COLUMN: Homeless need help in cold, difficult times

It has been so cold, for what seems like so long – at this point I’m not sure I’ll ever be warm again. Part of it is our old house is so old and drafty; part of it is we don’t have any super-cold weather clothes because it is so rarely super cold here; and part of it is I am cold-natured. I have always had a hard time feeling warm when the wind kicks up or the temperature drops below freezing.

Perhaps that is why I feel so bad for the homeless when the winter rain turns to sleet or things begin to freeze. I simply can’t imagine being homeless on a bitterly cold or relentlessly rainy night.

We see a lot of homeless people in the emergency room (where I am a social worker part-time.) Some are homeless because of mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse. Some are homeless from war traumas. More recently, some are homeless because they’ve lost jobs and houses and ways to pay the rent. They tend to be luckier and more resourceful, as the homeless go, because some still have cars to sleep in and live out of; and those who don’t are better at keeping track of things, like how to get into the Salvation Army shelter and stay there night after night without missing the check-in deadline or getting kicked out.

A common thread in most homeless people’s stories is that they have no one to turn to for help. Either they’re alone in this world, or they think they are. Sometimes, they’ve burned all their bridges with drug and alcohol abuse, or by constantly going off their mental health meds. Sometimes they really are all alone because of death or divorce or years and years of failing to meet even the most basic of expectations.

Rarely, a homeless person actually has family or an ex-wife or an estranged adult child who still cares enough to offer help when a hospital social worker calls. It comes in the form of a bus ticket, a new coat or pair of boots, a meal, a ride somewhere or maybe even a place to stay for a few nights. My observation — not judgment — is most of the time the homeless person manages to mess up (yet again somehow) and end up back in the tent or box or shelter or doorway where he or she started. What a cycle to be trapped in.

It is easy to judge the homeless harshly. After all, how does a person mess up so badly that he or she ends up completely alone in this world without even a roof over his or her head? All I can say is they seem to come by their state in life honestly, for all the reasons described above. My impression is that most of the homeless would do better, if only they could. They just don’t have the tools the rest of us take for granted.

One of my coworkers in the ER, another social worker, had an epiphany the other night, about how our tendency is to judge rather than simply see. She was working with a recently crippled man who had been hurt in a work accident on a job where the boss didn’t carry workman’s comp. His back was badly injured and he ended up in a wheel chair. He didn’t have insurance at the time of the accident nor did he have any way of getting it, once his list of pre-existing conditions became an arms-length long and he lost his job and his ability to work – all because of the accident. To make things even worse, the man had two little kids he was trying to raise alone, without any apparent help from family.

Due to his chief complaint of “back pain,” the wheelchair and his anger level, the man was quickly labeled a “pain meds seeker, ” which meant he was on the fast track for discharge without having his true needs, whatever they might be (if, indeed, he had any…) addressed.

At some point during their interaction, the man broke down and started to cry as he told my coworker what had happened to him and how it had made his life almost unbearably difficult and complex. He told her about his frustration about not being able to provide for - or even play with - his kids; and he talked about the big unwieldy medical care system he seemed to be plummeting through the cracks of. Something about his sincerity touched my coworker’s heart and she began to actually hear what he was saying.

“It’s much easier,” she told me later, “ to picture yourself in someone else’s shoes than to see the person standing there in his own shoes…It’s easy for me to tell that man what I would do if I were him. It’s much harder and much more challenging for me to actually figure out a way to help him from right where he is.”

I liked what she said and I took it to heart. It’s not enough for me to feel bad for the homeless; I need to do more to tangibly ease their pain. I’m not sure what form that will take, but it needs to be more substantial than the extra blanket, hot meal or bus-pass-and-sandwich-to-go I’ve been offering.

It’s a welcome challenge to face, as I wait for my world to thaw.

Lorin Sinn-Clark is a writer for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at lorin@barrowjournal.com.