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What is a Home?
Ann Stuart
Taking Title by Christopher Morley
To make this little house my very own
Could not be done by law alone.
Though covenant and deed convey
Absolute fee, as lawyers say,
There are domestic rites beside
By which this house is sanctified.
By kindled fire upon the hearth,
By planted pansies in the garth,
By food, and by the quiet rest
Of those brown eyes that I love best,
And by a friends gift of wine,
I dedicate this house of mine.
When all but I are safe abed
I trail about my quiet stead
A wreath of blue tobacco smoke
(a charm that evil never broke)
And bring my ritual to an end
By giving shelter to a friend,
This done, O dwelling, you become
Not just a house, but truly home!
Home! What is a home? My husband Bob's and my home is now Massachusetts. More importantly, Middleboro. Yet when we were growing up, and in our young adulthood, our home was the Quad Cities in Illinois. The Quad Cities was a farm industry community. It is the home base of John Deere. There were many John Deere factories. There were also factories of International Harvester, Caterpillar and Case. People tended to grow up, marry their high school sweethearts,(as Bob and I did) and go to work at the plant their father worked at. Or find a job that either serviced the plants or serviced the people that worked in the plants. Life was good. Yet in the early 1980's the Quad Cities was hit by the recession. In fact it wasn't just hit, it was devastated. Plants closed. Some moved away. Unemployment rose to over 35%. I read in an article that in 1983 45,000 homes were for sale in the area, and of that only 400 were sold. People were leaving, they weren't moving in.
Of the 35% unemployed, Bob and I were two of them. There was no work. Not even McDonald's was hiring. When we first got laid off we really weren't concerned. Work had always been plentiful in our lifetime, and we expected it to return. Quickly. Yet when the weeks turned into months, and the months literally turned into years with absolutely no end in sight, we realized we had to do something. So we sold almost all of our material possessions, packed up our fold-down camper with what we had left, loaded our station wagon with our fourteen year old son and 11 and 12 year old daughters, along with our cocker spaniel Tiffany, and decided to go to look for work in Florida. To this day I'm not quite sure why we chose Florida, other than the fact it would be warm and we had watched way too many episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club. But that was our plan. Packed, ready to go, looking much like the Joad family from the Grapes of Wrath, friends came over to say their good-byes. One close friend with tears in her eyes stated, "It's so sad. Once you had so much and now you are homeless."
Homeless? I was shocked. I certainly didn't feel homeless. A little apprehensive, sure. But, homeless? After all I still had my husband and children. Wasn't wherever they were, my home? Ok maybe it was temporarily a fold-down camper and not a big beautiful house, but wasn't it still home. And Bob and I still had our parent's, siblings, and friends. Wasn't wherever they were a home to return to? I thought what is the worst thing that could happen to us economically? We run out of money, call our parents collect to have them wire us a postal money order, come "home" and regroup. Which comes to the most important thing Bob and I still had. Our faith. Our faith in ourselves, each other, and our family and friends. We were in the midst of a serious financial problem we were trying to solve, but we were definitely not homeless.
So with that faith Bob and I made it to Florida, camped at a Yogi Bear Campground ten minutes from Disney World. Our children immediately procured work for the summer dressed as Yogi, Cindy and Boo Boo. My husband got an electrical job at the campground, and I became a tour guide at Epcot Center. We had a great time. At the end of the summer we heard about the "Massachusetts Miracle." We headed to Massachusetts and like I stated made it our new home.
For many years now I have been working with the people often referred to as the "chronically homeless." I am not talking about people who are going through temporary economic difficulties and have reached out for help to problem solve. I'm talking about the people that you see curled up on the grates in Boston trying to keep warm. The people urinating by a tree in the Boston Commons, on the five o'clock news being arrested and jailed for committing a crime, people addicted to drugs and alcohol, and running away from the violence of their families.
So what is it that I mean when I refer to having a home or being homeless? To me, having a home is our connections to those we love and care about. Our relationships. Being connected to one's family, friends, community, and faith. Homelessness occurs when one becomes disconnected to one's relationships, especially one's faith.
The stories of the homeless people I work with are certainly not about adventures to Disney World or dressing up like Yogi Bear. My clients stories are about the loss of fingers and toes from frost bite, being set on fire so someone can steal his pack of cigarettes, getting a gash in the head when someone steals the broken down dog house a client had been living in for three years. Another client tells of how he was once the president of a Boston company. He had a wife with three children. He tells how the use of alcohol destroyed his life and he had been living alone in the woods for the past few years until someone found him in shock nearly frozen and dead. The stories include selling one's body and children for a heroin fix, hiding from the violence of a family member only to find more violence on the streets. Post traumatic stress disorder is common. Arrests and imprisonment for selling drugs and using them. One of my clients was found dead in a McDonald's bathroom. A needle stuck in his arm. Another client, one time model, was found in front of the Boston Medical Center. She had slashed her throat and was dead.
Homelessness is a very complicated issue, and there is much debate about the cause. In his work Down and Out in America Peter H. Rossi states, "homelessness is more properly viewed as the most aggravated state of a more prevalent problem, extreme poverty." And I certainly agree that poverty can be a cause. Poverty in and of itself can tax one's emotional resources. So that when unemployment, disease, or other stress related issues happen, one has very little resources left to cope. Also if one was raised in poverty, one's support system is also most assuredly living in poverty. That means there are no parents to call collect when one needs them. Yet according to Rossi's research "There are twenty times as many domiciled extremely poor people as there are homeless persons in the United States, …..the ratio of the extremely poor to the "permanent" homeless… (is) somewhere between….forty to one. (This) raises the important question why some of the extremely poor become homeless and some do not." Why do most extremely poor people ,even those in the midst of serious crisis, manage not to become homeless?
Another problem often sited as the reason for homelessness is mental illness. More accurately the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Although research clearly shows that 90% of our mentally ill are cared for by family. And recent medications help the mentally ill lead productive lives, I certainly agree that this issue can be a cause. Most research shows that a percentage of homeless people clearly demonstrate symptoms defined as mentally ill. Some advocates argue that these problems are a byproduct of homelessness itself. That is surely true in some cases. When natural disaster or war drives randomly selected people from their homes, many become acutely depressed, and some grow suicidal or have mental breakdowns. When economic misfortune drives people from their home, they are even more likely to have such reactions, because they are more likely to blame themselves for their fate. This argument should not be overdone, however. Rossi asked the Chicago homeless whether they had had any of the following experiences within the past year:
Hearing noises or voices that others cannot hear.
Having visions or seeing things that others cannot see.
Feeling you have special powers that other people do not have.
Feeling your mind has been taken over by forces you cannot control.
About a third of those whom Rossi interviewed reported having at least one of these delusions at a time when they were neither drunk nor taking drugs. Even when victims of famine and war spend years in refugee camps far worse than any Chicago shelter, no one has ever reported that a third of them saw visions or heard voices. The fact that a third of the Chicago homeless suffer from such delusions must mean, therefore, that a lot of them had such problems before they became homeless.
There is much blaming going around for this problem. The conservatives blame the liberals for pushing for laws that give the mentally ill the right to choose to not be hospitalized, even if they do not have the ability to care for themselves. The liberals blame the conservatives for passing laws that they refer to as an economic assault against the mentally ill. As someone who has worked with the homeless and especially the mentally ill homeless, both issues were often very frustrating. I often referred a homeless person to a hospital for psychiatric care, but the person refused to accept the care. The law states that a person has to be an endangerment to themselves or others to be committed. Which I do agree is right. But it's difficult to see someone on the streets mumbling to the voices they hear in their head and know they can get help, but refuse to accept it. The mentally ill can get outpatient help from Healthcare for the Homeless at the Boston Medical Center, but most homeless individuals do not have the organizational skills to regularly take their medication when they get it. Also many mentally ill individuals I worked with did want help. The problem was they weren't sick enough to be hospitalized, but were too sick to be put in half-way houses. Often they had the dual diagnosis of alcohol or drug addiction. The half-way houses for drug and alcohol addiction would insist they be on medication for their mental illness for at least 30 days before they would accept them, but I had no where to keep them for 30 days. Or they would be taking their medications, but those particular medications were banned from the half-way house. It was a type of catch-22.
Another reason some people can be homeless is because they are aggressive or violent, or they are running away from people who are aggressive and violent. People who have poor coping strategies have trouble maintaining jobs. And family members of aggressive individuals often ask them to leave. Safe houses for battered women require that the women be drug and alcohol free for at least 90 days. Yet research clearly shows that at least 75% of battered women have turned to drugs and alcohol as a coping strategy for the abuse. At the detox they are treated for the drug abuse and then sent back to the family violence. Often these women are afraid to go to a detox for fear they will lose their children. They are afraid that the counselors will report that they are on drugs, which of course the counselors are mandated to do if there is concern for the safety of a child. And the battered women are afraid that their abusers will report that they are on drugs and the abuser will gain legal custody of the children. In her groundbreaking work, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman explains that women beat by their partners often turn to lies and manipulation to help them survive, along with drug and alcohol use. These are not traits that endear them to their families who often feel confused, hurt, and angry. The women feeling they have no where else to go can find themselves homeless, confused, and lost. And often do.
Which leads me to what I believe is the most common cause of homelessness; drug and alcohol addiction. Whether it is the primary cause of homelessness or a secondary problem, drug and alcohol addiction is rampant with people living in shelters and on the streets. In a recent study in New York homeless individuals were offered money to donate anonymous urine samples to be tested for crack cocaine. Of those tested 66% were positive. This research has since been replicated in other cities. Those individuals were not even tested for alcohol use. So we don't know the percentage of that. I suspect it was high. Not to mention the growing use of heroin and narcotic type pills. Not only with adults, but also with children. As someone who has worked with the street homeless, battered women, the homeless mentally ill, those imprisoned, and who have run-away, one common thread has been their abuse of drugs and alcohol. Until society can find a more effective way to prevent and treat drug and alcohol addiction, solving the homeless problem will remain daunting.
So what can we as individuals and a church community do to help? The truth is that much is being done within our congregation already. Members are participating in the Big Brother and Big Sister organizations, being mentors to young people. We offer space for AA and 12 step meetings. Some members are sponsors to those with alcohol and drug problems. We donate food, clothing and other possessions to those in need. We are a welcoming congregation to a diverse group of people offering support so people can be nurtured spiritually and grow. We work at not being judgmental, understanding that we are all human beings with specific skills, talents, needs, and flaws. We stay active politically. Some members are counselors teaching anger and stress management individually and in seminars. We have substance abuse counselors teaching relapse prevention. Some members are advocates for battered women, or take crisis calls for the Samaritans. Our congregation is active with Habitat for Humanity where members not only build shelters for those in need, but welcome them to participate in the community and churches. Some members work with populations who are in need of re-training, because of their life issues they have not developed skills to maintain jobs. We practice skills at listening to and forgiving those that have hurt us in ways we didn't understand.
What can we do? We can find out what other members in our church are already doing and ask how we can help them. Or we can ask what members of other churches are doing and ask how we can help them. When someone tells us that they are concerned about our behavior or our use of drugs or alcohol, or if we are feeling overwhelmed or confused, we can consider it as a warning sign that something might be wrong and ask for help from a friend, family member, minister, therapist, doctor, or other appropriate person. Most importantly we can nurture and maintain our faith. Our faith in ourselves, our family, our friends, our community, and our fellow man.
I would like to close by reading a poem by Carl Sandburg who was born near the home of my childhood in Illinois. The poem is entitled, At A Window.
Give me hunger, O you gods that sit and give the world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure from your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness
In the dusk of day-shapes -Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk.
And wait and know the coming of a little love.