It Could Be Any One of Us
Jorja Cummings
During the 1980’s the number of "homeless" people, those without a house in which to reside, increased at an alarming rate. Many analysts have given much time and thought as to the reasons that this phenomenon occurred. They cite economic instability and government policies with facts and figures to support their work. Beyond the research and cold statistics that explain this event, are the victims, and those that worked to help relieve their hardship. An interview with Philip Guerrieri gives us insight into the personal lives of these individuals whom he calls "houseless," and the realities of staying alive, both physically and spiritually, on the streets.
Martha R. Burt, author of Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980’s, makes the statement that "homelessness" has been with us in America since the Great Depression of the 1930’s (3). She quotes from Crouse 1986, that these people were the sons and daughters of "optimistic America," not transients, vagrants, criminals and bums that laws have been made to protect us against (3). Burt states that some advocates for the homeless in the 1980’s put the number of homeless at two to three million, which would represent 1% of the U.S. total population of 250 million. This would equal that of the rate of homelessness of the 1930’s Depression era. Burt says they have overestimated the number (4). She states that the studies conducted by her and her colleagues, which put the ratio at 0.2%, or roughly fifteen to twenty-five homeless individuals for every 10,000 people, are far more credible (4). She tells us that it was the emergency shelters and soup kitchens that began reporting the increase in necessity (1). She reports that her data came from unsystematically interviewing users of shelters and soup kitchens on the national level (6).
Philip Guerrieri, born in 1962, in Ft. Worth, Texas, was twenty-four years old in 1986 when he began working as an Emergency Psychiatric Response Care Division agent in liaison with the District of Columbia’s Mental Health Services Outreach. After spending then intensive years immersed in the personal realities that these individuals were experiencing to learn how to best serve them, he at present has taken time off to assimilate the many profound interactions that have served him by broadening his perceptions of life and death. He is currently attending East Tennessee State University, where he was awarded first place in the nonfiction category of the University’s literary magazine, The Mockingbird ‘98, for an essay that giving graphic details into the extraordinary life of an individual case history of just one man and the series of tragic events that left him houseless in D.C. during the late 1980’s. He gave me a personal interview on November 27, 1999.
Philip shares with me his personal experiences working with the individuals who found themselves living on the streets during the years of 1986-1996. He explains why eventually he dealt solely with those individuals who would not go in to the missions and shelters or even accept food from the mobile soup wagons. Philip relives the moment that he first realized that houseless people were not in their current situation because of a life misled or because they were lazy or criminal, as may be the common perception:
In helping to serve out food in a mission and shelter, I was there as a bouncer, basically, to make sure that people stayed in line, when I saw a man at the back of the line that looked like my Grandpa. My Grandpa had worked on the railroad for thirty-six years, and retired after raising a family. He at times was walking out in the streets, and I realized at that time, here in the ghetto, that my grandfather had been in those environments. And seeing this man in line that day, I had a sudden realization that it could be any one of us.
This was a pivotal event that led Philip to a more compassionate outlook toward houseless people as individuals, rather than as a "faceless mass" as Ronald Reagan once described them.
Philip tells us many people would not go into the missions or shelters at all:
People don’t like to be controlled, be told to be in by eight,...a lot of people just don’t want to put up with that...after they lived their lives too free, and it’s not false pride, a lot of it is real pride, if there is any real dignity or integrity left in a person, sometimes they don’t want to be walked around like sheep and corralled in like cattle, ...nobody likes being institutionalized,...when these people aren’t
criminals, they haven’t done anything, except they’re just simply impoverished, they’re poor.
Philip came to perceive that the standing in line to receive a handout everyday can severely damage the integrity of the human spirit. Many people, though they may need the help the most, refuse what services are available in order to maintain any shred of personal dignity they may still possess.
Martha Burt reports that some of the causes of homelessness would be, economic structure, personal characteristics, and political reasons (9). In other words, during a time of record unemployment and rising cost of living, government policies not only did not help to alleviate the situation for the many already in need of assistance, regulation changes concerning the institutionalization of those with mental illnesses, severely compounded the situation (4). In fact, she states that between the years of 1980 and 1987 we saw a 500-900% increase in seriously mentally ill individuals on the streets, homeless (212).
Philip recounts the situation in the streets in regards to the extraordinary numbers of houseless individuals that had been recently deinstitutionalized
The 1980’s were hard on the increase of mentally ill in the streets because of the Reagan cutbacks. In 1986, they took a lot of mentally ill and mentally challenged that were living in halfway houses in for their evaluations. When they did that, they cut off their checks that they had been receiving each month and then,...they released these people out into the streets with no aftercare programs, with no one to look after them or direct them to resources, and no one to give them their medication...there was an unusual amount of people out in the parks, thousands of mentally ill, basically bouncing off the trees... walking around with no shoes on and it getting cold weather, losing their toes to frostbite.
Many of these people suffered greatly from their prolonged exposure to the elements. In addition, new regulations and increased aggression from the police force compounded the problems for those who might be looking for a bit of shelter in doorways or subway stations. Many who should have been in controlled, supervised environments fell victim to the weather or eventually ended up in jail.
Burt states that to really confront the problem of homelessness we will need to institute new policy to support those who are not able to support themselves, such as the mentally and physically disabled, and those chronically dependent (226). Also she says we need to focus on supplying affordable housing, creating better work environments and increase our efforts to better educate and train workers (226).
Philip fills us in on what it was that enabled him most in his effort to reach the people who remained the most reclusive from society.
I was finally able to break through with these people, in the streets who many people would call mentally ill, but I would just say that they were seeking a more sincere relationship between the giving and receiving process...it was us giving on a more real, sincere level, accepting the role that we are deliverers of goods,...increase of sincerity, increase of acceptance...your words are saying this or that,
but there is something felt from the heart, and the mind,...that is what people really respond to. I
From this, we can gather that there is no simple solution to magically resolve the problem of houselessness. However, what Philip has shared of his personal experiences creates a bridge of understanding that leads us to see the houseless in a different light and incite within us the desire to share our most precious of commodities, our time.
Why there are houseless people in our society of such affluence and ingenuity is baffling. The solutions as to what policy changes it will take to correct this situation are intricate. One thing is clear. There is much that we as individuals can do to significantly alter their realities of these unfortunate souls from nightmarish, to at least bearable. Realization that as Philip said, "it could be any one of us," should lead to an inherent sense of humanity that lives within us, motivation us to a sincere desire to see to it that the most basic human rights of each individual is met.
Works Cited
Burt, Martha R. Over the Edge: the Growth of Homelessness in the 1980’s. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation, 1992.
Philip Guerrieri II. Personal Interview. Nov. 27, 1999.