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A "How to" guide to becoming homeless (Issues, Concerns and Causes)

Page history last edited by Javi 13 years, 6 months ago

Imagine for a moment walking in for a job interview.

 

What do you see? Most likely you're well dressed, you're well groomed and rehearsing your previous experiences.

 

 Now..... Imagine this....

 

You haven't showered in three days, you're drenched in sweat, your hair has lice, your breath stinks and you're starving. The last meal you ate was almost a day ago, it was half a hamburger somebody threw out and you were lucky enough to pick out from the garbage. You're not rehearsing your skills or previous experience because when you were 20 years old, you were charged with a felony while experiencing a manic episode thanks to Schizophrenia,, which has for the past five years gone undiagnosed while you sat in jail. Imagine the wasted benefits of the beautiful mind shrouded behind this disease, a mind which society has lost reaping its benefits from.

 

The manager has a soft spot in his heart for the homeless and decides to afford you an interview, he knows full well that because you don't own a cell phone or home phone, the interview must take place  the moment you turn in the application.

 

Lets assume he chooses to ignore the box marked "felony" as well as your horrendous hygiene and lack of skills or experience.

 

You sit down and the manager begins his questioning, in a professional matter. Suddenly you hear, you hear a voice, someone tells you "PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE" you belch out mid-interview "NO". The man responds "PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE OR HE'll EAT YOUR INSIDES OUT". "PUNCH HIM, NOW! PUNCH HIM!". You start to panic. You scream and blurt out "HE WON'T EAT ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!" You cause a scene. Customers are disturbed as they begin walking out.  You stand up, swinging your fists at the man who's telling you to hit the manager. The interviewer, runs to his office, dialing 911.

 

We can imagine what happens next.

 

Ever wonder how people become homeless? Better yet, why they stay homeless? Mental disorders often play a large role. Couple this with a lack of access to medical treatment for them and it becomes far less surprising that walking throughout Pinellas County we find that over 6,500 of our neighbors are homeless individuals. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the Civic Engagement Fair at USFSP; however, I have done work with a Hillsbourough County non-profit, Northside Mental Health. The organization works with mentally disabled individuals, often homeless and with criminal backgrounds, to acquire steady work and assimilate into society.

 

As the famous adage states "Feed a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he will never starve". Northside Mental Health strives to achieve this by providing individuals with interviewing skills, coping skills, transportation, shelter, mental health treatment, and shelter as a means to help these individuals lead a normal and productive lives.

 

As a classmate exemplified in his essay Pay It Forward 5000 it is not money that helps people, but people that help people. Which in turn poses a vital question to be answered; who and what causes people to become homeless and more importantly what causes people to stay homeless? The answer to such a complex question can be summed up in a simple one-worded answer: people.

 

It's a difficult and often an uncomfortable problem to confront. How do you help a violent veteran, a delusional adolescent, a recovering drug addict. Its far too easy to dismiss people whom may be emotionally or mentally unhealthy; as crazy or even more simply stated "bad people". Many find  themselves isolated, bouncing in and out of prison systems, infact, 2008 alone saw 2.4 million Americans starring at the blank cinder blocks behind bars, listening to voices violently echoing off the small confines, often more than 20 hours a day, often for days, for weeks, months, maybe years.

 

Have you ever left your child locked in his room for more than half a day? It would be cruel wouldn't it? Maybe they did something they should have not done? Maybe they didn't eat their vegetables or maybe they talked back to you or didn't clean their room so perhaps they should sit in their room, doing nothing, nothing but sitting. For days, doing nothing. That will teach them, right!? I'm sure it would, sitting there, starring at walls, listening to their voices. Until they loose track of time. No windows. No doors. No clocks. Nothingness. They may even forget what they did that was so wrong in the first place? They start to think; whatever it was they did, must have made them horrible people. Eventually, this is the role which they will take on.

 

Would you do this to your child?

 

Probably not.

 

Would you do it to your child at three years of age? How about five? Maybe twenty-five?

 

Probably not.

 

I guarantee, if it were your son or your daughter, you would never enforce this upon them, you would work to better them, teach them, help them. I can nearly guarantee that everyone has at least one  person in their life who;  no matter what crime or wrong doing they'd commit, you could still see them for their full potential. You could still see the goodness in their hearts. So there in lies a fundamental question, would you ever extend this care to someone else's child, someone else's friend? Could you apply your knowledge that someone out there sees the intrinsic goodness within this stranger? Would you extend that optimistic view unto others?

 

There is, at least one man in Pinellas County who did exactly this. Following many painful years of struggles  with his daughter's mental illnesses he founded Vincent House, a community which helps teach vocational and social skills to those who are struggling to recover from mental illnesses. Something that more than one-fourth of Americans over the age of 18 suffer from. Knowing this perhaps puts the problem into a much greater perspective.

 

With the simple statistic above I challenge anyone reading this to remember that a mental Illness is just that; an illness. Have you ever been ill? I can safely assume you have. Chances are you over came it, perhaps you bought medicine, saw a doctor or consulted someone for help. Most likely, it was no more than a week later that you began to see improvements and not long after found yourself in perfect health. 

 

Sadly, this is where mental illness and physical illness differ. Where one may take a few days, maybe a month to take it's course the other is chronic. Where one carries little stigma, little shame, the other carries guilt, shame, stigmas and feelings of inadequacy or isolation.

 

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of mental illness is the ignorance toward the general topic. Many sufferers of  mental illness do not seek help for lack of information or resources. Furthermore, it is not uncommon that people with anxiety, social or personality disorders are shunned, showered with guilt and mocked for what others perceive as simply inappropriate behavior. Many of individuals in turn find themselves having constant issues with law enforcement, being arrested for everything from DUIs to domestic violence and these issues can arise from panic attacks, manic episodes and states of paranoia, delusion or confusion.

 

Let's recall what we were taught as kids in school. When we all sat in our fifth grade classes, listening to "Officer Davis" from The D.A.R.E. program, we remember him talking about the different categories of drugs. hallucinogenics, depressants, narcotics, etc. As he went through the list one of the kids in the class, with that perplexed look on his face raised his hand; "Soooo, the medicines doctors give you are bad for you?". The officer replied with the standard and simple response that one could expect, carefully explaining the difference between prescribed drugs which were a necessity. I figured they were always bad for you anyways, my dad had always objected to pills of any sort and I took after him, in a sense I'm glad.

 

Nearly 2,500 miles away, my cousin sat in her 4th grade classroom, She had just been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.D.), something which a perhaps scandalous 7.8% of school aged children have had a diagnosis of since 2003 according to the C.D.C. and a psychiatrist was making a pretty penny off her prescription for methamphetamine, sugar coated with the  "Adderall" label, profits of which reached 190.3 million dollars in the last fiscal quarter.  We met when were 12 years old over a Christmas break shortly before my aunt married her dad, almost instantly we became friends and I remember her being an excited, energetic and contagiously happy personality. So when I moved to Florida three years later, I was content having her as an ambassador to my new surroundings and considering she was a cheerleader, I didn't mind hanging around her friends one bit.

 

But after a year, I started hearing less and less from her and as I got situated in my new state, we began to distance, it seemed, suspicious to say the least, constantly having broken phones, only sporadically seeing her at family gatherings, one month seeing her at a hundred pounds, the next weighing 130. An unhealthy appearance began to overtake her face over the years and a tired fatigued look resonated from her eyes. There was still that same excited energetic and contagiously happy personality vibing from her, still that inner goodness, but there was a new found anxiety, antsiness an even paranoid aura about her.

 

Holidays I'd ask about her, each time learning she was living somewhere new, one month it would be with her grandparents, eight weeks later she would be with her sister, then back home for a short period, then nobody would know. Occasionally, I would hear murmurs from her side of the family, gossip, most typically along the lines of how nobody could put up with her anymore, deal with her shit and how it served her well to "be on her own" or "not given any more help".

 

It was nearly a year later that I found my parents turning the other cheek to me and finding myself in precarious situations with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Working odd jobs and sometimes gathering change to find something to eat, I eventually came across fifty dollars and creatively started a business that began to get me on my feet. It was, to me a surreal feeling, as friends, family and people you know, suddenly, but almost organically seem to fade away. They say people get close when times are good and drift away when times are bad, I hate to admit its true.  

 

By December of last year, I was living in a small one bedroom apartment still distant from the world on Christmas day. It was a dull day and I wished I had worked. Then my phone rang and it scared me, not to be confused with startled, I looked at the unfamiliar number, worried about who it could be and in what strangely felt like a leap of faith, I answered.

 

"Hello"

 

"JAVI."

 

"hey, who's this?"

 

"JAVI." followed be speech to fast for me to comprehend, between labored breaths of someone that sounded as though they'd run around a track.

 

Eventually, I was able to put together it was my cousin, she'd gotten into a fight (something I found far out of character) and needed me to get her. 

 

Something seemed so wrong about her when I got her, a weathered, tired look people often take on that makes them appear as though they'd aged years in the course of only a few months. I was excited to finally hang out with her, but by the same token, so worried.

 

 

As we drove, she spoke so quickly, hardly taking breaths in between statements that I barely understood what she said or the context it was in. We stayed up until 6am the next morning, talking (mostly her) until I could barely keep my eyes open, she was still wide awake and around the time I woke up, she went to sleep, but not for very long. 

 

 

I realized that night, that being homeless did not necessarily mean not having a place to sleep but having the anxiety of not knowing where you would lay your head from night to night and day to day.

 

My Cousin woundup extending her stay for several months usually bouncing off the walls, cleaning, or rearranging, going outside into the pool all at odd hours, I could tell something was wrong and it seemed she never stopped moving and had I not had immense patience, I'm sure our friendship would have been ruined, through it all, I can honestly say we had a blast; going out until 4am drinking virtually every day, laughing, constantly making fun of each other and and I could barely keep up. After awhile, we could joke so freely about our multiple flaws that it discussing our problems became insignificant.

 

She told me about how she'd gotten arrested a few months back for fighting in Ybor, then again (in the same week) for a DUI, then yet again for assaulting an officer.....

 

However, started noticing a pattern where she'd ask me to take her to doctor's visits, every time a different doctor, little did I know I was helping her get a hold of prescription after prescription of Adderall.

 

I see now, that extending my friendship was the ultimate form of paying it forward.

 

Suffice to say, we're still best friends and upon some advice I'd suggested she finally turned to her mom for help. She moved to North Carolina to clean up.

 

Looking back , I see how easily people can become homeless, as Ehle accounted in her personal experiences with her sister. As was the case with her sister and my cousin, even family can become irritated, frustrated and tired of helping other people. Without support and with without a platform to stand on, it is quite easy to feel isolated and abandoned eventually loosing hope and a home.

 

 

 

 

Having programs like Vincent house allow people with mental disorders to recover often stem from drug abuse or the residual effects of being isolated.   Programs like these improve a person's emotional health and help them find community and a supportive group coupled with counseling. In my cousin's case, she needed someone to confront her about the problem in a non-judgmental and genuinely concerned matter. More than anything, she needed a friend and someone to confide in.  Someone to help her seek a solution.

 

 

When I started this project my plan was to examine homelessness and how mental illness related to it. As I continued to examine, reflect and free verse my thoughts into writing, I began to remember many of my own, personal experiences with homelessness and I can from a first hand account recollect the two months living out from my car, floating about from shopping center parking lot to super wal-mart parking lot. I realized attaining and maintaining a job with no college education, very limited work experience. Furthermore, doing the math, even working a steady minimum wage job full time would not afford me sustenance. In turn, I somehow, through creativity and undoubtedly a fair amount of luck started a catering company which quickly got me on my way. It is often disappointing to see convicted felons resorting to illegal activities as they see no other recourse. The very experience of being arrested, serving time in jail, weather convicted or not will accrue enormous debt furthering one into desperation, couple this with abandonment or the stigmas associated with being arrested and the combination is far beyond devastating.

 

 

Coming out of a prison cell, is often like stepping into emptiness with nowhere to go, no one to turn to and no resources to fall upon. Mental illness often leads to a similar outcome, finding little recourse or accommodation anywhere and drug addiction leads to similar consequences. All three are reasons people very often find themselves arrested. In turn it is important to examine this and seek ways to create community, forgiveness and rehabilitation to face life with a fighting chance.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~ 20 Sep, I've created a new page with my edits here. ~ Boda

 

 

~~~ Hey Javier, obviously still a work in progress, but wanted to check in and give you props on where you're going with this.  You do a great job of painting pictures in the reader's mind. Since you haven't finished, I won't do a sentence-level pass & edit (yet :-)  But I will say, since you're reaching the final version of your essay, be sure to keep an eye on the WTE rubric.  I'm confident Prof Conners isn't grading us with a checklist, but he does want us to reach out and touch the rubric areas to meet writing goals.  I definitely think you're there in the engaging your audience and sense of purpose areas.  You've shown us a diversity in the causes of homelessness.  You might want to expand your examination with more hard facts.  You've nailed it on the emotional appeal - now lock the door with evidence to your conclusions.  Okay... I won't kick you anymore :-)  I know you're not finished.  When you are done and want a final feedback - edit, feel free to email me: jay.boda@gmail.com .  Cheers.  ~ Jay

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