Running and Recovering

I vividly remember a warm late spring day at my brother’s house in Atlanta about two decades ago. My son Ben was just discovering the joys of running at age two, and he was running down a hall full tilt toward my nephew’s closed bedroom door. 

I caught him just before he did a face plant into a door panel. “Ben, don’t! That door isn’t going anywhere, you know!”

Ben just grinned and put his head on my shoulder. I carried him to the living room and pointed to some blocks on the floor. “Build a rocket for us, OK?” Then I went to the kitchen to refill my coffee.

In a few seconds, I heard little footsteps going full tilt down the hall again. I left my coffee cup and sprinted toward the noise, but too late. BAM! Ben had indeed successfully executed the face plant into my nephew’s closed bedroom door. (Remarkably, there was no blood.) I picked him up just as he realized the door had won.

Helping Ben learn to run was a matter of catching him when he hurt, and encouraging him when he made progress. 

It’s like that sometimes with the homeless and addicted. One of our neighbors who regularly visits our Resource Advocate Program, Donny, has been working with us for at least 16 months. During that time, he’s been sober save for one day last winter. When Donny introduced himself to our RAP “Angels” (if you saw them in action you’d agree the nickname fits) he had already “graduated” from living in a dumpster to prison to being homeless in a shelter. The Angels helped Donny to get housing, dentures, and approval for Social Security over the next few months.

In a way, recovery involves a series of choices where you decide not to hurt yourself. You can self-inflict healing with certain choices. Donny has been on that path of choosing to get better for years. Yet not too long ago, the Angels had to escort him out of the RAP office because he came in intoxicated. 

But that was last week. This is today. 

We believe that Donny will show up sober again, and soon. We believe that, especially as Donny is reminded he has the freedom to choose, he will continue to make more choices to heal than to hurt himself. 

Our job is simply to catch him when he hurts and to encourage him when he’s making progress.

The Squeeze Is On

Derek and Jeannie had to face their reality in a different way a few weeks ago. Their son Abe needed a tonsillectomy, and they had to come up with a four-figure co-pay.  Then they got the news that they didn’t qualify for school lunch assistance for Abe and their daughter Breanna anymore. Under revised guidelines, they make too much money for the program. (Not that what they make feels like too much money to them.)

The bottom line about their bottom line is that they have to come up with an extra 40 school lunches a month now at a time their savings are wiped out. In their wildest dreams, they never thought they’d have to come to the Mission to get help. But for the sake of their kids, they came last week for a food box. Thank God for neighbors like you, dear reader, who bring food to the Mission warehouse or to food collections at schools, businesses, and houses of worship throughout our community. You might be amazed at how many of your neighbors are neighbors in need, if only for a season.

More families than ever are showing up for food distribution at the Mission. I don’t want to minimize the fact that they need all the other things available for families here like clothing, furniture, household and personal items and even (some weeks especially) diapers. It’s that the need for food seems to be rising dramatically -- so much so that we now encourage families to stop by for food boxes an extra time a month if they need to. 

And they’re coming from places all over town. They’re scattered among the local zip codes now. Not evenly, to be sure, but still scattered enough to demonstrate that food insecurity for families is an issue to more of our neighbors than we might have dreamed of just a few years ago. In fact, 1 in 7 people in Colorado are “food insecure.” That’s a less painful way to say those neighbors really don’t know where their next meal is coming from, if it comes from anywhere at all. Depending upon whose figures you read, up to half the population in our state could be food insecure sometime this year--maybe only once, but isn’t that enough?

The squeeze is on for families in need of simple things like food. And there are few situations as compelling to move parents into action as having your kids playing quietly in the next room and assuming that food will be on the table when you’re actually trying to create a meal and there’s nothing left to squeeze out of an empty pantry. 

It’s a wake-up moment. It may be filled with pain or a sense of failure or relief or any combination of the above, but it wakes you up in any case. 

Just as it did Derek and Jeannie last week. So this week, I’m reminding you that the community is coming together over the next two weekends at the Rampart Range campus parking lot of Pikes Peak Community College (across from New Life Church on the north side of town) to offer non-perishable food, clothing, household items, furniture and appliances to help stabilize some of the 27,000 families in the Pikes Peak Region who live in poverty. The things you bring to the “Freely Give, Freely Receive” event will help some families start the journey from homelessness to self-reliance. You might keep others from becoming homeless in the first place. Or, perhaps, you’ll keep a couple of kids in your neighborhood from going to bed hungry.

And if you’re reading this from a distance, think about taking leftovers from the spring cleaning of your closets and pantries to your local rescue mission this weekend.

The squeeze may be on for families in a season of need, but we can do something simple, practical and genuinely helpful about it.

So What Are the Odds?

It was waiting for me as I walked to my office door at the Mission this morning: a lottery ticket. Right there on the concrete landing; all bright and shiny.

Don’t get too excited. It was just a used scratch ticket. Someone had played the odds and lost, pure and simple.

Yet I couldn’t help but think about the odds in the everyday lives of the people we serve. What are the odds that someone becomes homeless, anyway? According to a trusted report on homelessness in America, over the course of a year the estimated odds of experiencing homelessness are presently about

• · 1 in 194 for the general population,
• · 1 in 29 for people with incomes at or below the poverty level,
• · 1 in 10 for veterans living in poverty,
• · 1 in 12 for people living with friends or relatives due to economic need,
• · 1 in 13 for a person discharged from incarceration, and
• · 1 in 11 for youth aged out of foster care.[i]

I don’t pretend to know how those figures strike you. They startle me. Look at them: about a 10% chance of being homeless this year if you’re freshly out of jail or foster care, or if you’re living with friends or relatives because of money, or if you’re a veteran living at or below the poverty line. You have a tad more than a 3% chance of being homeless if your income is at or below the poverty level.

(And just so you know, your odds are significantly better for becoming homeless from the general population [1 in 194] than for winning just $21 from playing a Colorado state scratch ticket [1 in 300].[ii] Just sayin’.)

Someone had thrown the ticket down in frustration or resignation or anger (maybe) for the loss of hope they’d once held in the ticket. I just hoped that it wasn’t someone who was homeless or at-risk. That feeling of loss, that stinging hurt of once having possibilities and now having empty hands, is all too common for our neighbors who come here for help. A losing scratch ticket likely would add insult to injury. But they’d already feel that the odds were stacked against them, wouldn’t they?

That’s why the roles we play as friends of the homeless matter. You matter because whether you encounter a homeless person only on occasion, or you meet new faces from the homeless in your community every day, you become a vendor of hope. Few feel the impact of hope (or the lack thereof) as keenly as those who consistently face homelessness.

Our task is to help them beat the odds against them.

Chances are we have better odds of doing that than in winning the lottery, at least.

---

[i] The Homelessness Research Institute. The State of Homelessness in America 2012, National Alliance to End Homelessness, January 2012, 38-39.

[ii] http://www.coloradolottery.com/GAMES/SCRATCH/SCRATCH-ODDS/gamenum/502/.

Jeffy's Choice?

Sometimes I can’t help but think back on my now-grown children playing with friends, years ago, in the backyard. I think of Power Rangers and princesses, of karate kicks and sand cookies. I remember the sure-voiced pronouncements of what they’d be when they grew up:

“I want to be a singer.”

“I want to be a mommy.”

“I want to be a teacher.”

“I want to be a ninja.”

The list went on, of course, in the middle of daring swings from the climbing rope on the fort that housed the slide on the south side of the swing set: “I want to be…” almost anything. The sky was the limit.

It’s kind of strange, but not once in all those years of parental eavesdropping did I hear a child say, “When I grow up, I want to be homeless.”

Imagine that. All those dreams about growing up, and being homeless was never in the mix. Surprised? Probably not.

Just last week Ellen left her home, and in so doing removed herself from her longstanding role as a convenient punching bag for her boyfriend. She’s taking shelter with friends of a friend with church connections while her visible bruises heal and she gets a resume together. Ellen will need a significant boost in personal income to become self-sufficient. The training she needs to get that boost will take time and resources she doesn’t appear to have at present. It will take a lot of support from a growing network of helpers to see Ellen through this season of homelessness.

Ellen is quite uncomfortable in her role as a newly homeless woman. Like many homeless neighbors, she never intended to become homeless. She didn’t choose to be here. But she is anyway.

Of the hundreds of homeless people I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the years I can only think of a couple for whom homelessness was a welcome choice. It certainly is not the preference of Jeff, a middle-aged man who lost his factory job and then his apartment during a time of deep depression. He lives in his van in a friend’s driveway right now, but can’t drive it anywhere until he gets his license back when his DUI suspension is over. He’s working hard as a day laborer when he can get the work, but he can’t always make the transportation connections he needs. There’s no question his choice to drink, and then to drink at the wrong time, fed the conditions that led to his homelessness. But do you really think Jeff hoped to end up where he is today?

Do you think, when he was a child, someone asked, “Jeffy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” and he answered, “When I grow up, I want to be homeless” and as a result pursued the goal to be homeless until he so recently achieved it? Homelessness wasn’t even a conscious option in Jeffy’s dreams, in all likelihood. Homelessness isn’t a desired option for the adult Jeff, either.

If you take time to talk things over with a few homeless people (share a cup of coffee sometime), you’ll probably find that they don’t make many excuses for themselves. In fact, you might discover that they have keen insight on the conditions (some admittedly self-imposed) that made them homeless.

You’ll also find that, almost without exception, they’d rather be safe in a home they could call their own than in a van or on the streets.

Just like us, in so many ways.

“No” as a First Response?

I remember walking the streets of Omaha a long time ago with John, a mentor who was coaching me on encountering the homeless. He simply said, “When they ask you for something, don’t think money. Think lunch. Otherwise you could end up paying for someone’s self-destruction.”

And as if to prove John’s point, up walked Danny. Mid-twenties, greasy hair, dumbfounded look, hugging a dirty trenchcoat around a neon green t-shirt, ragged khakis, untied hightop tennis shoes. Virtually every stereotypical detail of a down-and-outer or an underground punk rocker of the day.

“Hey, midster.” Danny sounded like he was talking through a thick head cold, and maybe he was. Then he lost his balance and bounced into me. Even in my rookie year of street stuff, I recognized the pungent smell of alcohol and sweat bleeding through his pores. Now nose-to-nose with me Danny asked, “Got two bucks so I can get some cigarettes?”

John didn’t trust my resolve at the time, so he spoke up. “Nope, we don’t have any cash to give away today. But we can buy you lunch somewhere around here if you like.”

I was convinced Danny would say no to the offer and be on his way. Instead, he looked around at the restaurant options on the block and, pointing to a working man’s diner, said, “There.”

So began an eight-year interface with Danny. We started by sharing meals and coffee. Then came the process of encouraging Danny to dry out. Then we helped Danny move into an apartment, and then setting up a shoeshine stand. Often he thrived. Sometimes he stumbled. He helped us pack boxes when my family moved from Omaha to Colorado Springs.

Because he doesn’t read, write, or have a phone, we keep up on Danny mostly through mutual friends. To this day, Danny’s life doesn’t look much like a Hallmark movie ending. But he’s still in his apartment, and still working the shoeshine stand, and sober.

Therefore, in what could be a very unpopular position with some reading this blog I am going to endorse, with confidence, the “common wisdom” answer to a common question when encountering people who self-identify as being homeless.

Here’s the question: If someone who appears to be (or self-identifies as being) homeless personally asks me for money, should I give it?

Here’s the common wisdom answer: No. I agree, and make no mistake, I understand that saying “no” to this question has been characterized as being unfeeling, or at least lacking a sense of solidarity with the homeless. Such could be the case if one uses “No” as a response to shut off all contact and conversation with the homeless.

However, what if you said “No” about forking over cash and quickly followed up with, “But I’ll buy you lunch if you have the time,” and then actually shared lunch with them? Or, “Let me drive you to a place that can really help you out,” and then drove them to the local rescue mission to introduce them to someone there who helps homeless people every day?

Of course, you’d have to be ready to follow through with both the time and resources. And you’d really need to be ready to carry on a conversation -- and maybe even develop the beginning of a relationship. You’d take a few moments to offer a neighbor a better way to cope with life, and possibly restore horizons of possibilities they’ve long ago forgotten.

I used to buy my way out of encounters of any length with homeless people by saying “yes” to their first ask for money. Yet Danny’s transformation began with a “no” to his initial ask for money. That’s because, in this case, “no” was the launching pad into contact and conversation that produced the long-term help Danny needed to battle and conquer homelessness.

It’s gut-check time. Are you up for saying “no” so you can offer a better way, maybe even a supportive presence, to a neighbor in need?