Homelessness
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Homelessness
When thinking about whom I am and where Ive come from, I realize its no small feat that brought me to where I am today. Ive gone from a hopeless, homeless, unemployed, unemployable, habitual criminal to an acceptable, responsible, productive and home owning member of society. In 1983, I got out of High School and leaped into an abusive relationship and relocated to San Diego, CA.
There I became gainfully employed and had the semblance of a normal life. After a couple of years, I got introduced to drugs and began to use them for recreational purposes. Little did I know that having fun on the weekends would lead to insanity every day of the week?
In 1985, I started selling drugs and became engulfed in an unsavory lifestyle. I lost my job, and the relationship. I was evicted from one apartment after another. I would turn to family from time to time trying to get my life back together but it never dawned on me that I had to get clean and sober to succeed.
My lifestyle had deteriorated to the point that I lived in a storage container. Honestly, my home was a dumpster with double locking doors.
In 1986, I participated in my first drug sting but the sting was on me and my coconspirators. I was released (I had an innocent face) plus I snitched. I never even made it to City Jail, they took me to a Bus station and said dont return. When I returned to Oakland I meet a woman named Sheri, little did I know at the time she would be a very instrumental part of my life because at the time she was just a person that I was begging for a couple of bucks.
Later I found out that she was a district attorney with a kind heart outside of the court room. She would always extend services to me including case management, grief resolution counseling and even shelter. Because I was in denial about my drug problem, my world was in an endless cycle of insanity.
She was able to see that even though I was homeless I deserved saving and took an interest in the person not the behavior or the homelessness. Although my situation is not the most visible and severe form of homelessness, there are many other types of acute needs.
These include living in temporary accommodation, (a storage shed like I did): mental illness, emotional instability, illiteracy, chronic substance abuse, unemployment, and, most basic of all, breakdown of the family structure.
How are we to understand the phenomenon of homelessness? The most commonly used explanation focuses on the faults of those individuals who are homeless. This type of explanation is based on the ideology that opportunities for economic advancement are readily available for those willing to try. In this view, individuals are personally responsible for their successes or failures.
Thus, homeless persons are to blame for their deprivation because of their drinking habits, their immorality, their mental instability, their illiteracy, or their lack of purpose and initiative. In other words, the homeless are homeless because they are drunk, unstable, or lazy. The problem with this approach is that it blames the victim and ignores the powerful structural forces that push many people into difficult situations beyond their control.
Anyone can become homeless and the reasons that force people into homelessness are many and varied. The leading cause, however, of homelessness in California is Drug infestation which lead to criminal activities and mental illness that causes people to self medicate due to the not understanding the change in them and the inability to cope.
Also difficult choices must be made when you have only limited resources to cover your necessities, based on these problems. I mean even when I wanted to stop, what was I going to do? Who was going to hire me at that point? I had been living on the street not well groomed and very angry at the world and it showed which in caused the problem to spiral due to ongoing financial conflict.
Homelessness was an extensive, complex process for me. As much as Sheri tried it was unbearable, especially since they were using drugs in the shelter it was terribly unsafe. I felt safer on the streets so inevitably thats were I ended up. Different kinds of intervention are needed to deal with the problem.
Rehabilitation of old buildings by minimal funding is common projects to provide shelters for the homeless people. A great example of this is one of the biggest shelters in East Oakland which was originally developed after the Earthquake.
This is a building that was a Safeway warehouse, since this tragic emergency the shelter has not been moved even though the need is so great the City has kept it running based on that need; however living conditions are not designed for human habitat and instead of taking responsibility for making it so, they instead take credit for the declining of humans living on the street as if the problem has been solved.
My experience makes it clear that piecemeal intervention wont fix the real problem that is the cause for the homelessness which I regard as the ultimate goal of intervention. As my experience proves many homeless people are pleased to have three meals and a cot but what about the need for medical attention or evaluations, life skills training, mental health evaluations, job readiness, and substance abuse treatment and money management.
These are many very vital components that are necessary for treating the whole person that finds them homeless because if not the problem will reoccur or they will end up in jail or dead.
Luckily for me it was jail. I finally asked for help after being arrested numerous times, court ordered to drug diversion classes and failing, being convicted of 2 drug felonies and serving short stints in county jail. Little did I know this time my life would take a turn for the better.
Sheri made arrangements for me to be accepted into CURA for long term substance abuse treatment. It had taken 6 years for me to reach a point of surrender. I remember the Judges words as he said, Ms. Browne, before I pass sentence, know that Im giving you the opportunity to become a productive member of society. I was sentenced to CURA for 365 days, with the understanding that failure to complete the program would lead to 2 years in the State Penitentiary.
Boy was I scared I had heard many horror stories about how hard the program