Across the Great Divide

Shelter Report: Where's Victor?

Economists aren't the only ones who reflexively say, then, on the other hand...

You can't work with the homeless if you have a black and white view of the world. You can't do it if it bothers you when your predictions don't come true. If you rely only on numbers to get you to truth or rely only on your gut — forget it. Neither one will by itself will give you any reassurance.

Remember Paco, the guy who was taking the bus to Ohio to turn over his kidney for his sister? He showed up at the Day Center today, fresh off five days in jail.

Before he could leave town last week, some cops called him over. 

Come over here.

What did I do?

Nothing. We just want to know who you are. Got some ID?

Turns out there's a warrant for Paco in Durango. He knows about it, because once a month he gets hauled into jail for it. Nothing happens once he's arrested, and after five days he gets released.

Maybe that's true. We'll see if he's around next week.

*****

Someone asked about Victor today. 

He'd suffered some frostbite this winter. Whatever treatment he got wasn't enough. Homeless people tend to delay medical care, either because they're used to fending for themselves or because they can't afford treatment. Someone remembered him limping around with gangrene on one of his feet, and after some more  investigation, the consensus was the foot was amputated.

But he hasn't been into the Day Center or the shelter. No remembered seeing him for awhile. We made calls to the local hospitals, but with HIPPA confidentiality restrictions, we got nowhere.

A man who used to customize Harleys  and has lately walked everywhere may be down to one foot. But nobody seems to know where he is now.

*****

 I biked down to Municipal Court yesterday to check up on a dog case I've been following. Two of our guests were cited for having dangerous dogs, and an earlier case did not go well. The dogs were being held by animal control, and they weren't getting them back. Now it was just a matter of how much they'd be fined.

Neither of them showed up and warrants were issued. I biked back uphill against a mean head wind. 

 *****

A wave of campers came in late and the woman in the group signed everyone up for showers. They weren't actually organized enough to do it, but one guy who kept losing his cap tottered in. He'd burned both legs in a campfire and his wounds had scabbed over. We had some salve for him, but there was no one on duty in the clinic today. 

I hope we don't have another Victor on our hands. At least he's got something resembling a support system — a woman and three other alkies who won't be much help in a pinch.

*****

 My comrades with the bad dogs have recently been booted off the peninsula where they've been living, and they're transporting their possessions to other points down river. The man who didn't show for court had a warrant out for a drug charge, and he was afraid to appear at the court house for the misdemeanor before he'd gotten his scattered affairs in order.

He learned his lesson with dogs, he said. They loved him but were vicious toward others. He thanked me for my concern and said he planned to turn himself in on the warrants as soon as he had his home situation settled.

We'll see. On the other hand...

 

 

 

 

Shelter Report: Imagine That Guy Without a Hangover.

Paco is always a cheerful presence around the day center. He's charming, clean and has all his wits and teeth about him. He seems like he should be one of our alumni, and some days I've felt like asking, what are you still doing here, man?

Today, I got an inkling. His eyes were hangover red.

He was there to take shower he didn't seem to need, but it soon became apparent he'd come to talk. To say goodbye to his friends.

"I'm leaving for Ohio," he said. "My sister needs a kidney transplant and I'm a perfect match."

Paco had his kidneys pronounced healthy and his tissue matched hers, something that occurs 25 percent of the time between siblings. He agreed to be a donor and told his brother he was coming.

How will you get here, his brother asked. Walk, said Paco. No you won't, said his brother, who sent him a bus ticket.

"I'm not looking forward to this, but I am," Paco said. "It scares me, but I want to see my sister well again. I can do it. I got no life, and I can give her one."

*****

One woman was explaining to another: "He's here — not my son, but the guy who looks like my son. Imagine that guy without a hangover."

*****

Earlier this week, one of our guests made the police blotter for the second time this month and at least the ninth time since July 2009. That doesn't count his other interactions with police or EMT crews who respond to his fake medical emergency calls.

The latest incident described Lee being found on the sidewalk, intoxicated enough to be taken to the hospital. "[He] was accused of swinging his right arm toward the head of [an EMT] and swinging his left arm at and spitting on a police officer who rode with him in the ambulance."

Lee's a short man in his late 50s going on 70, has a stub for one arm and is missing a fingertip on the other. In the police reports, he's disorderly, harassing hospital staff, trying to punch officers, threatening to rob banks, stealing beer and throwing away tickets.

Around the day center he's quiet, even cowed. It's hard to imagine him in a fight he could ever win.

*****

Jim is heading for Salt Lake City, he says. A nurse at the VA refused to reauthorize the emergency oxygen tank he's carried for the past five years. He thinks the Salt Lake VA will be more sympathetic.

I don't know if the tougher VA is part of it, but there's a slow crackdown going on against the homeless here on a lot of different fronts. It's designed to get them off the river and into more stable settings, but for some, it's just going to drive them to another town or a different part of the river.

Jim's been going to Gold's Gym and working out. They'll transfer his membership to Salt Lake, he says. He'll just have to come up with another $75 for the new club.

So he'll have a VA and a gym just like in Grand Junction. He didn't mention where he planned to live. I wonder if he'll also have a place like this one.

*****

We don't let people in when they're intoxicated or have liquor or drugs on them. They can get off the street and sit in the vestibule, but won't be admitted inside.

Today, a falling-down drunk was stopped at the door, while a wobbling one made it past the checkpoint. He made some tea and started chatting up a woman folding her laundry. Hey, he said, I've got some money. Let's you and me go get wasted.

She lit into him, letting him know she wanted nothing to do with him. He was aggrieved. Look at you, he said. You're here and you don't want to party with me? As if having a drunk asshole willing to spend money on you was supposed to be a complement if you were homeless.

I need this place, she said fiercely. And I don't need anyone like you. So don't come in here talking to people like that. We're here to get away from it.

One challenge in observing people here is deciding what I can write about without invading their privacy. Over the last several months I've been watching her struggle with a raft of issues, and her marriage looks about to crumble under the pressure. Getting to know her and her husband, I've seen more clearly how they're treated by the various systems meant to help them and to protect society from them.

It's sad to be a witness to these minidramas of self-destruction but also heartening to see what happens when people are given a place to recover their dignity and gather their strength.

The lowest of the low, the drunkest of the drunk, the poorest of the poor and the craziest of the crazy are welcome here if they can behave with respect for each other. Whatever may be happening outside, no matter how in over their heads they may be, they can float through that door and get their feet on something solid just long enough to thrust themselves up again to the surface and maybe float another yard closer to shore.

Shelter Report: Just Another Post-Valentine's Day.

One of our guests came for his mail late in the morning, after most people had left, and picked up an accordion-sized package. It was filled with bubble-wrapped boxes of candy. He and his friends carried it through the Day Center, offering pieces to whoever was still around. Since I was in the middle of scrubbing toilets and wearing rubber gloves, I passed.

It seemed like there were lots of varieties of candy going around today, none of which do you find in a Whitman sampler.

D. came in, her face flushed and broken out, in her case a sign she's back on meth. When I talked to her two weeks ago, she mentioned attending her mother's court date as a surprise (mom got six months in jail). D. herself had finished her probation and treatment recently and was talking about how she was going to "mentor some kids," as if it were already under way.

I took that as aspirational talk — the kind of plan that lasts for about a day and is never heard again, because plans involve the unknown and uncomfortable. But your best and only Valentine is always there to take you back.

Another guest came in tweaking, taking apart a bandless, duct-taped Timex Ironman he'd discovered in the pocket of a vest he'd found in a dumpster.

We're on good terms, but when he's like this, I prefer not to engage him much.

Still, he told me how he could break loose some dogs being held at animal control by making off with an 18-wheeler from a truck stop and backing the trailer through the enclosure. His scenario was finely detailed, based on his own off-and-on experience as a trucker, but he conceded he wouldn't do it because it was his fault the dogs had been taken.

He also wouldn't do it because he would actually have to put together the series of steps that had already richocheted out of his mind to make room for the fact that Easter would be on April 8th this year, the same day he'd first seen his daughter.

Later I heard, not from him, that a relative of his had been taken to the emergency room after overdosing on an anxiety medication.

Another guest drifted through, looking rough around the edges. Heroin's his candy, and he's lost a job, a house and a family because of it. He reaches a point of sobriety and responsibility, and then he snatches it or it snatches him for another go.

A new guy, call him Steve, walked down the hall with his eyes fixed ahead as if he were crossing a deep chasm over a fallen cottonwood. Even standing still surrounded by people, his gaze tracked some invisible dimension where things move at lava lamp velocity.

And T. was back, almost catatonic, his arms limp at his sides. When he's not so medicated, he seems harmless enough, in his own world, checking his reflection in the two-way mirror, but lately he's been stalking a woman who used to come here. He thought she was giving him mixed signals about her interest. In reality the signals were probably no and hell no.

Before we started our shift this morning, we got an update on a new intoxicant that involves washing down a package of Coricidin with a bottle of cough syrup. Then came a reminder not to make change for guests, slip them money or give them rides. One group of volunteers had started doing this and soon were being pestered on the street for handouts.

Just remember, said the director, Ted Bundy was a nice looking young man, too, but he also happened to be a serial killer.

Our job here is to dispense acceptance and caring. And when I see our people on the street, I smile, greet them if they want to be recognized, and remind myself I already gave at the office.

Shelter Report: When We Are Not Home, We Are Still Homed.

I couldn't make it into the Day Center for my shift today. I was prepared to drive instead of bike, then leave early if I couldn't hack it, but when morning came, heroism was out of the question.

I wasn't getting better after all, and walking sick into that small space would be like detonating a dirty bomb.

My reddened eyes were crusted shut, my nasal passages clogged, and a deep, insistent cough threatened to crack my ribs and wring my diaphragm until I retched. My hair was matted from alternating sweats and chills. Muscles and joints ached from the viral bludgeoning they've received these last six days. The night's struggle showed in the tissues strewn across my bedside bureau.

But at least I woke in a bed, with a roof and walls that allowed me to stay there and ignore the risen sun and the gathering sounds of the day.

I'm also protected by a health plan and an armamentarium of pills, sprays, syrups, lozenges, juices, solutions and inhalers. There's carpet on the floor and a furnace that keeps the temperature constant, so I can barefoot my way to the bathroom. Should I really experience distress, there's a telephone nearby and my address is recorded in the emergency response system.

I have a home.

Getting to know more people here in Colorado and at the People Serving People shelter in Minneapolis has expanded my appreciation of home — as well as what it means to go without.

The landmark McKinney Act [PDF], reluctantly signed by President Reagan in 1987, defined homelessness* in terms of "individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence." That's about as concise and nonjudgmental as can be.

But note the nighttime qualifier, as if people need only a place to retire, perchance, to dream.

For the rest of us, doesn't our sense of residence largely derive from our waking experience?

Home is where we eat, store valuables and invaluables, feel safe, watch TV, hang family pictures, socialize, take phone calls in private, make love, accumlate wealth, gather our mail and newspapers, leave the cats when we go to work, vacuum naked, argue or sing in the shower without being overheard.

When we are home, even if we are dogged by fears of its impending loss, we can turn down the pilot light of consciousness just a little because we own a place, lease it, rent it, have hopes for it, and sleep, sometimes, without having to fall into it.

And when we are not home, we are still homed.

We carry that state with us always, but not as the homeless man carries his back pack or pushes his shopping cart. We are free to return home to perform all of the above routines, while the homeless woman sets off on perpetual errands. Food here, mail there, clothes in a Rubbermaid bin in this facility, a computer in the library, one cup of coffee from the gas station and face washing at the park shelter.

Last week I saw Robert walking his bike from the grocery store across the bridge. Later I asked if he'd had a flat or a breakdown, and he said no. It was just too cold to ride. Sometimes he has to walk first to get the feeling back in his feet.

Before I called in this morning to beg off from my service, I couldn't help but imagine waking up with this flu on a compressed cardboard mattress, stirring my bone-cold limbs and peeling back the layers of sleeping bag and blankets. I've slept in my clothes from yesterday, and in the freezing air, I wouldn't change them now if I could.

I rub the crusts from my eyes and regard the underside of the bridge. Any sane person would stay down, pull the blanket back over his head to recapture the retreating warmth. But there will soon be people along the trail, and bound up in this sack I can't fight or flee. There's no calling in sick from this place, and no reason to stay, even if I have nowhere to be.

__________

* HUD recently revised its definition of the homeless to embrace people who are:

Living in a place not meant for human habitation, in emergency shelter, in transitional housing, or are exiting an institution where they temporarily resided.

Losing their primary nighttime residence and lack resources or support networks to remain in housing.

With children or unaccompanied youth who are unstably housed and likely to continue to be because of disability or multiple barriers to employment.

Fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, have no other residence, and lack the resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing.

Shelter Report: Crossing at the Light.

Last week I broke a ten for Val, who needed the change to pay back his debts. Small sums change hands often as individual fortunes rise and fall among the homeless. One week you're a borrower and maybe next time you'll be a lender. The same type of exchange happens with tobacco, shoe laces, booze, blankets and other commodities.

Val's a veteran from the Vietnam era and would have qualified for one of the new housing units for vets across the street, but he prefers the subsidized room he has east of downtown because it carries less responsibility, I think.

In my notebook last week, I wrote about Val's distinctive style of walking. He propels himself with sort of loose-limbed, soft-shoe glide, his head thrust forward from hunched shoulders. Imagine a character animated by R. Crumb sneaking into a house late at night keeping his head low in case there are bats.

Concern for Val was rippling through the Day Center Wednesday morning because on Tuesday he'd been trucking across the street in his head-down manner and stepped in front of a truck.

Since he was hit on a main drag entering downtown between the police station and the main homeless park, there were plenty of witnesses. They agreed Val simply forgot to look both ways before he crossed a street he crosses several hundred times a year.

Paramedics were on the scene quickly, stripping him down and then hauling him off in the ambulance. His friends spent the rest of the day searching for him at the VA and other hospitals, and when he didn't turn up they feared his injuries were so serious he'd been airlifted to Denver.

In fact, he was at St. Mary's, had undergone surgery and was going to recover. Two days later, there still hasn't been anything in the news about a homeless pedestrian being hit by a truck.

There's another drama going on that I'm not ready to write about until I collect some more information and events have a chance to unfold. After a guest heard me talking to some people involved in it, he cautioned me not to get too involved.

"I know you mean well," he said, "but you have to be careful not to get too wrapped up with them. Those people are meth heads who created their own troubles because they didn't take care of things around their camp."

His concern reminded me that I only see one slice of life a week here, and it arrives in fragments cloaked in best behavior. I hear opinions and accounts from all kinds of people, some of them unreliable, some charming, some with hidden agendas and some who'd believe Satan himself deserves another chance. Some of the guests here are all of the above.

Gotta remind myself to keep looking both ways.

The reality here is that homeless people are marginalized by society and also by the choices they make. If you can overcome your fears and set aside judgment, their community may seem surprisingly diverse and open, but in other ways it remains closed and isolated.

Family members, social services, religious communities, cops, soup kitchen and shelter volunteers, courts, doctors, security guards, EMTs, employers paying in cash and strangers with spare change weave in and out of their lives, but the street, the park or the river provide the only reliable facsimile of home for some of the people I've met. So that's where they return to support each other, rob each other, learn from each other, inform on each other, worry about each other, distrust each other, fall in love with each other, argue with each other, share living space with each other, give legal advice to each other and compete with each other for whatever status and scarce resources can be scrounged at the bottom of the safety net. 

Also on Wednesday the guests were remarking on the moon and the moons of other planets and other galaxies. Out here, the moon doesn't just sit in the sky; it gets a nightly chance to perform framed by a 30-mile-square arena of mountains, against a backdrop of black infinity pebbled with stars. The night before, the moon had glowed like the horns of a golden calf lit from below by an invisible bonfire.

In a camp by the river there are no lights for reading, no TVs, no iPads and nothing much to do but talk and drink until you leave the fire for a frigid sleep. Down there, the moon was not a sight glimpsed on a drive or framed through a window. It was the glorious fixture in the ceiling of a place we think is not a home.