The Real Face Of Homelessness

STEVE LISS FOR TIME
Priced out of the Columbus, Ohio housing market, Phenom Cochran looks for shelter

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Without a federal plan that has worked, cities have lost patience, concentrating on getting the homeless out of sight. In New York City, where shelter space can't be created fast enough, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has proposed using old cruise ships for housing. New Orleans removed park benches in Jackson Square to discourage the homeless; Philadelphia launched an ad campaign asking people not to give to panhandlers; and in Orlando, Fla., a new law makes it a jailable offense to lie down on the sidewalk.

Polls in San Francisco, where the streets are clogged with the homeless who lose the nightly lottery for limited shelter beds, indicate that homelessness is a major concern. Billboards show residents holding cardboard signs that read, I DON'T WANT TO HOLD MY BREATH PAST EVERY ALLEY. Voters last November overwhelmingly passed Proposition N, which cuts handouts from $395 a month to $59, providing food and shelter instead. The proposition was proposed by Gavin Newsom, 35, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who describes himself as a liberal. Newsom's proposal was supported by a $1 million campaign and was so controversial that Newsom felt compelled to travel with police protection as Election Day approached. To his critics who contend that Proposition N doesn't do much to help the people whose assistance he's taking away, Newsom says, "We never said N is going to solve homelessness." Two weeks after the proposal became law, Newsom announced a mayoral bid.

Even in Miami, where homelessness has been reduced because of a 1997 court settlement that forced the city to decriminalize it and develop an elaborate system for dealing with it, citizens are demanding that the streets be cleared. New laws prevent sleeping on the beach and building shelters too close to one another. "They want to hide us with all kind of zoning tricks and such," says Steve Silva, 50, who makes $7 and a 5% commission selling Miami Heat tickets and lives in a shelter. "But it's a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound, man."

Likewise in Dallas, where the problem continues to worsen, the homeless complain of cops delivering wake-up calls from their car loudspeakers by blaring "Wake up, crackheads!" and handing out vagrancy tickets. "It doesn't make you want to go and rejoin society," says Gary Jones, 36, a laid-off welder. "What's lower than writing a man a ticket for sleeping on the street? If he had somewhere else to go, don't you think he'd be there?"

Neither cracking down on vagrancy nor Bush's plan to end chronic homelessness is going to help the growing number of families without housing. David and Gina Christian and their four children have avoided the streets by staying in a 600-sq.-ft. apartment at the Interfaith House in Dallas, which provides three months' housing to 100 needy families each year. David, 34, lost his job fixing rental cars in Austin after Sept. 11 when the tourism industry fell apart. Gina, 36, wasn't making enough as a nursing-home temp to cover the family's expenses. The Christians hocked everything they owned their TV, the kids' PlayStation, Dad's tools to follow David's old boss to a new job in Dallas. When that business fell apart too, David sold the tires from their two cars to pay for their nightly meals of rice and beans. "I was reduced to begging. I felt degraded, like I was less than human," Gina says. "When I was a child growing up in Watts, there was a 10-month period where we were homeless. I didn't want that for my family." Interfaith has found David an $8-an-hour job as a mechanic at a Texaco station, and now that the Christians are not paying rent, they are able to save a little money. But time at Interfaith is running out. The program already broke its own rule by letting the family back for a second stay.

Given that so many are without a home but have temporary shelter, the real policy debate is no longer about whether society is responsible for keeping people out of the cold we have agreed it is but whether it is obligated to give them somewhere permanent to live. By fighting to end chronic homelessness, the Bush Administration argues that we need to give houses to those who are incapable of providing for themselves. The others will have to weather the storm in a shelter, if it can be built fast enough.