What happens when you stop ignoring homeless people
Today I met Sara*. She has two kids who are in the 11th and 12th grades. The 12th-grader will graduate from high school this year and wants to explore graphic design for video games as a career path. But he probably won’t get to, because they don’t have the money. I met Sara while she was sitting on a stoop beside the subway in frigid, 18°F weather, propping up a cardboard sign. Sara is homeless.
“I never thought this would happen to me,” she said. She had been working in a stable job when suddenly, cancer struck. It was breast cancer, she said. After that, nothing would be the same. Illness after illness kept befalling her until she could no longer work at all. She tried to live off her savings, but she didn’t have a reliable source of income to replenish it.
“One day, the money just ran out.” Sara sighed. “My landlord evicted me. I didn’t know then — he didn’t do it in the right way. There are rules about this sort of thing. I just didn’t know. But I know now.” She told me how she found out about the Cambridge Multi Service Center, where she now has a case worker that is helping her transition into stable housing. For now, she stays at a shelter.
“Do you think other people in your situation know about these resources?” I asked.
“Oh no. I don’t think they do,” she said. She said again, she didn’t know about any of these resources before she became homeless. It is better to know about them before becoming homeless, she thought, because maybe an earlier intervention means you get to keep your home. But who knows all this stuff in advance? Who plans to become homeless? Certainly not her; she had worked her whole life.
She seemed to find it important that I know that she had worked. Underlying this, I thought sadly, was probably a fear that others would think she had done this to herself, that her homelessness was a result of a personal deficiency. Implicit in these statements — I had always worked; I never thought I’d be homeless — is an assertion, I used to be like you.
Joe Biden wants to make community colleges free for everyone, I told her. I suggested that her kids could take advantage of it, if it happened. Sara seemed surprised, but heartened, by this news. “Really? That would be great,” she said. “That would be really great.” It occurred to me that she doesn’t follow the news. Having the mental bandwidth to care about the news, I realized, is a luxury. Having a warm place to go when it’s below freezing outside is a luxury. Being able to eat without depending on arbitrary kindnesses from passing strangers is a luxury.
I saw that she had begun closing up the box of flatbread I’d bought for her, probably because we were talking, and probably because she didn’t want it to get colder than it was already getting. Being able to eat without telling your life story to a random stranger is a luxury. “I won’t keep you from eating any longer,” I said. “It was nice to meet you.” And I walked home to the 3-bedroom apartment that we keep heated to a cozy 70°F, wondering whether it is selfish to have a home gym and a home office when some people don’t even have a bed of their own.
The above is just a short sketch of one person’s situation. Below are notes on how to take experiences like this and parlay them into action. Necessarily, these notes are a work in progress.
Hypotheses:
- People who are homeless don’t always know what resources are available to help them. (What proportion do vs. don’t know?)
- It is more ideal to intervene before someone becomes homeless than after. (What kinds of pre-homeless interventions exist, and what are typical outcomes? How many resources [however this might reasonably be quantified] are required to achieve this same outcome via a pre-homeless intervention vs. post homeless intervention?)
Questions:
- Where do her kids live?
- How did she first find out about the Cambridge Multi-Service Center?
- Why was/is she unable to work?
- Does she have access to the internet?
Notes:
- Cambridge seems to have fairly comprehensive services for homeless people, low income students, and people who have trouble finding or keeping a job. The best course forward, if one were to try to help, is to ask them what they need.
*name changed