Last week, a friend posted an article called “Why My Liberal Neighbors Aren’t Speaking to me Anymore”
Looking at homeless objectively in this poised scenario is quite silly, especially when each case of experienced homelessness differs.
Those who are most at risk for experiencing homelessness are persons living in poverty, and before you go for the “those in poverty just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps”, studies show that poverty is not that simple. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, it normally takes a few generations to move upwards.
I can only speak from experience when I say the number of homeless people I’ve encountered don’t want to be homeless, moving from shelter to shelter, depending on the subjective generosity of strangers or soup kitchens. I’m telling you, its can never be fun to take a sponge bath in a library bathroom, its belittles your integrity and drives one to addictions, addictions that can’t be solved easily.
Another point is that about 40% of the homeless are veterans (1). A number of these veterans return to the U.S. with disabilities (both physical & mental) that the government only pays so much to cover . Vets often are unable to find jobs suitable to their needs and attempt to rent affordable apartments upon their return, and then b/c they have no address, its hard to receive these benefits in the mail. You see how these cycle can drive someone mad?
Perhaps you’ll retort and say, well, that one man in Pursuit of Happyness did it…why can’t everyone that is homeless do what he did? Well, that one man, also known as Chris Gardner, had a string of bad business decisions and then crossed a road with serendipity. That movie did make a good point however, a number of the homeless are made up of children, in fact, here are the numbers:
[39% are children under 18 with a parent, 42% of whom are under 5 years of age
42% African-American, 38% white, 20% Hispanic, 4% Native American and 2% Asian.
Persons with severe mental illness represented about 26% of all sheltered homeless persons (1)
Of course, these stats are underestimated because surveying homeless persons is a bit difficult.
So why mention children?
Because these children are born into position with nothing. Absolutely nothing, no home, no money, nothing. Education is usually the only way out of this circumstance but any school he/she attends more than likely will be a failed institution with very little resources to sufficiently assist him/her into moving upwards in the social ladder. Again, there are always exceptions to this rule, but by focusing on the exceptions we negate to solve the issues at hand.
Discussing the immigrant mobility is an entire different conversation which entails speaking about a series of different issues. Comparing families that have just arrived and families that have in the United States have been failed for generations is futile, studies show that new arrivals have different venues to succeed. Often times when immigrants arrive, they rely on immigrants that have arrived earlier to transition their resettlement (i.e. hire them, allow them to live with them until they get on their feet, invest in their businesses, etc, etc.). They also have resettlement agencies that transition that process as well (i.e. sponsors that have money and can help they get settled).
[“it is the unannounced endorsement by academics and policymakers for immigrant groups to “prefer” their own in local hiring through “networks,” as well as those allowed to maintain a relative monopoly through “ethnic niches,” that is most detrimental to African Americans and marginalized groups.” (2)]
My family is Eritrean, and whenever an Eritrean family moves to Chicago, the man of the house works for his cousin, brother, or distant relative as a taxi driver until they could buy their own taxi. They got access to the taxi business in Chicago through the Eritrean owned taxi company….see the pattern here? Insert other ethically owned businesses and the same scenario applies. Its hard for outsiders to get access into these sort of investments b/c its based on community, and most communities aren’t too fond of outsiders.
[“In fact, during the early part of the century the hordes of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, German, Scottish, Greek, Spanish, and other European immigrants frequently replaced Blacks as longshoremen, street-car motormen, construction workers, jockeys, blacksmiths, and able-bodied seamen. Outright, rank racism, and discrimination were the tools by which Blacks have been deprived of work over the decades. (3)”]
To say that “that sounds like an excuse to wallow in the worst part of the past”, again, negotiates what we identify as important parts of our history. For example, its seems like it is understood that enslaved Blacks were brought to the US against their will, saw many of their brothers and sisters treated as cargo, with skeletons of their brothers and sisters buried at the bottom of the ocean. This is a hard part of our history to swallow…yet, b/c it happened “so long ago”, its now irrelevant? I beg to differ.
After the Emancipation Proclamation (didn’t exactly free anyone…see share-cropping and other form of decapitations—little or no schooling, charging for living, charging for the food that the “freed” slaves harvested, hard to move forward when you have systems pulling you back) millions of Blacks migrated to big cities, like Chicago. In the first wave (between 1910 and 1930 I believe) they ended up on the South Side, with no money, no wealth, and only the desire to “move forward.” Many of the Blacks found that the same setbacks they encountered in the South were present in the North, expect at least in the South, people were straight-forward about their intentions. Jobs were always given to whites, and then when waves of immigrants began to enter the US, jobs were preferred to the new arrivals, and then blacks. If a black got a job, they were underpaid and rarely allowed mobility. For generations, families couldn’t move up the ladder, while laws were passed in principle, they were rarely practiced. Many families were herded into large, low quality, buildings to live in, with owners that rarely followed up with building codes and other standards of living. Frustrated parents would drink or do drugs to numb their woes, sometimes it drove them to beat on each other, and sometimes on their children. Their children would enter the same processes, struggling to get a job and then drinking or smoking, or sometimes they would give up on the whole process and become a drug dealer b/c that seemed to be more productive than working for a company that (forgive my language—or don’t) could give a shit less about them. Then they would become criminals, following the rules and regulations of their “bosses” (i.e. protecting their “territory” etc, etc) I can go on. But this part of the story is rarely read in text books right? I don’t need to quote this, I lived it, I saw how hard it was for the African-Americans on my block to try and make it through high school. Those who didn’t partake in criminal activities and tried to make it to college didn’t make it through their first year w/o dropping out or transferring to beauty school, or a community college b/c their primary education was so poor. But who do we blame? Is it their fault that they were born into this circumstance? Is it the fault of the 1% that doesn’t take a second glance at the maid cleaning their home(s)? Is it the fault of the middle class that is trying to maintain their livelihoods? Comparing my immigrant families status to the status of the generationally oppressed African-American or Native American is futile. These experiences are worlds apart and are treated differently, though, there are similarities.
But what about the people that do “make it”, how come they can’t teach everyone else what they did and then go from there? Enter Dr. Thomas Shapiro, writer of Black Wealth/White Wealth and professor at Brandies (sp?) University. In his book, co-authored by Melvin Oliver, they discuss the trends of wealth in black and white families in the US. There were several notes worth thinking about:
When a black family “makes it”, they tend to spend their wealth as opposed to accumulate it because of social obligations due to their communities and families. (“giving back to the community”, buying their families homes, assisting their parents into retirement, helping their cousins/brothers/sisters with loans or investments, etc,etc). They found that white families did not share these same obligations and were able to accumulate that same wealth and most times were able to pass that money along. In one of the interviews that Shapiro mentioned, he asked about “bailing” family members out to both white and black families. One couple poked fun at each other, where the husband was known as the “Bank of Karl” because whenever a family member was stuck in a tight financial situation, they would call Karl and ask for his help…doesn’t help the saving process very much. He also noted that for many black families, the notion of family encompassed more than parents and siblings, they included extended cousins, childhood friends, longtime neighbors, etc. The same question was asked to interviewed white families, and they looked at Shapiro like he was crazy, they responded that if a family member or old friend had had a sticky situation, it was up to them to get themselves out of it. This is not to say this applies to all white families, but it was a pattern they found in their research, with exceptions to helping parents and children.
He also noted that wealth encompassed more than yearly income, it included assets (level of education, houses, cars, etc). He found that because many black families essentially started behind because by the time they began making 6 figure salaries (if they ever made it to making that sort of money), many of the same colleagues they interacted with had inherited wealth that they did not have. (Parents could lend them money to buy a home or a car).
Another thing they noted was that if the black families wanted their children to succeed in the future, they typically would move into upperclass neighborhoods in order to enroll them into good schools, good after-school programs, safe communities. Insert identity crisis for the little black girl that’s picked on because her hair doesn’t look the same as her classmates or the little black boy that parents tell his classmates to stay away from. Don’t believe that this still happens? Watch this video study by Anderson Cooper.
But all of this deviates from the original conversation, the “conservative” and “liberal” approach to solving homelessness. I never really understood what those labels really meant anyway…neither of them solve anything and most times can’t even identify with the issues they demean as unimportant. I’m neither, I’m just a poor black woman trying to make it through college, make enough money to support my family, and then give back to my communities (Three main ones: the Eritrean community in Chicago, the Black community in Chicago, and my community in Eritrea, and then supplementary communities)
But perhaps numbers won’t do the trick ?
Allow me to share a few stories.
Meet Troy, a homeless man that begs for money at the Dunkin Donuts on Broadway & Wilson in Chicago. Every time my dad would take me to DD, he would talk to Troy and ask how he was doing and how the job search was going. Troy would always respond…. “Man, its hard to get a job when you don’t have connections, have a disability, no clean clothes, an address, and a record.” You see, many homeless people would get arrested on purpose to so that they would at least have a consistent source of food and shelter, so then no one would hire him…and the cycle would continue (sigh, what poverty forces people to do to survive). My dad would buy him a coffee whenever he could as well as some food if he asked.
Rocket
Meet Rocket, or Roque, a Mexican immigrant that I met at a soup kitchen on Kenmore & Lawrence. He knew little English but was willing to do anything to get a job and off the streets. With no papers…its hard to get a legitimate job…then there’s paying for papers, but you need money for that, and the money a homeless man usually has is spent on daily food and travel from shelter to shelter. Plus its harder for Mexican homeless men to get money from strangers b/c most see them as people “trying to get their jobs.” That narrative is largely present in the Chicagoland area. At times they can get cash paid jobs but you can only do so much with cash (can’t create a bank account based on cash without legit sources of identification, and then building credit to get a house or a fridge or a car is essentially impossible).
Singer
Meet the random singer under the Wilson train station. He’s a tall, white, lanky man, that is a horrible singer. He’s right next to the community college and hopes to get pity from other struggling persons in the neighborhood. As soon as he gets enough money, he crosses the street and buys food from the fast food Chinese restaurant..in change. Buying healthy food is not possible for him (expensive and buying groceries from a market is silly if you don’t have a fridge), so he inherently becomes susceptible to illnesses and can be affected by malnutrition, diabetes, high cholesterol, and other causes of eating daily fast food.
Mary
Mary’s a cute little old woman that I met in Downtown Chicago that begs a few blocks from the Sears Tower every Tues and Thurs. I didn’t have any money, so I gave her the chocolate cover pretzels I had with me and told her I would look forward to seeing her again. I haven’t seen her in 4 yrs…I don’t know if she died, found a job, or what…but her, and many like her end up invisible in our populations.
Senait
Senait was an Eritrean woman related to my aunt that was being abused by her then husband. (See the pattern of poverty here?) She moved in with my aunt’s family, but after this caused some tensions with her husband and our families, so she was forced to live in a homeless shelter until things settled down. Because she had a clean record and some job experience, she was able to qualify for assistance from Inspiration Cafe, a cafe on Wilson that helped homeless people get jobs, use their address as a source to receive government assistance, and provided lunch and dinner. Most of the people they can help, however, are usually recently homeless and single. Families don’t go to the agency for fear their kids will be taken away from them. Persons that have been homeless for decades don’t qualify b/c of their average criminal records, drug use, and their last source of job experience is often decades ago.
Abraham
Abraham was an Eritrean homeless man that had a streak of bad luck that landed him on the streets. I don’t know much of his story outside of my dad allowing him to stay in our apartment while I was away at school. Because my dad could identify with his struggle, he was able to help him get on his feet but he hasn’t heard from him in months…another example of the invisible population. But I don’t see many people from Lincoln Park (wealthiest neighborhood in Chicago) giving up their summer homes for the homeless until they get on their feet, yet, its these same populations that believe that the homeless should “work hard” and do it themselves.
If there’s anything that my post should show…$50 isn’t going to do very much in the long run, either from the “conservative” or the “liberal”, who both share the same privilege by virtue of living next to one another. Dreaming to be President rarely crosses the mind of a homeless child, being able to get a steady job is a unreachable dream within itself.
(1) http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html
(2) http://newpol.org/node/231
(3) 2. Amsterdam News, October 23, 1971.
