tomorrowteen
11 May 2005, 05:28 PM
Hello. I've posted this on several different boards, and thought I'd give you guys (and girls) a chance to read it. I've sent copies to President Bush and various members of Congress, and even sent a copy to the Associated Press.
Bed and Breakfast, at What Price?
By Michael H. Fox
I recently had an opportunity that not many Roanoke residents have had. I was homeless. It was not something that I chose to do, but my choices led to the problem.
I found two immediate options to avoid living on the street. The first was the Rescue Mission on 4th St. The other was the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Lodge. Both offer a roof over your head, and food in your belly; and both exact a price for that privilege.
Let me take you through a typical day at the Rescue Mission. The night starts at 5pm, when you go through the door and are greeted with a room filled with chairs. Uncomfortable chairs, where you must wait until dinner is served, which is at 6:30pm. Other homeless men surround you, and the place reeks of alcohol, and just plain dirt. It is a foul odor. Yet you endure it because you're broke and hungry.
At 6:30, the line begins to form for dinner. They take the Physically Challenged first, and then, row-by-row, person-by-person, you go into the dining area. Generally, the food served at dinner is of good quality, and is served in enough quantity to fill the average stomach and sustain the diner for the night. You go though a turnstile, and can't help but feel like a number. Not for the last time. They serve water to drink, and occasionally tea, but that's it. It sustains you, nothing more.
After dinner, if you want to stay in the shelter, you have to attend Chapel. It's Christian, of course. Most shelters are. This is not surprising given our President's policy of Faith-Based Initiatives. I have to wonder, though, where do the Jewish homeless go, and where do the homeless Muslims hang out? You crowd into the chapel with all the other homeless men and you listen to the messages, sing hymns, and sometimes fall asleep. If you do that too much, they'll kick you out.
After chapel, around 8:45pm, you get in another line, or sit in uncomfortable chairs and wait to be assigned a bed. You must take a shower and you must wear only the sleeping gown, which resembles more than anything else the type of clothes you see prisoners wear. There are no morning showers.
The showers are not private, and those of us of a more modest nature are forced to fall in line between men who are, more often than not, naked or nearly so. I wore my prison-style gown over my body while waiting, but still had to disrobe - in front of all the other men who were waiting - in order to take my shower.
After showering, and from the smell, you get the impression not all are using the soap and shampoo provided, you find your bed and lay down for the night. This usually happens around 9pm. Many men go to sleep right away, and you can tell, because those that are awake can hear the snoring. You have men sleeping all round you and above or below you, and men will make noises in the night. The snoring of one person is enough to keep me awake, but when you multiply it by ten, it's enough to wake the dead. And then there are other noises, ruder, that men make and the noises and smells fill the air.
That's if you're lucky enough to get a bed. If you arrive late, or if you are unlucky enough to be at the end of the line, you may get a mat to sleep on. At first, the mat seems comfortable, but after sleeping on it for one night, I had back pains.
The first night I slept there, I may have slept for 3 hours.
Wake up time is 5am. There is no choice. If you stay in bed a moment to wait for the others to clear out, the rousters will rattle your bed, and threaten to kick you out for 30 days.
After making your own bed with fresh sheets, you wait in line again, dressed only in your dark blue nightgown with your bed number on it, and then you are allowed to go to your locker and pick up your laundry. They will wash and dry one shirt, one pair of pants, underwear and socks. When you are dressed, if you want to eat breakfast, you must sit in those same uncomfortable chairs until 6:30am comes along, and then you wait in line to get fed. Breakfast is, perhaps, the least appetizing meal of the day. You get dehydrated milk, sometimes a few scrambled eggs, sometimes biscuits, but it's usually not much. Yet you endure, because you're not getting anything else.
After breakfast, you have several choices. You must leave the shelter, but where you go after that depends on many things: Do you have a job? How cold is it? Do you have any money?
If the answer to those questions is no, or very cold, you grab your belongings, because you can't leave them there, and trudge someplace else.
The downtown library doesn't open until 9 or 10, which leaves you a couple of hours to kill. There are a couple of day shelters in the area: The Samaritan Inn, and RAM House. RAM (Roanoke Area Ministries) House has the same type of uncomfortable chairs that the other shelters have, after all, who wants to make the homeless feel comfortable, and has a selection of books. They also serve lunch to those who are hungry. The caretakers there do offer more than the standard shelter, though. They have a limited number of job listings, pulled from the state web site. They offer a 'Job Club', and will screen the people who come for 'employability.' The reality is, though, that unless you're lucky enough to be there at a time when employers are looking for a spare body, you're not going to find a job there. It's another place to rest weary bones.
Other places popular with the homeless crowd include the Jefferson Street Library. But their chairs are no more comfortable, and a security guard sits upstairs where most of the chairs are.
At least the library has resources, like computers, which the homeless can use to find a job. However, finding a job when you are homeless is not an easy task.
First, what address do you use? The shelter? And what about a phone? How would you feel if on calling a potential applicant for an interview, you heard 'Roanoke Rescue Mission?' I don't know about you, but it would make me think twice.
The treatment of the homeless is appalling. It's more than the dirty looks. It's a pervasive attitude that homeless people are not welcome. You see it at the Jefferson Street Library, the only branch where I've encountered a security guard, where you can't leave your bag at a chair to use the bathroom for a few minutes without the guard putting a note on your stuff saying the next time they'll call the police. Where you may be asked to leave a section, because that's only for business. And there were so many business people standing around, waiting for me to get up. I saw a couple stack their belongings along a railing, and then be told they can’t do that, and if they didn’t move it, they would have to leave. They left. I have been lost in thought for a moment, only to have the guard kick my chair and tell me ‘No sleeping in the library.’ In another instance, a guard told a man that his backpack was too big and he could not bring it with him anymore.
It's an attitude you see all over downtown; the Anthem Building has security guards that patrol outside after 4:30pm so the homeless don't cut through their property on the way to the shelter. And they give dirty looks too. I was on my way to the shelter one afternoon, on a cold day, when I saw a man whom I knew from the shelter standing ahead of me, waiting to cross the street in front of the Anthem Building. He slipped and fell on the ice. I immediately went to help him up, but the security guard, not more than 5 yards away, did nothing. The man could not stand, fell back to the ground and only then did the security guard do anything, and that was just to radio for an ambulance. He did nothing to personally help this homeless man, and all I could think of, was 'Shame on you.'
After 2 weeks at the Rescue Mission, I was sick from having caught a throat infection. I was staying at RAM House, and felt I could not walk back to the Mission. I decided to give the Salvation Army shelter a try. I felt I had nothing to lose, and it was a closer walk.
They open at 4pm, and the Director, Mrs. Mays, let me in. The first thing she made me do was fill out forms and read the rules of the establishment. The first one that caught my eye was ‘No Alcohol.’ I welcomed that. In fact, she makes everyone coming into the shelter take a Breathalyzer test. Again, a welcome change from the Mission. She assigned me a bed, and allowed me to put my stuff away. I was starting to think this was paradise when I actually got to lay my sick, tired body down at 4:30 in the afternoon and nobody cared. Dinner is served at 4:30, and after that, you can take a shower, not private, but not everyone showers at the same time, either. My first night there I took a shower by myself for the first time in two weeks. Finding out that wake-up time was 6am instead of 5am really put a cap on my mood. I thought I was in heaven.
Then I started noticing a few things. Little things, that became mandatory. You have to do a chore 3-4 times a week, which I don’t have a problem with. You have to attend 12-step meetings twice a week. You have to attend Bible Study three times a week. And the worst of all, you have to ‘volunteer’ at the Corps 3 days a week. There’s even a notice on the bottom of the sign-in sheet: ‘Volunteering is not optional.’ I started to wonder how they could expect someone to find a job if they had to work at the Corps 3 days. And they do expect you to find a job, because after 45 days, if you don’t have a job, you’re out of there. The sad part is, other Salvation Army shelters, while still requiring residents to volunteer, pay those volunteers minimum wage.
One of the better aspects of staying there are the church services. You are required to attend church Thursday nights and twice on Sundays. In fact you can’t leave without permission from check-in time Saturday night until check out time (6am) on Monday. The services aren’t bad, really. In the Mission, you’re blasted with hellfire and labeled as sinners. In the Corps, you’re treated with dignity. The Captain himself drives you to church in a bus. A far cry from the bumpy ride you get while being driven to volunteer, which is done in the Corp’s canteen, a monster of a vehicle that is equipped to serve coffee and cook food. But you have to stand in the back and hold on for dear life while the truck roars down Campbell Avenue.
Reading this you might think I have nothing positive to say about these shelters. Please don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for the fact that both of them put a roof over my head at night and keep me off the cold, dangerous street. They have a pretty hard job taking care of men who don’t appear to be able to take care of themselves. I admire their willingness to help. I just think that they could do a better job than they do, and they simply ask too much in return. The service they provide is only sustaining and not truly helping to solve the problem.
So what's the solution to the problem? One that gives the homeless their dignity, doesn't require prayer, but makes it available, and treats the problem, not just placating it.
Here's what I suggest. I'm going to call this the Advantage Program. It would have to be run by the Federal government, because frankly, it's a Federal problem, not a local one. The Advantage Program will deal with homeless or those nearly so, living well below the poverty line.
First and foremost, it would give people a place to stay; a room of their own with a bath. Access would be available though a single nation-wide toll-free number, manned by homeless people training to be CSR's, who take down where this homeless person is, and what shelter is closest, then dispatch a van (driven by a homeless person) that would pick him up.
No rules. If you really want to get drunk every day and come home to a warm bed at night, you may do so, but all you'll get is a room with a bath. No TV. No Computer. You'll be locked in there, getting dinner and breakfast, then let go between 6 and 8am. It's as close to prison as you can be without being in prison. Not unlike what the current system is, except a little more privacy.
The next level is for those who want help. You get a room, with a TV and computer. You're taught how to use the computer, and one of several marketable skills. If you're high on drugs or an alcoholic, counselors will be there and you'll be allowed to dry out. You work within the center, doing laundry, making meals, helping with health care and whatever else needs to be done until you're ready to strike out on your own. The program cannot guarantee that you won't slip back into your 'evil' ways, but at least you can stand a chance.
The last level would help indigent families. They're out there. They have access to more Federal programs than single men, so it would appear they don't need as much help, but this is a consolidation of existing programs into one. The families would get a suite of rooms, the number depending on the number of children, and the primary care-giver would get the same training, along with child care, run by (you guessed it) homeless people. Maybe a school within the center can give the children of the homeless another advantage.
Counselors will be available. Health care will be available. No charge. One stop shopping for all your homeless and poverty needs.
But what of the costs, man! For heaven's sake, what of the costs? Most shelters today are run by charities, Christian groups using volunteers. This program would be run primarily by the homeless themselves, working for their room and board until they are fit to get a job outside the shelter. If certain professionals cannot be found within the shelter, then they can be hired. You'd be surprised how many homeless people out there that possess the skills to run a computer, for instance. They just need a chance to prove themselves.
So what are the costs now? Where is the money coming from now? Some from charities, some from local governments, some from State and Federal grants. The idea is to consolidate everything within the Federal government, and with consolidation, comes a lessening of the overall costs.
Sure it will cost to build the shelters, but the homeless can be hired to build them. Sure it will cost to run the shelters daily, but you have to weigh the good with the bad, and producing well-qualified employees can only be good.
So there you have it: a look at the current system, which works up to a point, and my suggestions for a different, and in my humble opinion, better system.
It will take time; it will take patience, but we can make this a better country if we show we care.
Author’s note: On May 4, 2005, Mrs. Mays of the Salvation Army informed me that if I did not have a job by May 13th, I would be ‘out the door.’
Michael H Fox is not a homeless advocate. He is an advocate for the elimination of homelessness. He has one book in print, “Theater Boy”, 2004, Publish America, a Science Fiction novel aimed at Young Adults. The sequel, “The Timmons Incident”, is currently in pre-production at Publish America. For more information visit http://www.michaelhfox.com.
Bed and Breakfast, at What Price?
By Michael H. Fox
I recently had an opportunity that not many Roanoke residents have had. I was homeless. It was not something that I chose to do, but my choices led to the problem.
I found two immediate options to avoid living on the street. The first was the Rescue Mission on 4th St. The other was the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Lodge. Both offer a roof over your head, and food in your belly; and both exact a price for that privilege.
Let me take you through a typical day at the Rescue Mission. The night starts at 5pm, when you go through the door and are greeted with a room filled with chairs. Uncomfortable chairs, where you must wait until dinner is served, which is at 6:30pm. Other homeless men surround you, and the place reeks of alcohol, and just plain dirt. It is a foul odor. Yet you endure it because you're broke and hungry.
At 6:30, the line begins to form for dinner. They take the Physically Challenged first, and then, row-by-row, person-by-person, you go into the dining area. Generally, the food served at dinner is of good quality, and is served in enough quantity to fill the average stomach and sustain the diner for the night. You go though a turnstile, and can't help but feel like a number. Not for the last time. They serve water to drink, and occasionally tea, but that's it. It sustains you, nothing more.
After dinner, if you want to stay in the shelter, you have to attend Chapel. It's Christian, of course. Most shelters are. This is not surprising given our President's policy of Faith-Based Initiatives. I have to wonder, though, where do the Jewish homeless go, and where do the homeless Muslims hang out? You crowd into the chapel with all the other homeless men and you listen to the messages, sing hymns, and sometimes fall asleep. If you do that too much, they'll kick you out.
After chapel, around 8:45pm, you get in another line, or sit in uncomfortable chairs and wait to be assigned a bed. You must take a shower and you must wear only the sleeping gown, which resembles more than anything else the type of clothes you see prisoners wear. There are no morning showers.
The showers are not private, and those of us of a more modest nature are forced to fall in line between men who are, more often than not, naked or nearly so. I wore my prison-style gown over my body while waiting, but still had to disrobe - in front of all the other men who were waiting - in order to take my shower.
After showering, and from the smell, you get the impression not all are using the soap and shampoo provided, you find your bed and lay down for the night. This usually happens around 9pm. Many men go to sleep right away, and you can tell, because those that are awake can hear the snoring. You have men sleeping all round you and above or below you, and men will make noises in the night. The snoring of one person is enough to keep me awake, but when you multiply it by ten, it's enough to wake the dead. And then there are other noises, ruder, that men make and the noises and smells fill the air.
That's if you're lucky enough to get a bed. If you arrive late, or if you are unlucky enough to be at the end of the line, you may get a mat to sleep on. At first, the mat seems comfortable, but after sleeping on it for one night, I had back pains.
The first night I slept there, I may have slept for 3 hours.
Wake up time is 5am. There is no choice. If you stay in bed a moment to wait for the others to clear out, the rousters will rattle your bed, and threaten to kick you out for 30 days.
After making your own bed with fresh sheets, you wait in line again, dressed only in your dark blue nightgown with your bed number on it, and then you are allowed to go to your locker and pick up your laundry. They will wash and dry one shirt, one pair of pants, underwear and socks. When you are dressed, if you want to eat breakfast, you must sit in those same uncomfortable chairs until 6:30am comes along, and then you wait in line to get fed. Breakfast is, perhaps, the least appetizing meal of the day. You get dehydrated milk, sometimes a few scrambled eggs, sometimes biscuits, but it's usually not much. Yet you endure, because you're not getting anything else.
After breakfast, you have several choices. You must leave the shelter, but where you go after that depends on many things: Do you have a job? How cold is it? Do you have any money?
If the answer to those questions is no, or very cold, you grab your belongings, because you can't leave them there, and trudge someplace else.
The downtown library doesn't open until 9 or 10, which leaves you a couple of hours to kill. There are a couple of day shelters in the area: The Samaritan Inn, and RAM House. RAM (Roanoke Area Ministries) House has the same type of uncomfortable chairs that the other shelters have, after all, who wants to make the homeless feel comfortable, and has a selection of books. They also serve lunch to those who are hungry. The caretakers there do offer more than the standard shelter, though. They have a limited number of job listings, pulled from the state web site. They offer a 'Job Club', and will screen the people who come for 'employability.' The reality is, though, that unless you're lucky enough to be there at a time when employers are looking for a spare body, you're not going to find a job there. It's another place to rest weary bones.
Other places popular with the homeless crowd include the Jefferson Street Library. But their chairs are no more comfortable, and a security guard sits upstairs where most of the chairs are.
At least the library has resources, like computers, which the homeless can use to find a job. However, finding a job when you are homeless is not an easy task.
First, what address do you use? The shelter? And what about a phone? How would you feel if on calling a potential applicant for an interview, you heard 'Roanoke Rescue Mission?' I don't know about you, but it would make me think twice.
The treatment of the homeless is appalling. It's more than the dirty looks. It's a pervasive attitude that homeless people are not welcome. You see it at the Jefferson Street Library, the only branch where I've encountered a security guard, where you can't leave your bag at a chair to use the bathroom for a few minutes without the guard putting a note on your stuff saying the next time they'll call the police. Where you may be asked to leave a section, because that's only for business. And there were so many business people standing around, waiting for me to get up. I saw a couple stack their belongings along a railing, and then be told they can’t do that, and if they didn’t move it, they would have to leave. They left. I have been lost in thought for a moment, only to have the guard kick my chair and tell me ‘No sleeping in the library.’ In another instance, a guard told a man that his backpack was too big and he could not bring it with him anymore.
It's an attitude you see all over downtown; the Anthem Building has security guards that patrol outside after 4:30pm so the homeless don't cut through their property on the way to the shelter. And they give dirty looks too. I was on my way to the shelter one afternoon, on a cold day, when I saw a man whom I knew from the shelter standing ahead of me, waiting to cross the street in front of the Anthem Building. He slipped and fell on the ice. I immediately went to help him up, but the security guard, not more than 5 yards away, did nothing. The man could not stand, fell back to the ground and only then did the security guard do anything, and that was just to radio for an ambulance. He did nothing to personally help this homeless man, and all I could think of, was 'Shame on you.'
After 2 weeks at the Rescue Mission, I was sick from having caught a throat infection. I was staying at RAM House, and felt I could not walk back to the Mission. I decided to give the Salvation Army shelter a try. I felt I had nothing to lose, and it was a closer walk.
They open at 4pm, and the Director, Mrs. Mays, let me in. The first thing she made me do was fill out forms and read the rules of the establishment. The first one that caught my eye was ‘No Alcohol.’ I welcomed that. In fact, she makes everyone coming into the shelter take a Breathalyzer test. Again, a welcome change from the Mission. She assigned me a bed, and allowed me to put my stuff away. I was starting to think this was paradise when I actually got to lay my sick, tired body down at 4:30 in the afternoon and nobody cared. Dinner is served at 4:30, and after that, you can take a shower, not private, but not everyone showers at the same time, either. My first night there I took a shower by myself for the first time in two weeks. Finding out that wake-up time was 6am instead of 5am really put a cap on my mood. I thought I was in heaven.
Then I started noticing a few things. Little things, that became mandatory. You have to do a chore 3-4 times a week, which I don’t have a problem with. You have to attend 12-step meetings twice a week. You have to attend Bible Study three times a week. And the worst of all, you have to ‘volunteer’ at the Corps 3 days a week. There’s even a notice on the bottom of the sign-in sheet: ‘Volunteering is not optional.’ I started to wonder how they could expect someone to find a job if they had to work at the Corps 3 days. And they do expect you to find a job, because after 45 days, if you don’t have a job, you’re out of there. The sad part is, other Salvation Army shelters, while still requiring residents to volunteer, pay those volunteers minimum wage.
One of the better aspects of staying there are the church services. You are required to attend church Thursday nights and twice on Sundays. In fact you can’t leave without permission from check-in time Saturday night until check out time (6am) on Monday. The services aren’t bad, really. In the Mission, you’re blasted with hellfire and labeled as sinners. In the Corps, you’re treated with dignity. The Captain himself drives you to church in a bus. A far cry from the bumpy ride you get while being driven to volunteer, which is done in the Corp’s canteen, a monster of a vehicle that is equipped to serve coffee and cook food. But you have to stand in the back and hold on for dear life while the truck roars down Campbell Avenue.
Reading this you might think I have nothing positive to say about these shelters. Please don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for the fact that both of them put a roof over my head at night and keep me off the cold, dangerous street. They have a pretty hard job taking care of men who don’t appear to be able to take care of themselves. I admire their willingness to help. I just think that they could do a better job than they do, and they simply ask too much in return. The service they provide is only sustaining and not truly helping to solve the problem.
So what's the solution to the problem? One that gives the homeless their dignity, doesn't require prayer, but makes it available, and treats the problem, not just placating it.
Here's what I suggest. I'm going to call this the Advantage Program. It would have to be run by the Federal government, because frankly, it's a Federal problem, not a local one. The Advantage Program will deal with homeless or those nearly so, living well below the poverty line.
First and foremost, it would give people a place to stay; a room of their own with a bath. Access would be available though a single nation-wide toll-free number, manned by homeless people training to be CSR's, who take down where this homeless person is, and what shelter is closest, then dispatch a van (driven by a homeless person) that would pick him up.
No rules. If you really want to get drunk every day and come home to a warm bed at night, you may do so, but all you'll get is a room with a bath. No TV. No Computer. You'll be locked in there, getting dinner and breakfast, then let go between 6 and 8am. It's as close to prison as you can be without being in prison. Not unlike what the current system is, except a little more privacy.
The next level is for those who want help. You get a room, with a TV and computer. You're taught how to use the computer, and one of several marketable skills. If you're high on drugs or an alcoholic, counselors will be there and you'll be allowed to dry out. You work within the center, doing laundry, making meals, helping with health care and whatever else needs to be done until you're ready to strike out on your own. The program cannot guarantee that you won't slip back into your 'evil' ways, but at least you can stand a chance.
The last level would help indigent families. They're out there. They have access to more Federal programs than single men, so it would appear they don't need as much help, but this is a consolidation of existing programs into one. The families would get a suite of rooms, the number depending on the number of children, and the primary care-giver would get the same training, along with child care, run by (you guessed it) homeless people. Maybe a school within the center can give the children of the homeless another advantage.
Counselors will be available. Health care will be available. No charge. One stop shopping for all your homeless and poverty needs.
But what of the costs, man! For heaven's sake, what of the costs? Most shelters today are run by charities, Christian groups using volunteers. This program would be run primarily by the homeless themselves, working for their room and board until they are fit to get a job outside the shelter. If certain professionals cannot be found within the shelter, then they can be hired. You'd be surprised how many homeless people out there that possess the skills to run a computer, for instance. They just need a chance to prove themselves.
So what are the costs now? Where is the money coming from now? Some from charities, some from local governments, some from State and Federal grants. The idea is to consolidate everything within the Federal government, and with consolidation, comes a lessening of the overall costs.
Sure it will cost to build the shelters, but the homeless can be hired to build them. Sure it will cost to run the shelters daily, but you have to weigh the good with the bad, and producing well-qualified employees can only be good.
So there you have it: a look at the current system, which works up to a point, and my suggestions for a different, and in my humble opinion, better system.
It will take time; it will take patience, but we can make this a better country if we show we care.
Author’s note: On May 4, 2005, Mrs. Mays of the Salvation Army informed me that if I did not have a job by May 13th, I would be ‘out the door.’
Michael H Fox is not a homeless advocate. He is an advocate for the elimination of homelessness. He has one book in print, “Theater Boy”, 2004, Publish America, a Science Fiction novel aimed at Young Adults. The sequel, “The Timmons Incident”, is currently in pre-production at Publish America. For more information visit http://www.michaelhfox.com.