Myths hold power. We use them as devices to explain the inexplicable, a way to convey a reality devoid of context. Phenomena like the ebb and flow of the tides can be described without being defined. The vicissitudes of the human condition can be examined at arm’s length.
The use of myths to impart truths without the trappings of rigorous fact strips the requirement for detail, allowing topics to be addressed as a monolithic whole.
It removes the potential for nuance — that great height makes it possible to see the mountain at the expense of the crevices.
So, too, do some approaches to the reality of homelessness.
We tell stories, we make assumptions, forcing the messy lives of normal people into boxes that make us comfortable because it puts distance between our lives and theirs.
Those homeless people must be lazy. I’m not lazy. They must be addicts; look at the needles. That’s not me. They want to be out here. I wouldn’t make that choice.
And by framing it as a series of choices, of forks in the road that housed people would not or have not taken, it casts aside empathetic response in favor of the medicine of “tough love.”
That medicine can kill the patient.
The reality is that the majority of Americans are one crisis away from homelessness, and that rents and the costs of maintaining a “normal” lifestyle indoors are going up faster than wages.
The reality is that the majority of Americans are one crisis away from homelessness, and that rents and the costs of maintaining a “normal” lifestyle indoors are going up faster than wages. People — predominately people of color — whose families didn’t have opportunities to build wealth in the past have little capacity to weather a financial storm.
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Here are the stories of people experiencing homelessness in their own words: A couple who got in a car accident that wrecked more than the vehicle. A man whose manufacturing job disappeared. A woman fleeing domestic violence.
These are faces of homelessness in Seattle.
Stanley Many White Horses
Outside the Chief Seattle Club, Stanley Many White Horses rested on a barrier separating the dedicated bike lanes from the rest of vehicular traffic. He appeared quiet, perhaps reflective, observing the flow of people at the corner of Second Avenue South and Yesler Way.
Many White Horses is a member of the Blackfeet nation. He grew up on the reservation, raised by his great grandparents to follow the spiritual traditions of his people, who place animals and elements of the natural world at the same level as humanity. These beliefs married with his work in the forestry service.
Many White Horses moved to Seattle 20 years ago to leave behind an environment rife with addiction to alcohol and methamphetamines. He hoped to get out before it dragged him down, but he’s struggled with sobriety himself since coming to Seattle, a cold city with little of the culture of community and reverence for the natural world in which he was raised.
Except for the Chief Seattle Club, the services available don’t meet the needs of Native peoples, or anyone who doesn’t fit into the cultural mainstream. When you’re a person of color, he said, you’re born with the dominant culture weighing in against you.
“I don’t feel part of the system,” Many White Horses said.
At 70, struggling with kidney failure, congestive heart disease and other medical ailments, Many White Horses finally has a chance to come indoors. A caseworker at Chief Seattle Club has taken him to see an apartment for older adults in Kirkland — he hopes to move in by Jan. 6.
Housing is crucial, Many White Horses said. Without it, sobriety feels like an impossible dream.
“Once you become homeless, it’s hard to get out of that,” he said. “You’re using to dull the pain of being on the streets.
“If you don’t have that, you can’t stay sober on the streets,” Many White Horses said.
Rico
Courthouse Park was unusually quiet. It’s not uncommon to see clusters of folks using the benches during the day, chatting, chilling, even grilling. But beyond a small clump of people at the Third Avenue entrance to the park nearest to the King County Courthouse itself, there was only Rico.
Rico sat on a short retaining wall across the street from the fountain next to an entrance to Pioneer Square Station, a bright yellow umbrella open to shield his work from the wind. Rico reached into a large bag of loose-leaf tobacco and dropped it on the surface in front of him. He then sprinkled a portion into a small, mechanical device, rolling a pristine smoke complete with orange filter.
A fight broke out behind him, but Rico ignored it. That sort of thing happens.
Rico landed in Seattle after his job as a machine operator in St. Louis, Missouri dried up, but the job he was looking for here never materialized. Now, he estimates, he makes $60 a day off the cigarettes. When it gets cold and dark, he gets on the Night Owl bus and rides it until the morning.
He figures he’s homeless because of the Great Recession, and the jobs that disappeared when Wall Street bankers dragged the economy down under the weight of toxic assets and predatory loans.
He figures he’s homeless because of the Great Recession, and the jobs that disappeared when Wall Street bankers dragged the economy down under the weight of toxic assets and predatory loans.
“I’ve lost money, I’ve found money,” Rico said. “How do you lose $3 trillion?”
As we spoke, a few customers approached, some others apparently deterred by our presence, not wanting to interrupt our “documentary,” as one man put it. One cigarette sells for a quarter, six for a dollar. Rico took a crumpled bill from a woman who walked up and placed six cigarettes in a plastic sandwich bag.
He doesn’t see the manufacturing jobs coming back, whatever the current president says, and doesn’t believe the new tax bill passed by Republicans will do anything to help the matter, either.
“It’s Reaganomics 2.0,” he declared before eviscerating the concept of trickle-down economics and mulling over Democratic strategy for 2018. They need a message, he said.
“You can’t sit and twiddle your thumbs and wait for us to vote you in,” Rico warned. “You have to push the envelope.”
Rico hopes to leave Seattle within the year. His daughter is about to graduate from a training program for plane mechanics, and once she’s set, he’ll start thinking about his situation. Until then, he’ll be working on the street to make ends meet.
To those who think homeless people don’t work hard enough to change their situation, he has a challenge.
“You try rolling four, five hundred cigarettes.”
Carrie Clark
Dozens of people congregate every day on the stretch of sidewalk across the street from the courthouse and in front of DESC’s The Morrison. Some socialize, some pace, some stare blankly out into the middle distance. One woman dropped her pants and urinated in a doorway.
Carrie Clark tries to stay safe. It’s easier said than done.
Clark became homeless fleeing an abusive partner who she said forced her to sell her truck and beat her near half to death. She spent most of her youth in Issaquah or Bellevue, and she came to Seattle out of fear of him.
Now she’s afraid all the time.
In her time on the street, people have targeted Clark, maybe because she’s a slight woman and vulnerable. She says she’s been raped six times, and shot in the foot right there on Third Avenue. Men, even other women, try to pick fights with her. These aren’t fights she can win.
“If a 13-year-old picked a fight with me, I’d lose,” Clark said.
She has strategies, but her primary tactic is to run. Don’t stop. Don’t look behind you. If you look behind you, they’ll get you.
“So don’t trust and always run,” Clark concluded.
What she needs, she says, is a job, but the strain of the constant state of fight-or-flight, the exhaustion, the depression and the schedule imposed on her by the shelter system make it hard.
What she needs, she says, is a job, but the strain of the constant state of fight-or-flight, the exhaustion, the depression and the schedule imposed on her by the shelter system make it hard. Still, Clark managed to land a gig that day, she said.
“It’s not drugs or being lazy,” Clark said. “They’re depressed. They’re scared.”
Shone Delyle
Shone Delyle stood outside of the Union Gospel Mission, picking out an unrecognizable, but well-executed tune on his acoustic guitar. Delyle, a leftie, had strung the guitar in the style of Jimi Hendrix rather than twist his nonconformist hands to accommodate a traditional instrument.
He arced his back slightly, leaning into the music on a cold December afternoon.
He and his wife worked as laborers, recently at a ranch in Iowa where they fed and cared for cattle. Two months ago they wrecked their gray Nissan, badly injuring Delyle’s wife.
The couple came to Seattle, in part, because the health care was better here, and his wife needed medical care to recover from her wounds.
Delyle has the mentality of a rugged individualist. He scoffed at the notion of redistribution of wealth, holding firm that it’s up to a person to change their lot in life. Seattle takes care of its homeless, Delyle said.
“If you don’t want to make it here, you don’t want to make it,” Delyle said. “I’ve made it.”
And to those with ideas about people experiencing homelessness?
“Fuck off.”
Ashley Archibald is a Staff Reporter covering local government, policy and equity. Have a story idea? She can be can reached at ashleya (at) realchangenews (dot) org. Twitter @AshleyA_RC
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