From: DLynn6
Feb. 11, 2005. 01:00 AM
`Plans' make for rough shelter
JOE FIORITO
He looks dead. The way he is just lying there. One leg straight out,
one leg drawn up. Face down, head resting on his arm, on a small
grate in the sidewalk. You can't tell if he's breathing or not. It
isn't right. It's wet. It's cold. You stop, you lean over and you
ask if he's okay.
No answer.
You lean closer and you ask again, a bit louder this time. Still no
answer. Oh, well. In for a penny. This time you yell.
"Buddy, you all right?"
It is a stupid question. As if any man could possibly be all right
when he is lying on the sidewalk at 9:30 a.m.
The people who work in the financial district walk past. They don't
have time to stop. They see this guy, or guys like this, every day.
They keep on walking. Nothing they can do.
"Buddy, you all right?"
The young man is suddenly startled. There but for fortune, is what
you think. Him today; it could have been me yesterday and it might
be you tomorrow. He squints. His eyes are bleary. His hair is
unkempt. He says, "Yeh." His head drops back down.
That's as good as it gets.
That is as good as it's going to get, and that is how it will remain
until this evening, when he finds a place to stay, if he finds a
place.
You don't know what happened to this man.
It is the same old story, or else it is a variation: Got fired. Ran
out of money. Ran away from home, or got kicked out of home. Got
stoned and couldn't stop getting stoned. Sees demons, maybe hears
them. One of the wounded, one of the ones who just can't cope.
You let him alone.
There is another man just down the street, on top of a big warm
grate. He is under a sleeping bag.
All you can see sticking out are his boots; his feet in socks, with
plastic bags to keep them dry. Same damn thing.
"You all right?"
"Yeh."
Plans to provide houses for the homeless are useless to these men
today. No man ever slept well in a set of plans, and then woke up,
walked across the kitchen floor and took the juice out of the
refrigerator and took a swig out of the carton before starting the
water for coffee.
And no man ever slept well in a shelter; too many other guys moaning
and snoring and talking all night long, guys twitching, guys having
nightmares.
You have to be awfully tired to fall asleep on the sidewalk in the
early light of a February morning.
You know shelters are not meant to be hotels. You know shelters have
to be cleaned in the morning, so they send the men onto the street.
Because the shelters must be readied for the evening. Guys who are
homeless don't have the right to sleep late.
But you wonder how many guys, in return for the chance to stay
indoors, would be willing — would be capable — of helping with the
work.
You stand there, helpless.
You know people need rooms. You think of that apartment building on
Queen at Dowling, still boarded up after a fire several years ago;
there are rooms there.
You think of the flophouse on Lansdowne, the one where the young
woman fell out of the window; there are rooms there.
You wonder why we have claimed the right to nudge people off the
street, but we cannot claim the right to compel insurance companies
to settle up after a fire, nor do we claim the right to force slum
landlords to clean up their properties.
The question of whether a man has the right to sleep on the street
is a Catch-22. As soon as he exercises that right, he is wrong.
Nobody ought to be on the street.
You jam your hands in your pockets and you run your tongue across
your teeth. You've just come from the dentist. Your teeth have just
been cleaned. You wonder when the men on the sidewalk last had their
teeth cleaned.
The men on the sidewalk are too zonked to ask for money. Neither of
them has a sign, or a cup or a cap. Soon, they will be gone. We'll
nudge them off the street, somehow. We aren't sure where they'll go.
This is what it's like to live here. These men are on the street
right now. They sleep badly. We sleep well.
We have plans.
www.LoveCry.org
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