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Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood |
| How to Restore the Conscience of America's Communities; A Grass Roots Approach | |
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| Homeless in Camp Springs Below is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood. The narrative documents the circumstances of two individuals who lived quite conspicuously for a time without homes in Camp Springs, Maryland. Although anecdotal, the narrative makes a strong case for several crucial deficiencies in American society:
Let me briefly relate two other anecdotes not included the book excerpt:
What we're trying to illustrate with these anecdotes is the impersonal, aloof, and generally inhumane character of the justice system. The police, prosecutors, judges and jailers work like programmed robots. They're unable to think or act beyond the strict guidelines of the legal code. The letter of the law is supreme, while the spirit of the law is nowhere to be found. Total strangers, these bureaucrats appear out of nowhere, pass their judgments, dole out the punishment, and then disappear, having in many cases destroyed the lives of the people whom they judge. Where are these judges and lawyers when people like Dennis and Vera need help? Even the social service people, like the folks who ran the Embry Rucker shelter – how could they allow a human being to freeze outdoors in the winter, and broil in the summer heat, with no family support and not a penny to her name, not 100 yards from their shelter, for a full year without letting that person spend even one night inside? Vera would visit the shelter every day to pick up a bag lunch, and they knew full well who she was and where she slept. Disconnected, uncaring and irresponsible – that's the only way to describe these people. And who is really at fault? We are. Because we don't ask enough of these people, whose job it is to serve us, the public.
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Excerpted
from "Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood" I would like to relate one other episode that illustrates the depth of the community-wide attention deficit that we've been discussing. I have described how hard it is to get people to participate in Neighborhood Watch. For some folks the fear factor is too big an obstacle. We've also seen that getting people to pay attention to trees can be just as difficult. Perhaps the real problem is that I've taken up the wrong cause. Perhaps I should pick an issue that requires a softer touch. Maybe I could get caring people to come forward by finding something that tugs at their hearts more. Something that brings out their compassionate side. Something, say, like the problem of homelessness. It is certainly an issue that requires a humanitarian approach, is it not? No caring person could possibly turn his back on the plight of a homeless man, right? |
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To tell the truth, I myself have only recently woken up to the problem of homelessness. Camp Springs is not the place where you would expect to find people without homes. The standard of living in this area is too high. But unfortunately we do indeed have people among us who live in tents and cars, and who curl up under blankets in doorways. For several years I had heard that there were homeless men living in a patch of woods behind the drugstore at Padgett's Corner. At the time my thoughts about the situation were not exactly kind. I remember thinking that the men were a nuisance and a potential threat to the security of the neighborhood. As far as I was concerned, they needed to be picked up and carted off, like trash from the side of the road. My attitude about the matter changed quite recently. I can almost pinpoint when it happened. In June of 1997 I set out to write an article for my newsletter about a homeless man that my friend Charlie Taylor had mentioned to me on several occasions. The man's name is Dennis Gale. Charlie's description of Dennis was intriguing. He told me that Dennis was a street-corner philosopher of sorts; a man of some insight, but with an outlook on life that was just slightly askew. The venue where Dennis and Charlie held their philosophical discussions was the coffee counter at the 7-Eleven at Pyles Corner. Charlie, being a true night owl, would often go there at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and rap with Dennis for an hour or two. Dennis lived in a broken-down van right across the street between the Sunoco and the carpet store. The van had been parked in that spot for at least two years. Before that he had lived in a car behind the nearby Dunkin Donuts for a couple of years. When I heard that he had been so conspicuously homeless for such a long time, I was incredulous. With the thousands of people who came and went from the Sunoco, the 7-Eleven and the Dunkin Donuts during all that time, how could we have failed to notice this guy? People had to have seen him. It was impossible not to. Didn't anyone care that he was living on the street? Many homeless people have problems that frighten you away. Many are alcoholics or drug users. Some are violent, or have criminal records. People are reluctant to get too close to someone who isn't completely straight, or who can't be fully trusted. But Dennis Gale has none of these problems. He has never taken drugs, other than prescription drugs, doesn't touch alcohol, and is impeccably honest. He is respectful, well mannered, and so well trusted that the manager of the Sunoco would have him act as a courier to carry money to the bank across the street. I learned all of this when I set out to interview him for my article. Although he had finally moved his van out of the carpet store parking lot (he had it towed to a private lot about 1/2 mile away), it wasn't hard to find him. His habitual hangouts had not changed. When I first approached him, he was standing in front of the 7-Eleven, wearing high-top combat boots and an Eisenhower jacket, and smoking a cigarillo. Dennis is a fairly tall man; thin, but not gaunt. He moves slowly and speaks intelligently. Apart from needing a shave, there really wasn't much about his appearance that gave away the fact that he was homeless. It only takes five minutes of talking to Dennis to realize that what you see is what you get with this man. It's clear that he doesn't hide anything. He may choose not to share some of the more personal details of his past, but little of that matters anyway in light of the circumstances under which he now lives. Winter and summer, year-round, Dennis Gale's home is the back of a rusting Chevy work van. He has no heat, no running water, and no phone. Only recently did he get electricity. His van doesn't run. Never did. His only transportation is a bicycle that he built from scrap. In other words, this guy is truly living on the edge. Gale's problem, if you want to call it that, is that he is physically disabled. At 47-years-old his body has already sustained more permanent damage than most people experience in their entire lives. Gale is a veteran who was retired from the military on disability. He served in both the Navy and the Air Force, including a tour in Vietnam. It was when he was in the Navy that he got hurt. He was hit by a car and injured quite badly. His back, hip, and legs were broken, and his skull was fractured. It happened 19 years ago, but the problems with his back and legs never went away, and the injury to his head left him suffering from an epileptic condition that to this day requires him to take anti-seizure medication. How he found his way to Camp Springs is somewhat complex. Six years ago he was working for a defense contractor in St. Louis. It seems that the company was trying to get rid of him because they believed the disability affected his job performance. There was also another factor involved. The firm was being investigated for contract improprieties, and Dennis, as honest as he is, wouldn't go along with the company line. He contested his termination, but eventually lost the fight. In addition to losing his job, he lost his home, and his security. Incensed at having been cast aside, discarded like a wornout shoe, but powerless to do anything about it, he decided to come to Washington to continue the fight here. And how exactly did he manage to land in Camp Springs? According to Dennis, he ran out of gas. That's right. He ran out of gas five years ago, and he has been here ever since. Ponder that for a moment. |
To tell the truth, I myself have only recently woken up to the problem of homelessness. How do you think it would feel to wake up tomorrow and discover that society no longer wanted you? That someone more powerful than you had decided that you weren't useful as a human being anymore, and that you were going to be left behind; dropped off by the side of the road to fend for yourself. If you can imagine this, than you can perhaps imagine what Dennis Gale went through. Few of us have experienced the depth of despair that Dennis must have felt at the treatment he received. To be rendered permanently disabled through the trauma of an auto accident, and then to be forced out of work, knowing that in your disabled state it would be next to impossible to find another job like the one you had, you can imagine that in order to carry on something deep inside would have to click into gear; some rarely used survival |
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mechanism would have to be triggered in order to keep you going. Clearly there would be psychological consequences. The experience would certainly leave you with a great deal of anger and bitterness. What's amazing about Dennis though, is that despite the losing hand that life dealt him, he still maintains a surprisingly upbeat attitude. Even after five years of being ignored by the world, he still hopes to be vindicated someday. Moreover, he hasn't lost his ability to see the irony in life. It's entertaining to hear him talk about the twists of fate, and the unexplained coincidences that only he notices, but which create for him a framework that supports the possibility, however remote, that things may one day start looking up again. As I was gathering material for the article on Dennis Gale, there appeared on the scene quite unexpectedly another homeless person, a woman, whom I'll call Vera. I'm not using her real name, because unlike Dennis, Vera does not desire to publicize her situation. It's not that she has something to hide, rather, Vera has learned the hard way that telling people you are homeless does not always produce an outpouring of kindness. As tough a life as Dennis has led for the past five years, Vera's has been tougher. I met her on a Tuesday night in June. At about 9:00 in the evening I was down at the Sunoco looking for Dennis, when I bumped into Vera making her way from the pay phones to the mini-mart. She was strapped into an enormous backpack, and was lugging a sleeping bag, a book bag, and some sort of tent. My first thought was that Vera was a traveling student. I'm not sure why I even spoke to her. Maybe it was because she looked so unusual with all that gear. I bought her some coffee, and she began spinning a complicated tale about her life on the street. Vera was 43-years-old. Her roots were Russian, but she had been residing in this country for nine years. Prior to coming to the United States she had been a student at Moscow State University, and was an anticommunist dissident during the days when the Soviet Union still existed. She had been persecuted by the government for her dissident views, and it was because of this persecution that she left Russia to come here. It all seemed quite plausible, but as she continued to talk, her story took some odd turns. She told me that her family tree was connected to that of the last Czar, and that a fortune was being held in an account somewhere which the authorities were not allowing her to access, even though the money was legally hers. Moreover, in order for her to get at the funds, she would need the help of some high-up officials in the U.S. government. Vera said that part of her persecution involved the taking of fertile eggs from her ovaries against her will. Because of her valuable blood line, the Soviet authorities wanted to use the eggs to make babies, which were then sent to foreign countries. I didn't quite understand why they did this. In fact, I never did get clear about what exactly had happened to Vera in Russia. She related all of this within the first twenty minutes of our meeting, and the more detail she provided, the more confused I got. Although Vera spoke with an accent, her English was excellent. In fact, her English was almost too good. At times I felt as though she were talking over my head. She peppered the discourse with some fairly heavy philosophical notions, and made frequent reference to the German philosopher Hegel, whom I gathered she held in high regard. She also spoke of people involved in an ongoing plot against her here, which was apparently a continuation of the persecution she had suffered in Russia. There was a woman she called "The Yellow Satan Girl", who had stolen her identifying documents, and who was committing crimes using Vera's name and I.D. She mentioned another woman, a Mexican lady, who looked like her, and who was also carrying out criminal acts in her name. There was also a man named Goldsmith, who at one time had been her lover, but who turned against her and joined her enemies. It was all part of an international criminal conspiracy which could eventually result in the destruction of the United States unless action was taken to counteract the criminals. She said that I myself could be in danger if I helped her, because agents of the government were keeping close tabs on her. As she put it, she was a "guarded girl". Strange though it may sound, I was impressed by the sincerity of this lady. She clearly wanted very much for you to believe everything she said. Moreover, no matter how bizarre her story became, I never felt uneasy with her. On the contrary, the longer I talked to Vera, the more I realized that she was a very sensitive and highly intelligent woman. She could talk for what seemed like hours, but from time-to-time while she was speaking, she would stop and gauge your reaction. She could tell if you were becoming impatient or annoyed, and would ask if she was bothering you. The last thing she wanted was for you to become angry with her. When she saw that you were still listening, she would continue in earnest, obviously wanting to supply every relevant detail so that you would understand exactly what was happening to her and why. It didn't take long for me to realize that Vera was suffering from a mental disorder. I wasn't quite sure what she had, but clearly her condition gave rise to a very active imagination. Needless to say, this made it a bit difficult to decipher which parts of her account had actually happened, and which were made-up. This much was clear, however: Vera had no money, no food, and no place to go. Furthermore, as I later learned, there was no one who cared about her condition; no one who was looking out for her; no one she could call to say, "I'm in trouble, come get me." To me this looked like an emergency. Wouldn't it to you? Consider how you would react if you learned that someone close to you, a family member, say, had fallen into such circumstances. Any person with a heart beating in his breast would spring into action instantly. He would get into the car, drive out there immediately and rescue the person before another night passed. That's the feeling I came away with after meeting Vera. I had never before sensed such urgency about a person, homeless or otherwise. I guess I've led a sheltered life. I guess I haven't spent enough time downtown where people sleep on heating grates, or paid close enough attention to the news reports about shelters closing and what-have-you. Not even after learning about Dennis's situation did I feel such urgency. Dennis after all did have a bit of money, could buy himself food, and was able to get out of the rain at least. It wasn't until Vera showed up on our doorstep that it sunk in how horrifying it must be to have no home to go to. But what really blew me away was this: Vera had been living this way for five years! That night she made a camp of sorts under a bush behind the gas station, and the next day I visited her again, meeting her at the Prince George's County Department of Social Services (PGCDSS) next to the Superfresh. She asked for a ride to a church in Clinton, the Upper Room Fellowship Church on Dangerfield Road, and I agreed to take her there. Apparently this church had helped Vera in the past, because they seemed to know her quite well. I learned that she was using the church as her mailing address in order to apply for an Independence Card, Maryland's version of food stamps. Later that day I drove her to the Allentown Recreation Center at Padgett's Corner where they let her use the shower facility. Charlie had spoken to the girl at the front desk ahead of time, so Vera got in for nothing. That night she again made camp behind the gas station. The food stamp application would take some days to process, and Vera said she would stay right where she was until the approval came through. She explained that without the Independence Card she couldn't eat, so she had no choice but to wait. It was clear from the beginning that I had to help this lady. It wasn't something that I even had to think about. Thus I found myself with not one, but two homeless people who needed help. Dennis I would write about in my newsletter. And Vera? What was I going to do for Vera? What she needed of course was a home, but putting her up at my place was impossible because of the situation with my boarders. Was this something I should bring to the attention of the neighbors? Did it fall within the purview of Neighborhood Watch? I considered circulating a "Neighborhood Alert" flier like the one I handed out when the carjacking took place earlier in the year. To me Vera's situation was no less urgent than that was. But I was hesitant about doing that for two reasons. First, Vera was adamant about not wanting to draw attention to herself. She was very much afraid of provoking the displeasure of people whose cooperation she needed in order to survive, and she knew from experience that they don't generally roll out the welcome mat for the homeless. The second reason for my hesitation was that I had my own doubts about how much kindness there was among the residents of Westchester. I had already heard some negative comments, even from people in the Watch. One of the patrollers, on learning that I was planning an article about Dennis, wanted to know why I would associate with "someone like that" anyway. And when I spoke about Vera to a lady up the street, a colonel's wife, someone whom I thought was quite compassionate, she started complaining about why we let people like Vera into the country in the first place. Then she went off on how the government was screwing her husband out of his medical coverage. I could see that this was not something I could sound a general alarm about. I had to be more selective in how I appealed for help. What about the preventive approach? Perhaps there was a way to change the scope of the problem; to take it out of the realm of emergency response and instead make it into an educational opportunity. Perhaps I could elevate the discussion, as I had done with the pear tree situation; shift the focus from the narrow issue of what we should do about Vera, to the broader question of why the community had no heart. I'm sure some of you must be thinking, "Just where does this guy get off saying the community has no heart. What makes him so special that he can judge people like that? Who does he think he is anyway?" But this is exactly the point. There's nothing
special about me. I have no special powers. I submit that it doesn't take
special powers to recognize the absence of heart. Anyone with his eyes
open can see it. Let me do this … let me recount the steps I took
in seeking help for Vera, and summarize the response I got, and you can
decide for yourself how much heart there is in Camp Springs. Again, we're
conducting this exercise not for the purpose of solving the problem of
homelessness, but to demonstrate the extremely narrow attention band that
the people in this community display. We want to form an image of how
poorly-developed awareness is manifested at the grass roots of society
and to show the steep price we pay when so many of us exhibit this condition. |
Before I describe my summer-long relations with Vera, I would like to give you a slightly clearer picture of how Vera presents herself to people. On the following page is the transcription of a message that Vera left on my answering machine (Figure 3.4). I changed her name, but otherwise the text appears exactly the way she spoke it. This message is typical of the way Vera speaks. |
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If she has your ear for more than a minute or two, she will launch into a long monologue that includes most of the elements we see here. Given the slightest encouragement from your side she can easily talk for an hour. Naturally in a transcription much of the speaker's expression is lost, but I think this message provides a fairly accurate image of Vera's manner. There are several points I'd like to make about it. In the first place there can be no doubt that this lady is in need of help. Even this one message alone confirms it. When I say she needs help, I'm talking about help on several levels. She most certainly requires the basic stuff of day-to-day survival: food, water, shelter, and so on. I think it's also clear that she needs a friend, an advocate, someone to turn to for advice and support. Finally, there is evidence that something is causing her great discomfort. She is tormented mentally, and perhaps physically as well. Yet this talk of irradiation, sterilization and horrible crimes is not just rambling lunacy. As bizarre as it all sounds, there is human reason behind it. I submit that telling these strange tales is the only way for Vera to convey to us the nature of a problem so profound that the very reality she experiences is altered. There is a biological short-circuit deep down somewhere that causes what she sees with her mind's eye to be as real as the input from her senses. Psychiatrists would call this condition a mental illness, but when you understand the difficulties in grasping the true nature of the mind, and furthermore consider that defining what "real" means is not such a simple matter either, one might not be so quick to say that Vera was ill. It could well be argued that Vera's reality is just as real as mine or yours. The second point I want to make is that Vera wants help. She asked for help in this message, and this is how it always was when I talked to her. There were specific things she needed, and she articulated her needs clearly and rationally whenever we spoke. I bring this up because quite often I hear folks declare that the homeless want to be homeless. "You can't help them if they don't want to be helped," is what they say. I've even heard this argument from outreach people. But I don't buy it. First of all, in Vera's case it is simply not true. She clearly desires assistance. But even in the case of, say, alcoholics or drug users, it's hard to understand how we can sit back and let people persist in destroying themselves. If you saw a sick child beating his head with a stick, would you ignore him and walk by? If you had any compassion, you would take the stick away. I submit that from a humanitarian standpoint, there is no difference between a child beating himself and an addict sticking a needle in his arm. Moreover, a person who drinks or drugs himself into oblivion day after day is indeed asking for help. Maybe not with words, but with actions. By his actions he is saying, "I am helpless and out of control. Please do something with me." But none of this applies to Vera anyway. Not only is she not helpless, she is highly resourceful and amazingly self-sufficient. Moreover, she has no desire to be living on the street, no desire to suffer. Furthermore, Vera does not refuse help. On the contrary, her life is centered around a constant effort to seek help. There are other interesting aspects about Vera's message. She frequently mentions something that she calls her "subject". At times she refers to it as her "value subject", at other times it's her "sensitive subject". At first I was confused by this, but I finally realized that what she was talking about was her self, the basis for her identity. It's that entity which, when a thought is expressed, is the thinker of the thought; when an action is performed, is the doer of the action. When you pose the internal question, "Who am I?" it's the answer that comes back. When Vera talks about the "value" of the subject, it seems that she is giving voice to this question; trying to grasp the nature of this entity, this "I", as in, "I" did this or that, or "I" said this or that. She is wondering out loud who or what is the "I"; what is its value. Vera tells us that the "subject" is "connected with information about my body". She has even discovered where the "subject" is located. It's behind her womb. Your body allows you to experience the material world by way of your senses. Thus when Vera describes the subject as "sensitive", what I think she means is that it is sensible, or that it is capable of sensing. It's very heavy talk, much heavier than most of us are accustomed to. Although much of what Vera says seems incoherent, her rambling speech is in fact quite meaningful. She is giving us an inside look at what takes place at the deepest level of physiological functioning: at the intersection of the mind and the body. In this respect Vera's mental state is superior to that of most "normal" people. She displays a heightened awareness of the subtle mechanisms within the physiology that underlie the human ability to look at yourself and identify what you find there. Still, there's obviously something not right with Vera. How do you explain this peculiar talk of crimes, the military and the Yellow Satan Girl? There are two things to be said about this. First, the thrust of the message is quite clear: "Please help me." That's what it all comes down to, an unmistakable plea for help. The remainder is embellishment. Vera wants us to know how badly she needs help, so she introduces forces – the military, the criminals – outside her control that are working against her, threatening her life. And who would argue that this is an exaggeration? Who would argue that this is not an emergency? Vera's life is indeed in jeopardy. It is in constant jeopardy. She wakes up every day in a state of emergency. But what is at the heart of Vera's story-telling is fear. We have already discussed fear extensively. How it can affect a person's behavior, how it paralyzes people, how it influences the structure of society. Individual fear keeps neighbors from talking to each other. Societal fear allows delinquent teenagers to roam the streets unchallenged. I believe Vera's is a case where at some point in her life fear became so intense that it permanently scarred her. The injury was so profound that when faced with a circumstance that presents even the slightest threat to her well-being, she is incapable of detaching herself from the terror it creates. Her mind reacts by creating a rationale for why these things are happening to her. How, for example, can she explain why people aren't helping her? How can it be that they leave her outdoors in the cold and the rain, without food or water, as if they wanted her to die? It's about as frightening as you can get. She explains it by inventing a criminal conspiracy against her and against the United States. After all, it can't be the United States that is at fault. She told me on many occasions that this country is great; that she loves it here because we gave her her freedom. If it's not the U.S. that is causing her to suffer, then it must be criminals, and if the criminals are trying to destroy her, they must also be destroying this great country that supports her. There is logic and moral reasoning in this explanation, and they serve to confirm the truth of Vera's personal reality. What I noticed about Vera is that when she found herself in a particularly
tenuous situation, her agitation would increase, and her stories became
even more wild. But if you kept her in the present, focused on what she
and you were doing right there, right then, things were fine. So it was
really her memory of past events, more so than her perception of present
reality, that clouded her reason. Except, that is, when something frightened
her. Then everything went to hell. There is one other thing that should be pointed out regarding Vera's fantasies, and her steadfast belief in them. I argued that this aspect of her behavior was not as crazy as you might at first think, given the brutal nature of her existence. But it also occurred to me that the mix of fantasy and reality that Vera so deftly conjures up is by no means unique to her. It can also be found in other, very different sources. Consider for example the allegorical content of cultural and religious traditions. Are the myths and parables of say, the American Indian, or the ancient Greeks, very much different in nature from Vera's imaginings? One might speculate that the sages of ancient times spun their fables in a fashion similar to hers. If one of those ancient sages were here today, speaking to people on a street corner, do you think we could tell the difference between him and Vera? I'm not sure we could. I think we might very well load them both onto the same bus to the nearest institution. Consider also the mixture of fact and fiction that comes from people who are trying to hide something. People sometimes stretch the truth to the point where they actually believe their own fabrications. There have been some well-publicized criminal cases that illustrate this. In some of those cases the fantasy spun by the accused and his lawyers was so convincing that even the jury believed it. Children are another example. Kids are very adept at creating extensions of reality, especially when you plant a seed by suggesting something new or unusual to them. One might argue that the same mechanism is at work in all of these instances. The image of past events is colored according to the fancy of the person who remembers them. Is this wrong, I wonder? Wrong-headed perhaps, or wrong in the sense that it's unruthful? Or maybe there is nothing truly wrong about it at all. Maybe there are people for whom the only "real" reality is the here and now. And that after all is not such a crazy notion. Vera eventually did get her Independence Card, but it took a couple of weeks. In the meantime I began preparing meals for her. Whatever we ate at home, that's what she got. My housemate would heat something up, pack it into a plastic container, and someone, usually me, would take it down to her. Vera was very grateful for it. We continued to take food to her through the summer. Not quite every day, but close to it. She remained in that same spot, under the bush behind the Sunoco for two months. Not continuously of course. When there was heavy rain, she would find a dry spot to sit … Wendy's, Gemeli's Deli, the laundromat. I even found her curled up with all of her gear inside the back doorway of the Social Services building one rainy night. But when she was camped out, it was right there behind the Sunoco that you could find her, on the back side of the fence that borders the Masonic Temple parking lot. After a few days the managers of the Sunoco barred her from coming inside. They were aware that she was sleeping behind the station, but apparently weren't concerned about it as long as she didn't come into the store. I should tell you this about Vera's behavior. She was never disruptive or abusive. Naturally she was a little unkempt, but unless you looked closely, you probably couldn't distinguish her from any other person you might encounter in public. When Vera found a place where she could sit, she would open up her notes, of which she had reams, and quietly write. She called this her "research". She was after all highly educated. A philosophy major no less. So the fact that the Sunoco manager barred her from the mini-mart should not reflect negatively on Vera. On the contrary, it shows the insensitivity of the manager, and the upside-down priorities of our society. There were indeed people who loitered inside the Sunoco. They have chairs set up for the Keno customers. People sometimes sit there for hours, staring at a TV monitor that displays nothing but numbers. You could make a strong argument that the folks who play that mind-numbing Keno game day after day are more impaired than Vera. But I guess it's more important to give folks the opportunity to gamble their brains away, than it is to allow a destitute orphan to use the bathroom, or have a drink of water, or get out of the rain for a few minutes. …… At the beginning I was quite optimistic about
finding Vera a home. The pastor at Upper Room knew her pretty well, and
one of the church members had actually put Vera up for a while the previous
year. A woman in the congregation, Josie her name was, found Vera downtown
somewhere, and simply packed her up and took her home. I contacted this
Josie person and asked if there was any chance she could take Vera back
again. Josie explained that she hadn't had any problems with Vera while
she was there, but because relatives had moved in, she wasn't able to
keep her. Still, this was an encouraging sign. There did exist at least
one person in the area who was humane enough to offer shelter to someone
in Vera's position. And I found another person shortly thereafter, a chaplain
in the Tantallon neighborhood, about ten miles away. The chaplain had
been a benefactor to the homeless for years. Unfortunately her home was
also full up, but now my hopes were pretty high. |
I decided that the first avenue I would pursue for help was the religious community. It seemed logical that if I wanted to locate the compassionate element in Camp Springs, that the churches were the place to start. A number of local congregations participated in a program called "Warm Nights" that sheltered groups of homeless men and women in the winter. They took |
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turns putting people up for a week during the cold months. Thus there was already some degree of sensitivity to the problem of homelessness in our area. Maybe I could tap into that. I composed a letter to each of the local pastors (Appendix C), describing Vera's predicament, and suggested that perhaps the word could be spread within the congregation that help was needed. I wrote to some churches twice, hand-delivering the letter to most of them. Every church in Camp Springs received a version of this letter. In a few cases I was able to meet and speak to the pastor in person. Moreover, several of my Westchester neighbors were either clerics or people closely associated with a church. I made sure that those folks got a copy of the letter too. In addition, there were four churches that Vera mentioned as having assisted her in the past, three in Washington, and one in Bethesda, Maryland. I phoned them all, and followed up the call with a letter. Altogether I contacted 34 congregations, representing roughly 15,000 to 20,000 parishioners. I had by this time finished the latest issue of my newsletter with the article about Dennis Gale. A copy of this also went out to most of the churches. I figured that if they were going to help the homeless in Camp Springs, they might want to so something for Dennis as well. This, then was the thrust of my efforts to alert the community about the problem of homelessness in Camp Springs, sending these letters out. Except for the fact that the letter came from a neighbor, rather than, say, another church or a non-profit group, there was nothing very unusual about the approach I took. As much as you'd like to, you can't scream too loudly about an issue of this sort. Nevertheless, I did manage to get the attention of a few of these folks. One pastor read my letter to his congregation. Two or three others called me on the phone to acknowledge receiving it. The chaplain in Tantallon forwarded the letter to several more churches, and another pastor added Vera's name to the weekly prayer list. And some help was indeed forthcoming. A handful of churches offered food, and one church even offered to donate money. I also received many suggestions about where to seek shelter. However, although people were willing to give food, money and advice on potential leads, none of them volunteered to actually carry that food to Vera, or to personally check on her, or to follow up those leads on their own. I'm quite certain that no person from any church visited Vera while she was here. In other words, the help that was offered was of an impersonal variety. It was remote, hands-off help, and help like that has limited value for someone in Vera's position. For, what I discovered is that homeless people need a lot more than just handouts. They need not just food, but a way to cook the food. They need not just clothing, but a place to wash clothes, and change clothes. They need transportation … bus fare. They need to make phone calls. They need to visit clinics … to see doctors, dentists. They need to shower. They need an advocate, someone who can provide a recommendation or help them fill out an application form. They need jobs. Vera, like Dennis, told me that she wanted to work. But it's tough to get work when you're dressed in rags, haven't bathed in weeks, and make your bed on the ground at night. What made it even tougher is that the bureaucracy that is tasked with helping people – the outreach workers and what-have-you – had essentially turned their backs on her. The government's idea of help for someone like Vera is to confine them to an institution and make them take drugs. But that's exactly what Vera didn't want. If you even suggested that she see a psychiatrist, she immediately raised her defenses, declaring that those people who would "do me disabled", as she put it, are part of the same criminal conspiracy that is injecting her, torturing her, and removing parts of her brain. She declares that she is healthy and drug-free, and insists that she remain that way. I never learned why Vera had such a great fear of psychiatrists, but her refusal to deal with them made it quite impossible to secure any assistance from the local government. And I did indeed contact the county mental health agency. On at least two occasions, at my request, outreach workers from the Prince George's Division of Mental Health came out to see Vera where she was camping. The very first thing that these folks require is that you sign legal papers granting them permission to treat you. Vera seemed quite familiar with their procedures, and no matter what you did, you could not persuade her to sign such documents. She made it clear that she did not want to be confined in an institution, and that she did not want to be declared legally disabled, even if it meant she would not be eligible for certain benefits. I even tried to talk her into faking that she was disabled. I reasoned that once in a while you have to tell small lies in order to get what you want. I explained that this tactic was necessary in diplomatic dealings when the other party was too ignorant to fully appreciate your position. In her case the government was the ignorant party, for not seeing how badly she needed assistance. Thus it wouldn't be so terrible to fib a little about the state of her health. Vera understood my reasoning perfectly, but she was afraid of potential repercussions if the truth were ever discovered – the truth from her standpoint being that she was actually well – and she was also so deeply fearful of being locked up that she wouldn't go along with it. Moreover, they were probably confusing her with the Mexican woman or the Yellow Satan Girl, thinking that she, Vera, had committed crimes that in reality had been committed by one of them. No … getting Vera to cooperate with people she knew to be mental health workers was out of the question. But the county's policy was that the client had to (a) give her written consent and (b) be "stabilized" before they could do anything. When Vera learned that the people visiting her were from the mental health division, she wanted nothing to do with them, and that was the end of that. The outreach folks went on their way, and Vera remained right where she was, sitting inside a cloth bag, on the ground, under a bush, talking loudly to herself. I'd like to point out that there is a certain amount of irony in the government's insistence that Vera undergo treatment for a disorder that she denies. I've been trying to show throughout this discussion that most of the rest of us suffer from a similar condition. We too are blind to key aspects of our existence, and are utterly unable to recognize that there is something we can't see. I would argue however, that our own condition is far more acute that Vera's; that if psychiatric help is needed for any of us, it should not be for the person sleeping on the cold hard ground at night, but for those others who walk right by that person without the slightest concern for her destitute state. The government and the churches were not the only places where I sought help. I sent faxes to both the Russian embassy and consulate in Washington. I contacted the Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Rockville, and I called a number of shelters and clinics throughout the D.C. area. I even called the local chapter of the American Red Cross. I also approached some of the local businesses, including two nearby animal hospitals, Coolridge and Al Lynn. My reasoning was that if we had people living in the area who took in strays, then the veterinarians would know who they were. Folks who showed kindness towards an abandoned dog or cat might also be kind enough to take in a stray person. But isn't it awful that we should even make this comparison? Isn't it a disgrace that we should even think about equating animals with people like this? When you consider the billions that we spend taking care of pets in this country, it's beyond belief that we aren't able to provide shelter for one of our fellow human beings. In any case, the local businesses were not responsive, and none of my leads led to anything substantial. One elderly lady from a local church contacted me through her pastor to say that she needed a person to stay with her as a caretaker; someone who could call 911 if she had an emergency. It sounded like a great situation, but I could not in good conscience recommend Vera. The position required too much responsibility. There was also a possibility of getting Vera into the county woman's shelter, the Shepherd's Cove facility near the D.C. line in Fairmont Heights, but it would have only been a temporary solution, since they don't allow anyone to live there for more than six weeks. The folks who answered the "Homeless Hotline" in Prince George's County told me that they were familiar with Vera. In fact they had special instructions about how to handle her. It seems that they were not supposed to let Vera talk on and on forever, as she was wont to do, because it tied up their phone line. They had tried once before to get her into Shepherd's Cove, but she backed out at the last minute. The formalities required to enter the facility apparently made her uncomfortable. The story I eventually pieced together was that Vera had been moving back and forth between the street and shelters since 1992. Most of this time was spent in D.C. or Montgomery County, but she had also lived in suburban Virginia and eventually made her way to Prince George's. Before coming to Washington, she had been married to an American, a physicist, and lived with him in Chicago from 1988 until their divorce in 1992. They had married in Russia, and he brought her back to the U.S. with him. Vera told me that the marriage was a political one. She explained that her husband had rescued her from the communists, and for this she would always be grateful. I was able to find this guy through the Internet and I contacted him by e-mail. He replied to my message, and acknowledged that he was the person I was seeking, but declared that he wanted nothing to do with his ex-wife, and advised me not to contact him again. Vera claims Holy Trinity Catholic in Georgetown
as her home church, but I didn't get much of a response from them when
I called over there. When Vera eventually left Camp Springs, it was to
Holy Trinity that she was headed. She believed that just by visiting with
a priest there, and saying confession, she would get some relief from
the toxins and what-have-you that the criminals had been torturing her
with. She also visited Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Bethesda, Maryland,
where some of her belongings were stored. I talked to her on the phone
shortly afterwards, and she told me that the church purchased her a new
tent, a real one, and that she was quite pleased with it. Vera has two
or three acquaintances in the area that she knows from the street. A couple
of her friends have found permanent shelter and they occasionally help
her out, either with money, or by putting her up for a few days. I met
one of these guys, a thirty-something alcoholic who is now living back
at home in Fairfax, Virginia. The guy took Vera in for a week in the fall,
but then threw her out again. I gathered that there was a conflict between
Vera and his mother. As the cold weather approached, Vera called to ask
if she could keep some of her stacks of notes at my place, and I agreed.
She took the bus back out to Camp Springs one day in early November and
I met her behind the PGCDSS building where she spent one night. Her plan
was to go back to Virginia and camp outside a shelter in Reston, the Embry
Rucker Community Shelter, to wait for an opening. It's not clear why she
chose that particular shelter, since it is somewhat out of the way. I
believe part of the reason was that there are wooded areas close by where
she could erect her new tent without being disturbed. She had tried to
set it up in other places, including downtown near the King Library, but
was forced to take it down by security people. What a great thing security
is, eh? Where would we be without it? I have wondered why the Prince George's
police didn't evict Vera from her spot behind Sunoco, or why it took two
years before they kicked Dennis out from the carpet store parking lot
next door. I rather doubt that it was due to the exceptional kindness
of the police force here. But just imagine how unassuming Vera must be
to set up camp and sleep on the ground outside a shelter in the hopes
that they might eventually grant her entry; how polite and humble she
is to demonstrate such patience. Me? I'd be pounding on the doors and
summoning all the devils in hell to descend on the heartless drones who
ran the place. |
As of this writing, Vera is still sleeping outdoors, so my efforts to get her into a shelter have failed. I also failed to find a home for Dennis Gale, or to generate much interest in his case. Every one of the 500+ households in Westchester received a copy of the newsletter with the article about him, but when I spoke to Dennis many weeks later, he said that no one had yet come forward to talk to him about the article or to offer him a place to live. But what more could I do to get people's attention? I'm not the government, or a social services agency, or a human rights activist. I'm just a neighbor. Don't people wonder why a neighbor would go to the trouble to put out a newsletter in the first place, and to furthermore feature a story about a homeless man on the front page? It seems that people can't take a hint, doesn't it? Or perhaps they got the hint, but when it came to actually doing something, they couldn't move. People may indeed recognize that there is a problem to be addressed, and may be sympathetic towards those in distress, but they aren't exactly sure what do to about it. They are caught like Shakespeare's Hamlet, in a zone between action and inaction, between thinking and doing. That's why it's perhaps best to be very specific about what you want from people. With our Community Patrol for example, the patrollers are required to do one very specific thing: cruise the neighborhood for an hour once a month, and nothing more. No thinking is involved, so we avoid the bottomless pit that traps folks who either can't or won't make decisions about matters of this sort. I'm less worried about Dennis now than I had been. He recently moved his van into an enclosed garage in the nearby town of Morningside, and he has electricity there, so he's not going to die from exposure at least. Vera on the other hand presents a much more difficult problem. Yet it really doesn't have to be so difficult. I'm firmly convinced that if there were a true community here, she wouldn't have spent a single night outdoors. There wouldn't have been any need to send letters out, or make dozens of phone calls, or even to bring the government into the picture. And it wouldn't have been just one person alone who shouldered the burden. Lots of people would have pitched in, and they would have done so spontaneously, without a lot of hand-wringing. In the Appendix there is a table that lists the churches I contacted regarding Vera, and the response I received from each. I'm including this information not to cast blame, but to underscore the reality of my efforts to seek help. When you analyze problems in the abstract, it's easy to lose sight of real-world events. I would like you to understand that we are not discussing an element of logic here, but a human being. A living, breathing person who really did come to Camp Springs, and who really did sleep on the ground, outdoors, outside our homes for two months. Moreover, when the question of homelessness is brought up, we often treat it in a way that makes it appear as though the problem is the homeless themselves. It is in the person of Vera or in the person of Dennis Gale that the homeless problem is manifested. I want to shift our sights 180 degrees. I want to suggest that the problem lies not with Vera or Dennis, but with us; with our lack of compassion, and lack of attention. I furthermore submit that the extent of the problem is clearly shown by the poor response I received. It is exactly analogous to the problem of juvenile crime. When we talk about fear, anonymity, lack of courtesy, and the inability to take action, we're talking about the adults in the community, not the kids. Thus when 500 neighbors, 34 churches, 20,000 parishioners, a dozen businesses, the mental health department, the Department of Social Services, the Russian embassy, the Red Cross, and a myriad of other agencies … not to mention the hundreds of people who had contact with Vera over the years … when all of these forces combined cannot find a home for one poor woman … even after she has spent more than five years on the street … in the capital of the Western world … you can't possibly tell me that the problem lies with that one woman. No. It lies with these assembled agencies, with our communities, and with all of us. In particular, it lies with Camp Springs. My community. But when you say that a community has a problem, what you're really saying is that the people, the individuals, of that community have a problem. And in order to solve the community problem, you must address the shortcomings in the individuals. Each of them. One by one. One last comment about Vera. I went to a lot of trouble to help this lady, and you might question whether all that effort was worth it. You could argue that rather than working with just one person, it might be more effective to distribute my help more broadly. Perhaps I could have lent support to a nonprofit group that handles this sort of thing. Collected donations for them, say, or volunteered in some capacity. Such groups certainly do valuable work, but
you must remember that the ultimate recipient of your support is not
the group, but a person. We tend to treat the homeless as if they were
a single entity and we overlook the existence of individual human beings.
It's easy to forget that the well-being of each of those individuals is
just as important as your own well-being. Vera's life is as precious to
her as your life is to you. In this respect she is royalty. Nothing less.
She deserves the same respect and attention that we would give to a princess.
When you see it in those terms, it becomes clear how appalling our treatment
of Vera has truly been. |
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