I interviewed a woman last year who was living in transitional housing – a tiny home village – after years of sleeping on friend’s couches, in shelters or on the streets. She told me that whenever she saw a TV news interview with a person who professed to having chosen to be homeless, she would think to herself that the reporter was exploiting someone who was mentally unstable.
My own experience in interviewing people experiencing homelessness is that many are deeply ashamed. Some don’t think they deserve housing. When you ask people in that state of mind whether they would prefer a home, they might think you’re crazy for even raising the question. They’re likely to be defensive and evasive. Saying their homelessness is a choice is a defensive mechanism that diverts the conversation away from what is for them a painful topic.
I ask people why they stay away from shelters. They open up about finding it hard to sleep in what feels like a jail, a barracks or a warehouse. I’ve met people who have been robbed or beaten or fallen ill in shelters. As they tell me about their shelter experiences, they will talk about where they would like to be instead. While they may have decided the streets are better than shelters, they know the streets are not better than a home. It’s at this point that they might share with me that they have applied for housing or housing assistance and are on a wait list. It’s not unusual to spend years on a wait list for affordable housing. People will tell me about giving a day shelter as their address and checking there constantly in hopes of getting a message that their name has finally been drawn in a lottery for housing vouchers.
I recently interviewed a man named Marcio who had slipped into depression, leading to homelessness. He was living in a tent encampment that had grown up around a Denver middle school. Marcio told me he had attended that school before he started joyriding as a teen, leading to more serious crimes and eventually prison. His prison record was making it even harder for him to find housing. Landlords don’t want to rent to felons.
When I met Marcio, he was the last of at least 30 campers left outside the school. Earlier in the summer, there’d been more than 100 tents in the camp. The campers knew they had to move before school started. Students will be learning remotely, but teachers and administrators will be in the schools.
Marcio was packing bike parts he’d found and been using to build bikes he gives away or sells. He had been visited the week before by outreach workers for a program that helps men who have been incarcerated reintegrate into their communities. Marcio was considering moving his tent across town to be closer to the program’s headquarters. He was planning to supply bikes to other former prisoners who needed transportation.
It’s crazy, or at least unconstructive, to focus on the stereotypes that can make it seem that homelessness cannot be solved. Perhaps Marcio’s trip across town would be a step toward ending his own homelessness.
I asked him: “Where would you like to be?”
Marcio told me: “Helping.”