, labeling this death as suicide might not be in the family’s best survival interest.

All these matters are much more complicated than the general public suspects. Which is why it is so useful to reduce all the abstractions to a very solid thing, a grouping of bronze figures with a story to tell.

We do not know if the vet in the Home Coming statue has ever suffered a head wound or blow to the head that led to traumatic brain injury, but if he didn’t, he certainly had friends in the military who did. We don’t know if he has ever contemplated suicide, but it would not be too presumptuous to assume that he experiences a certain amount of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) , and possibly chronic pain from some past trauma.

Even though statistics come with serious caveats, here are a few random examples:

• Vietnam veterans report lifetime rates of PTSD ranging from 10% to 31%.
• 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have PTSD and/or depression.
• PTSD is under-diagnosed and under-treated.
• An estimated 19% of veterans have traumatic brain injury. That amounts to about 260,000 people.
• 7% of veterans have both PTSD and traumatic brain injury.
• The suicide rate for male VA users (38.3 per 100,000) is higher than for males in the general population (19.4 per 100,000), and the same is true of females (12.8 per 100,000 versus 4.9 per 100,000.).
• Oh, and “some branches of the military do not keep fine-grained data, or any data at all on the suicide rates…”

“Veterans statistics: PTSD, Depression, TBI, Suicide” is a bountiful source of links to sites with lots of numbers. We also recommend a 58-page presentation by Hal S. Wortzel, M.D., who has a list of credentials a mile long qualifying him to speak on “Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Suicide in OEF/OIF Veterans” (Afghanistan and Iraq).

Here’s the House the Homeless directory of posts and documents filled with vital information about these important matters:

• “Helping Veterans With PTSD”
• “Veterans and Suicide”
• “To Prevent Homelessness, Alleviate Veteran PTSD”
• “Homeless Veterans and Suicide”
• “Brain Injury, Neglect, and Self-Destruction”
• “A Book to Help Homeless Veterans”
• “Traumatic Brain Injury — Promising Developments”
• “Stay Current With Veterans, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Kids”
• “Head Trauma, Homelessness, and Crazy”
• “Traumatic Brain InjuryA Protocol to Help Disabled Homeless Veterans within a Secure, Nurturing Community”
• “VA Wastes Miracle Machine”
• “Vital VA Project Got Off on the Wrong Foot”
• “Brain Injury Awareness Day Is March 22”
• “Survey Links Brain Injury to Medical Causes of Homelessness”
• “More Ways to Become Homeless”
• “Prevent Vet Homelessness With Correct Diagnosis”

Reactions?

Source: “Veterans statistics: PTSD, Depression, TBI, Suicide,” VeteransAndPTSD.com, 09/20/15
Source: “PTSD: National Center for PTSD,” VA.gov
Source: “Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-TraumaticStress Disorder, and Suicide in OEF/OIF Veterans,” SemanticScholar.org, 2015
Photo on Visualhunt

House the Homeless recently discussed the plight of children and pets experiencing homelessness, because we are talking about the sculpture called the Home Coming, two of whose figures represent those beings (partial image to the left). The tallest person in the group is the little girl’s father, a returning veteran.

Bone-weary, angry from a sense of betrayal and unappreciated sacrifice, he wonders if the “promised land” he fought for will ever yield a place for him. With his minimalist pack of gear resting beside him, he shelters the child with his cloak as they enjoy the unexpected gift of warmth from a trash fire.

So, what is going on with American military veterans these days? Progress is made here and there, by fits and starts.

For instance, it was 2009 when the Veterans’ Administration announced that it hoped to end veteran homelessness by 2015. Between 2010 and 2013, a 24% reduction was said to have been achieved. Journalist Nick McCann noted, “Some veterans’ advocates are skeptical of the VA’s goal of ending homelessness among veterans, especially because funding for veterans will be reduced after 2015.”

In 2014, then-First Lady Michelle Obama got behind the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness. The progress made, says Roger Chesley, has not necessarily depended on big expenditures. Bureaucrats have made efforts to lower barriers between their agencies, and coordination between local, state, and federal authorities has grown.

Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe aimed to end veteran homelessness in the state by 2015, and succeeded in housing 743 vets within a year. Virginia seems to be trying to help the most vulnerable, the people with physical and mental disabilities including addiction, with the “housing first” philosophy. Steps one through three are to identify, assist, and house. Then, bring on the counseling and treatment.

The nitty-gritty of housing

HUD-VASH is the country’s largest housing program for veterans experiencing homelessness. Based on the Point-in-Time count, the federal government determines how many housing vouchers to distribute in each part of the country. It is said that nationwide, communities using the vouchers have housed 78% of the veterans who needed help. Depending on their assets and employment status, the individual pays from 30% to 40% of their rent.

Problem is, in many places, for both vets and other varieties of people experiencing homelessness, having a voucher of any kind is meaningless if there are no rental vacancies, or if landlords are unwilling to rent to tenants who receive assistance. Tenants on the taxpayers’ dime need to occupy spaces that are safe, fire-protected, un-infested, and without toxic leaks. Property owners have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, show up for inspections, and make repairs if needed.

As much as they hate expenditures, landlords hate bureaucracy and regulation even more, and tend to resist what they see as unnecessary snooping into their affairs. At the same time, they don’t mind generating paperwork for others, like the applications that have to be filled out and submitted with rental application fees.

A prospective tenant might apply to several vacancies. As journalist Anna Webb says, “They deplete meager resources, leaving nothing for first and last month’s rent and security fees.” She adds,

The HUD-VASH program operates on the principle that housing is a basic human right. It follows a “housing first” philosophy: Start with a safe home, then build from there to solve other problems. HUD-VASH vouchers don’t expire. They’re available indefinitely for the veterans who need them. But in an ideal scenario, a homeless veteran will use HUD-VASH to get healthy, get a job, become self-supporting and leave the program.

The hard-nose landlords are counterbalanced by the rare few who consider it a patriotic duty to accept vets as tenants, and willingly work with the case managers. Webb quotes social worker Amanda Walund, who has been a case worker since 2011:

It seemed that when I first started, we had a good base of landlords, more property managers on board. In the last few years there are fewer property managers who will accept vouchers and rents have increased beyond what vouchers will pay.

And, of course, even vets who are able to rent are subject to the same economic uncertainty as other tenants, because rising rents are always as certain as death and taxes. Another difficulty is that available rental properties may be far away from the medical facilities and other agencies that a disabled or disoriented individual needs to deal with — often, using public transportation that is either inadequate or nonexistent.

Visit the statues section of House the Homeless, and see how to become a part of this exciting project. It is a beacon of hope and an enduring, visual way of telling the story that housed people might not think about very often. It’s the story of a lifestyle with nothing glamorous about it, that millions of Americans are compelled to put up with, and desperate to escape.

They feel invisible and discarded. They need help to get over the hump, and the very large majority are good people who, like the family unit portrayed by the sculpture, are willing to share what little they have.

By the way, The Home Coming will not remain strictly visual. In contrast to its kinship
with the ancient lineage of metal statues, this one will have a technologically up-to-date means of telling its entire story to visitors.

Reactions?

Source: “VA Plans Change for Homeless Veterans’ Care,” CourthouseNews.com, 05/15/14
Source: “Cutting red tape to find housing for homeless veterans,” PilotOnline.com, 06/20/15
Source: “Rent vouchers in-hand, homeless Idaho veterans still struggle to find housing,” IdahoStatesman,com, 04/15/15
Image by House the Homeless

The bridge is frequently used as a poetic allusion to the meanings behind movements. Last week, House the Homeless talked about Bridge the Economic Gap Day, when people show up to demonstrate on literal bridges, and also about children experiencing homelessness.

On that subject, there is plenty more to say, including the quotation from an advocate who believes it is society’s responsibility to build all the bridges from homelessness to hope. Of course the background is that kids are a demographic represented by the Home Coming statue.

In 2015, about half a million people were homeless in America, and about a quarter of them were children under 18. Numerically, that’s close to 128,000. Weirdly, in the same year, the Department of Education believed that it encompassed 1.36 million homeless K-12 students, which is quite a different number.

At around the same time, journalist Patty Machelor wrote about how the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) enumerates people in shelters, under bridges, and in parks, while other strays and stragglers remain unaccounted for. As the writer put it, “HUD doesn’t include families and children who are living in cars, doubling up in rented hotel rooms or temporarily sleeping on a friend’s floor.” The HUD numbers didn’t reflect the doubling of school-age homeless kids since the economic dumpster fire of 2008.

In Nashville, Joyce Lavery of the Safe Haven Family Shelter said of the Department of Education’s assessment,

Sometimes that doesn’t even count children who are of pre-school age or infants. It also doesn’t include children who have dropped out. So we don’t really know the full extent of youth and children homelessness but we know it’s a crisis.

What about 2017? HUD numbers said there were 554,000 homeless people in the U.S., including 193,000 unsheltered people with no access to emergency shelters or transitional housing. Part of the problem was HUD’s perhaps overly-strict documentation process. It is a scientific truism that you can’t prove a negative. What piece of paper can a person get to prove they don’t live anywhere?

In keeping with the trend of explaining complicated concepts as if to a child, this page contains graphics with such titles as “Homelessness is more acute where housing is expensive.” Between 2016 and 2017, the most rapidly growing subgroup were unaccompanied children and young adults, which increased by 14%. The 2017 point-in-time count found more than 40,000 unaccompanied children and young adults, so that symbolizes an average night.

Back in 2014, Kevin M. Ryan wrote about an attempt that was made to legislate improvements in the way children experiencing homelessness are counted. Advocates predicted that reform in this area would add about 900,000 children and families to those served by federal assistance programs.

Ryan, President and CEO of Covenant House International, wrote in favor of the bill that would put federal officials in the back seat by allowing local officials to decide which groups would receive priority help. Younger homeless kids tend to become older homeless kids, and nasty factors intervene, like opioids and human trafficking, and nobody wants that.

Homeless is where they are. Not who they are.

Ryan describes “kids who had one stroke of bad luck, then the house of cards collapsed, leaving them to face homelessness alone… Kids whose parents died, or went to jail, or overdosed, or couldn’t or wouldn’t parent them.”

Late last year, Ryan wrote about a very comprehensive study. The University of Chicago found that, for instance, among the nation’s 13- to 17-year-olds, one out of 30 will be homeless at some time in the course of any given year. In that vulnerable and volatile five-year age range, 700,000 adolescent minors are destined to be on the loose in 2018. In one way or another, Covenant House reaches 80,000 of them, and temporarily houses 10,000.

Homelessness makes it very difficult to do well in school, or even to attend, which makes it hard to earn a high school diploma or even pass the equivalency test. Without that credential, a young person is 3.5 times more likely to be homeless.

This is only one of the numerous vicious cycles that teens can get caught up in. Actually, it’s a better-case scenario, the worst case being that the criminal justice system becomes involved their lives, an event that sets in motion a whole different and even grimmer dynamic.

Richard R. Troxell commented:

Apart from the emotional devastation to these individuals, think about the financial cost to us as taxpayers. Now project a little further into this dark and hazy picture and think about single parents living on insufficient wages just before they fall into homelessness, scurrying to keep ahead of the constable who has come to evict them again.

In response, these kids relocate over and over again, each time enrolling in a new school in an effort to avoid detection. They do not bond with their school chums as we did. They do not join after-school sports activities or join choir or band or chess or book clubs.

They are latchkey kids to a single parent who is scratching at a living, who has no time or energy for their own children. Who would be more susceptible to drugs and gang recruiters? What the hell is happening?! Tell them what we really need… Then go vote.

Reactions?

Source: “More than 500000 homeless in the US,” WSWS.org, 11/21/15
Source: “HUD homeless count not clear on youth, families,” Tucson.com, 11/25/15 Source: “Growing up homeless is new reality for thousands of children in Tennessee,” WKRN.com, 2018
Source: “Estimating the Number of Homeless in America,” TheDataFace.com, 01/21/18
Source: “Counting Homeless Kids, the Right Way,” HuffingtonPost.com, 07/25/14
Source: “Largest Study of Homeless Young Adults: 10 Percent Lack Shelter Each Year,” HuffingtonPost.com, 11/15/17
Photo credit: DFID — UK Department for International Development via Visualhunt/CC BY

Coming up soon is Bridge the Economic Gap Day, on Tuesday, September 4, which is the day after Labor Day. We have a nice collection of archived posts just waiting to satisfy the curiosity of readers who want to support and participate in this nationwide annual event.

Organizations that get involved include unions, faith-based groups, non-profits, businesses, and more. In 2005, House the Homeless co-founder Richard R. Troxell wrote to then-Senator Barack Obama about Bridge Day and the Universal Living Wage.

Here are photos from Bridge Action Day in 2010. In 2015, the 14th Anniversary of Bridge the Economic Gap Day was celebrated. This commemorative page also includes a record of the various campaigns and activities initiated and backed by House the Homeless.

The following year, we quoted Richard’s words:

We need to index the federal minimum wage to the local cost of housing. In this fashion, if a person puts in their 40 hours of work, they will be able to afford a basic rental property… No matter what that rent escalates to, or where it’s located. This makes sense for business as it stabilizes their minimum-wage workforce. This makes sense for the local construction industry (nationwide) that will get to construct housing for the 3.5 million people experiencing homelessness. And it makes sense for the homeless minimum-wage worker who can finally attain housing.

Additionally, our website holds many more resources, like a whole section on the Universal Living Wage, and a copy of letter that Richard recently sent to Spencer Cronk, the City Manager of Austin. This missive recalls the decades-long resistance against “right to rest” laws up to the most recent activities of HtH:

I came with a winning argument that yielded the compromise with Council Member Randi Shade, the Health and Human Services Committee, and the City Council. The people got every point now reflected in the enclosed No Sit/No Lie ordinance guide. We have reissued these cards to our citizens in English and Spanish, and to our police officers four times in lots of 5,000. In the end, we were all winners.

The Home Coming Statue

Last time, we talked about the project that puts a positive face on homelessness through artistic expression. The Home Coming is a work with several components, one of them being canine, and we brought up some of the important things to remember about the human-animal relationships that are, for many people experiencing homelessness, so important to both physical safety and mental health.

We will recount the whole narrative backdrop of the sculpture in a future post, but the salient fact to know right now is that another of the characters in the still-life drama is a child. What do we know about child homelessness in the greatest country on earth, the United States of America?

Homeless children are of different kinds. A baby with its mother is a whole different category of child than a 14-year-old who ran away from an abusive step-parent. Unaccompanied youth are the best at hiding their housing status. They bounce around from place to place, and because youth in itself is attractive, they “clean up nice” when it’s necessary to pass for what is considered to be normal.

In the counting department, it’s a shame when a state official says the only available estimates are “based on overall nationwide perceived percentages of homelessness amongst unaccompanied children.” What? Where does the federal government get its numbers from, if not from the states? Even more discouraging is when the same official doesn’t care about getting numbers anyway, because he or she doesn’t believe any of them.

A circular dynamic happens. Because there are no services they can apply to, kids are not identified as homeless. So they are not counted, and when the time comes for an agency to ask the state or federal government for financial support, the paramount question is, “How many kids are we talking about?” And nobody knows, because… (go back to the beginning of the paragraph.)

Trendct.org presents a number of promising ideas to incentivize kids to make themselves known to the system. For instance, if an adult wants to ask questions, have that person vouched for by a juvenile who is trusted by the other juveniles. Of course, concepts like social proof and personal vetting have been around since cave people days. The trick is, teaching people how to be more competent at winning the confidence of strangers, through authenticity and other ethical methods.

(To be continued…)

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless children: A new strategy to count an invisible population,” TrendCT.org, 05/07/15
Image by: House the Homeless

Consensus holds that between 5% and 10% of people experiencing homelessness have pets, most often dogs. The notable exception, Ace Backwords, lives in the Berkeley hills with a herd of cats that he feeds, photographs, and writes numerous blog entries about.

Most homeless shelters don’t allow pets. But of course, the people who are allergic to hairy animals deserve consideration too. As do the people responsible for keeping shelters clean. Dogs can and often do have continence problems. Even a dog who is trained to only relieve itself outdoors could make a mistake, because institutions run on schedules. There are safety issues, and a responsible shelter can’t let people wander in and out all night long.

Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless says:

We are also now learning that many battered women won’t enter a shelter because they won’t leave their “other child” (dog or cat) with the batterer. In response, many woman’s shelters have now opened their hearts and their doors to these beloved family members, so all battered women can find sanctuary.

Occasionally there is a situation that is unclear, or hard to resolve. What about a blind person with a guide dog? In that case, the Fair Housing Act forbids discrimination against the disabled, and supersedes the no-pets rule. But a City Rescue Mission in Pennsylvania got in trouble for not knowing that, or not caring.

It is probably fair to say that most of the dog owners are street people, because of the hassle. Who is on their side? Depending on where a person lives, either nobody, or a patchwork of a safety net that may or may not be able to help with any given problem. It all depends.

Allies and advocates

In Los Angeles, a park hosts health fairs for people experiencing homelessness and their pets. Pets of the Homeless is a national group with 424 donations sites, which have collected 588 tons of pet food and extended medical treatment to more than 18,000 pets.

In Louisville, KY, the group My Dog Eats First helps out with pet food and supplies, vaccinations, and even spay/neuter services. It’s not just for the sake of the humans. Pets have healing power that helps people, and there is benefit also to the healthy pets who will not wind up in shelters, or worse yet, euthanized. The local volunteers pick up donations, clerk at the Pet Food Bank, and separate jumbo size bags of food into 1 gallon plastic zip bags.

The video on this page shows the process involved in helping to supply My Dog Eats First with food and other commodities to distribute in the homeless community. It was made by Prank It FWD producer Tom Mabe, who has a message for uncomprehending housed people:

I used to get really upset when I would see a homeless person with a dog. I would think, “You can’t take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of this dog?” But after spending a lot of time with them, I realized that they take great care of their dogs… They’re best friends, there’s all kinds of unconditional love. A dog doesn’t judge the person, a dog doesn’t steal from the person… Maybe think twice, the next time you see a homeless person with a pet.

Mabe also said, “It gives them something to be accountable for,” which is no small matter. Part of that accountability is that a canine companion might also motivate some folks to steer clear of avoidable trouble. You don’t want to go to jail if that will jeopardize your best and only friend.

Aside from giving the human a sense of purpose, a dog often lends protection, or at least some extra-alert senses. If someone is asleep and would be better off awake at the moment, a dog will know it. There are shady humans intent on thievery or assault, and even some very ill people who believe that their divine mission is to execute rough sleepers.

Personal testimony

Becky Blanton, who has experienced homelessness and presented a TED Talk about it, was blocked from renting an apartment partly by the security deposits that her cat and dog would require. (Again, it is hard to blame landlords, because even nice animals can do extensive and expensive damage.) But loyalty to the pets was certainly a factor in her staying in a vehicle, rather than gaining a roof.

HtH has written about the film Wendy and Lucy, in which a heartrending dog-related decision is made. If the pet owner happens to become homeless in a city where people tend to be rehoused pretty quickly, the temptation is strong to hang onto the pet or pets, even if it means living in extremely limited conditions, i.e. outside of the official shelter system. After all, it would be terrible to give up the pet, find a place soon, and later have to think, “If only I’d held onto Buddy for just two more weeks!”

What can people do?

House the Homeless raised awareness by publishing Pet Calendars, two years in a row, and redesigned its logo to include a canine companion (see top of page.) Also relevant is the memorial page for Austinite Judy Lynn W. Beall. If you are someone who carries around extra clothes or water to randomly give out, consider adding some dog food to the stash in your trunk.

NOTE: Actually, this post is a teaser. We will be talking more about a specific little dog named Joey, in the context of a project called The Homecoming.

Reactions?

Source: “He Said He’s Filming The Homeless & Their Pets, But What He Really Does Shocks Everyone,” PawMyGosh.com
Photo credit: Steve Baker on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND