Although I lived in my car for the summer at least twice during my thirties, that wasn’t forced homelessness; I was trying to be creative about the chunk that rent took out of my low income. Unfortunately, I found that living in my vehicle was usually more expensive than the rents I was paying. By the time one drives from food stop to shower facility to dog run to work, and eats instant or restaurant food much of the time, the gas and food expenses add up to more than I’d had to pay for rent. Whether one chooses it or not, living in a vehicle is stressful.
Because I chose to hold onto my critters, who were/are my family, finding living situations has always been a creative endeavor. I can’t count the number of times my “home” has not included a shower, toilet and/or kitchen facilities. I’ve made do with showers at the Y, buckets and hot plates. To say I am a Microwave Queen is an understatement! Generally, if everything else about the living space was congenial, those lacks were not the end of the world.
I drive around and look at possible living spaces even when I have a place to live. While I am drawn to small houses, I usually look more at garages with good windows, lofts, garden sheds, storefronts and other places that could keep off the rain and chill. When I have been homeless, I’ve often felt frustrated at TPTB who insist that people cannot live in a place that is not up to code. To me, this seems rather two-faced, since that decision leaves many people sleeping in the woods or on heating grates or in the backs of sedans.
And then they chase homeless folks out of those places they’ve made for themselves because people struggling to survive “bother” those who have comfortable homes and nice incomes. There are few things I have as much rage about as I do the way we treat people without homes.
I feel angry at home-owning friends who are frightened by a man in dirty clothes panhandling (or simply sitting) at a shopping center or in a park. I don’t hear them complaining about the men in suits who sit at shopping centers or read books in parks. I guess a man with a latte in his hand can’t attack women.
Every community has its troublemakers, including the communities dressed in designer fashions, but I learned a valuable lesson as I made the effort to talk to panhandlers and other street people. Although I’ve often had homeless men verbally harass me, I found that when I took the time to talk to them, and mentioned that I was living in my truck, the were as respectful, human and nice as any other stranger. The harassment is just a game they play. Perhaps they’re bored, or perhaps they’re expressing their rage at being treated like slime by 95% of the people they see in a day.
As I walked the streets of Ballard, where I lived for four months one summer, exercising my two adorable dogs, often followed by my opinionated cat, I experienced all sorts of prejudice and meanness. People leaned in their front windows and glared at me. They took a leaf blower to my truck, deliberately scaring my cat into running away. (Fortunately, he safely crossed two arterials and went back to a former neighbor who left cat food outside.)
Couples would stop to admire my animals until it dawned on them that I was homeless; then they would draw together, women especially acting afraid of me, simply because I slept in my truck instead of in a bed in a house. The animals were still cute, I still had a job, and sometimes I’d even had a chance to take a shower or do my laundry that day. Even if I had none of those privileges, I’m about as harmless as they come.
I was lucky to have my truck; the prejudice that street people face is far worse.
For many years, I maintained a P.O. box in a rundown section of town. I often ran into people selling Seattle’s street paper The Real Change. Buskers played on the sidewalk, men hung out near the newspaper stands and a frowsy-haired woman loudly vented her rage at bosses and other workplace abusers, while watching her shopping carts full of her possessions.
Other people in the neighborhood told me that she had once been a medical doctor but had become psychotic and ended up on the street. The men (the same ones who yelled insults and sexist remarks at me) told me that they watched out for her. Eventually, she disappeared, and I began to worry about her. A local Mennonite church, I was told, had given her access to a house nearby. “She’s too paranoid to go into it much, but if she wants to be inside, she can be,” one of the panhandlers told me. I never saw her again, so I hope she’s adjusted to being inside.
I try to be caring and honest with homeless people, but I fuck up all the time. I offer a chocolate protein bar from the back of my truck; she takes it, but I think that I probably should have found a way to gracefully offer to pick up something (her choice, within my budget) before I go into the store.
I chuckle at a youngster standing outside a McDonald’s with a sign saying he wants a Big Mac. “Clever sign!” I think. I give him some peanuts, and watch him frown after me. Of course he wants a Big Mac. Kinsey Milhone isn’t the only one who lusts after them, and who wouldn’t want a hot meal on a rainy day?
I chat in a friendly way with the man in the park who offers to wash my windshield for a donation, suggesting places he might be able to get a job washing windshields. And then I feel angry when I realize he’s conned me out of money to buy beer. We both know I’m a foolish, middle class woman.
I stoop to pet the patient dog keeping a couple of young men company on the sidewalk. I greet all animals before I greet their people, but homeless folks resent it when people are more concerned about their pets than they are the people. For the record, all the pets I have met, who belong to homeless people, looked well fed and loved. I’ve seen more abused-looking critters at the dog park in Seattle’s ritzy Sand Point area than I’ve seen on the streets.
So I keep working on learning to be a good advocate for those less fortunate than I am, and I keep looking at all the places that I think could be used to provide housing for those who need it.
And I dream about a tiny house all my own.
Photos from stock.xchng.
This moves me more than almost anything I've read about homelessness. I wish for you a hobbit house.
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