City can't keep closing its eyes to homelessness

This article is from the Gainesville Sun

September 28. 2003

A homeless person can be a child, a pregnant woman, or an old person who has outlived his or her money.

By ARUPA CHIARINI–FREEMAN

uring the 1970s, leaders of a popular meditation movement advertised that they could, for $1,500, teach people how to levitate.

Assuming that some of those people are still around, I would like to propose that the city of Gainesville hire levitation teachers to come in and impart their skills to our local homeless community.

A five–year effort to locate and establish a Safe Space where homeless people could legally abide failed, since no neighborhood was willing to have such a facility within 10 miles of their homes.

Now there is a movement to remove homeless people from the downtown area, lest they offend potential customers by their disheveled appearance, their laundry, or their lamentable tendency to drink beer that was not purchased at one of downtown Gainesville's many bars.

Since Gainesville has a thick and luxuriant tree canopy, the city could build platforms high up in the live oaks, where the many elderly and disabled homeless people could rest when the effort of continuation levitation became too difficult.

Since there are no laws against sleeping, eating, or pursuing other activities of life, in mid–air, our homeless citizens would finally be able to sleep peacefully at night, and be free of harassment during the day–time hours.

The many homeless people who work for day labor agencies or fast–food restaurants could be given a special dispensation to come to earth during working hours.

Others could be allowed to descend long enough to pick up their disability checks and spend them at local businesses. Those who bring food to homeless people could be provided with ladders. Or perhaps we could learn to levitate also.

Some citizens will oppose this plan, believing that if homeless people are barred from eating and sleeping in any geographic location, they will go back where they came from. The flaw in this argument is that the majority of our homeless people come from Gainesville.

Others will want a Safe Space to be built out in the county, many miles from homes and businesses. This sounds like a good idea, but it could turn into a public relations disaster. Public policy during World War II gave internment camps a bad name.

Other citizens, advocates of tough love, believe that homeless people who are denied services, will put the cork back in the bottle, find a job, and rent an apartment. This argument is alluring. If we had a living wage, sufficient affordable housing, and equal access to health care, it might even work.

All of these plans have one thing in common: They are proposed by people who do not actually know homeless people.

In the absence of first–hand knowledge, it is possible to believe that homeless people congregate in the park because they are lazy bums who have chosen to spend their lives living outdoors drinking, and that stringent denial of services is what they both need and deserve.

Before 1994, when I became a volunteer in the homeless community, I held similar beliefs. If I saw a disheveled person sitting under a tree drinking beer, I assumed that person needed to stop drinking and get a job. What could be more obvious?

I didn't realize that the person I saw might have multiple hidden disabilities, ranging from schizophrenia to dyslexia. I didn't understand the roles that institutionalized poverty, racism, child abuse and war play in the creation of homelessness. I didn't know that many homeless people work full time at low–paying jobs.

I didn't know that a homeless person may be a child, a pregnant woman, or an old person who has outlived his or her money after a lifetime of hard work.

I didn't know that some people have lost their jobs and become homeless after being diagnosed with serious illnesses such as cancer. I didn't know that there are people sleeping behind bushes who are also walking to local hospitals to receive chemotherapy or dialysis.

I didn't understand that alcohol, when it is used (not all homeless people drink) is a form of self–medication against unbearable pain or tormenting inner voices.

It is difficult to find a solution to the problem of homelessness within the present context. Local government leaders and service providers are severely hampered by a lack of support from Washington and Tallahassee.

The entire nation is dancing around the Golden Calf of money, while believing that the poor, the hungry and the homeless can be forced to disappear.

Every December, members of the HOMEVan, a group of local citizens who bring food to the homeless, hold a Christmas week vigil outside City Hall. During this time, we invite spiritual leaders from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities in Gainesville to meet with us and share their perspectives on homelessness.

Jesus, Mohammed and the founders of Judaism all council that it is everyone's responsibility to care for the poor, feed the hungry and provide shelter to those who are homeless.

Even in the absence of government support, this is a solution that could work. There are a thousand homeless people in Gainesville and a hundred thousand people who have homes.

If each one of us made it our business to address the problem of homelessness, to the extent that we are able, there would be a hundred people working on the problem for every one person who is homeless.

The HOMEVan, a group of some 20 volunteers who have no funding other than donations from friends and neighbors, have helped 10 people get off the streets this year, either by assisting them with rent and utility deposits or putting them on a Greyhound bus back to where they do have friends and families.

We provide two meals a week to between 80 and a 100 people, along with clothing, hygiene supplies and, when possible, other amenities such as tents, bicycles, reading glasses, flashlights and phone cards.

Many of the people we help have become our valued friends. They teach us patience, courage and love.

The Interfaith Hospitality Network, a larger group that provides shelter and mentoring to homeless families, is another successful example of direct community outreach to homeless people.

Inexorably, we are approaching another winter. During last winter, one of the toughest in Florida history, hundreds of people struggled to survive while living outdoors in 20– and 30–degree weather. Are we going to have a repeat of that?

Last month, a man whose only home was an electric wheelchair sat dead on a street in Gainesville for many hours while people walked by, assuming that he was asleep or passed out from drinking alcohol. Is this who we are?

Earlier in the year, an elderly man with cancer died on the sidewalk in front of the County Administration Building. Another man died in a tent fire last winter, while trying to keep warm. Is this acceptable?

Through our collective will, we can put an end to homelessness. We can welcome homeless people downtown or wherever they choose to go. We are all human beings with the same needs, and we all have a short–term lease on this beautiful green planet.

It's just as true now as it always has been – you can't take it with you.

Arupa Chiarini–Freeman is a local poet, playwright and volunteer with the homeless community. She can be contacted at barupa@atlantic.net.