Home, Home on the Heat Vent?

 



Homeless man in National Gallery

I'll confess straight out that there's a lot I don't understand about the homeless people I see living on the streets of every city I've ever visited. And I'll specify right from the start here that I am not talking about the newly displaced homeless like the families who have lost their homes to financial crises and who are working earnestly even if without success to end their homeless status. I am talking about the chronic, longterm, professional homeless population I see living on the streets of every city I've ever visited. And the biggest question for which I don't have an answer is a really super-sized question: "Why would anyone living like this want to keep living, especially in Wisconsin, where the weather is almost always atrocious?"

Another way you might put this same question is, "Why shiver on a heat vent through nights that dip substantially under zero in either temperature scale when you could be sleeping on a beach in Mexico?"

 



Cops Arresting Homeless Man

There was an article in one of our dying local newspapers this week talking about the impact of two building closures on the local homeless population. One venue closed this last winter when the new despot of  our state, Governor Scott Walker, ordered his loyal henchman to lock up the State Capitol, which has always been a sort of incredible marble walled haven for the homeless, at least on the basement level. Keeping our beloved capitol building open, as I discussed in an earlier post, has long been a source of pride and joy to many of us who live here. Now, increased security at the building has eliminated the lower level cafeteria from the list of places the homeless can go to warm up or to use the restrooms. And very soon, another building just two blocks away that has been another mainstay of their survival here is going to close: our downtown public library.

OK. I'll admit I don't like to go to the library as much since the rising population of homeless people has squatted and occupied all the computer stations. I am sufficiently squeamish and middle class that I don't like taking a seat next to someone who is not only wearing their entire wardrobe but has been wearing it, day in and day out, in sickness and health, til death or rot do them part, for weeks, months, even years sometimes. And I certainly wouldn't want to set down a cafeteria tray next to someone who is dipping a used teabag salvaged from a neighbor's abandoned tray into hot water for a fifth cup of very weak tea; this ruins my usually nonplussed appetite. I don't give to the homeless who jiggle cups for spare change on downtown streets, and I don't smile appreciatively at homeless men who toss out comments on my appearance as I stroll by: "Like that hat you're wearing, sweetheart." "Hey, smile there, Blondie. Life isn't all that sour." I am not the best friend of the homeless. I barely pass as a sympathizer really, once you exempt the families I cited earlier.

But why do they stay in places like Wisconsin, that are so inhospitable? We are apparently going to have a siege of competition for downtown heating vents this coming winter without the benevolent warmth of the Capitol and the public library. Liberals are worrying about how to serve the homeless, keep them warm, cautioning already, even in the pleasant temperatures of August, that there will almost certainly be deaths among the homeless this winter. Indeed. So again I wonder. Why stay in Wisconsin?

They can't afford to go elsewhere? Not a good argument. They can't afford anything, and yet they manage. They can't afford food, yet they don't starve. They can't afford insurance, yet they are living in rusted old vans parked along low-traffic streets. They can't afford not to leave, yet they stay. I repeat, why stay in Wisconsin.

Family and friends here? Now that's a fairly good reason to stay somewhere. But what family and friends are in the picture here, family and friends who don't offer them shelter? Not even a place in their backyard to set up a tent, access to their homes for the sake of a shower, a toilet, every once in a while a movie or a birthday cake?

It was very interesting being in Cairo this summer, one of the poorest big cities on the planet, and really not seeing anything that struck me as homelessness. I am fully cognizant of the fact that there is a huge amount of homelessness in the city, but it's not obvious, the way it is here. Perhaps it's simply more egregious here, the difference between the homeless and the domiciled a greater chasm than it is in Egypt? Perhaps it's the very significant fact that homelessness here has so much to do with alcohol, while in Egypt a tea or hashish habit may be much more prevalent than alcoholism, it being a nation that's 90% Muslim. Perhaps a nation that's impoverished hides homelessness better, a sort of urban camoflauge.

And perhaps of equal importance, it's a nation that doesn't have cold winters.