I admire the P.E.A.C.E. office for their efforts at educating the UT student body about homelessness. I am dismayed, but not surprised, that many students didn’t take it seriously.
Even those who did, how can you really know what a homeless person feels when there is the choice of food and shelter but a short walk away? I’d like to take the discussion a step further.
I won’t go into statistics here, as the root of the word “numbers” is “numb,” except for one generalized statement from the packet that P.E.A.C.E. handed out. “35% of the homeless population are families with children, which is the fastest growing segment of the homeless population.”
Picture a woman with three children, including the one growing inside her, driving in blinding snow with what few possessions they could take. Her husband decided suddenly that he no longer wanted a wife and a family.
She’s headed for her home state, but there is no real home waiting. There are plenty of family members greeting them, but no room at the inn.
She imagines that this is how Joseph and Mary must have felt. Someone offers an empty trailer. It has no heat, no running water and the toilets don’t flush. It’s Christmas Eve when they arrive.
When the conditions become intolerable, the oldest daughter, 16, moves in with a friend. The woman walks through the door of the local family shelter with a toddler in tow.
She’s lucky she lives in a small mid-western town. If this had been Tampa, she would have been turned away. The waiting list is two years long.
While applying for Section 8 housing assistance and food stamps, she endures the condescention of social workers.
“You have a college degree. Why aren’t you working?”
Blindness and ignorance seeming to be a pre-requisite for government jobs of this kind, the child on the woman’s lap and the other in her womb become invisible.
Who would hire her?
Once the baby is born, Florida beckons. Section 8 comes through but subsidized daycare doesn’t. Another two-year waiting list follows.
There seems to be no way out. She’ll lose what benefits she has if she works. After paying daycare, there’s not enough for bills. She hovers at the brink of homelessness from week to week.
If you haven’t guessed, this story is mine. I am one of the many faces of homelessness. All it takes is one illness or injury, one layoff or, as in my case, abandonment by a spouse.
Not everyone can count on their resources or the kindness of strangers to pull them through. All across this prosperous nation there are families tonight wishing they had my car or your cardboard boxes for shelter.
I can’t imagine the heartbreak of refugees in countries like Darfur. These human beings may never know the meaning of home again.
My heart breaks for parents whose children have no energy to cry themselves to sleep as they huddle together on the hard ground. They long for the grassy knoll you slept on.
As you scarf down your Chick-Fil-A, thousands of children are eating garbage to stay alive because their parents have been killed in war, perhaps by one of our few and proud.
Those of you who used the sleep-out as an excuse for partying – I hope your desire to drink doesn’t one day find you begging at a fast-food drive-in for $10 so you can sleep at the Salvation Army.
I hope you sober up and grasp how humiliating it is having to ask strangers for help.
I hope your child never goes hungry or eats nothing but French toast for a week because eggs, milk and bread are all the food you can afford.
I hope you never spend one night in a place that’s not home.