Homeless 101.6: Now I Know What I Can't Be. I Can't Be the Poster-child For the Homeless

How did I get here?

The last few months have been fraught with soul searching. "How did I get here?" - as the Talking Heads might have said. And what I have come to realize is that once one succumbs to the psychological mind frame that allows a person to live as a "professional homeless", the battle has been lost. You will have become what you fear most. And compromises must be made to live on a state owned bed and just $200 in food stamps and $45 cash a month that the government allows you. One of the men in my room at the shelter is a loan shark for crack heads. He loans them $20 and they give him back $40. Another can sell three packs of cigarettes a day at the shelter, one by one, and pocket maybe $20. And not a one of them is looking for a job - they already have jobs. In fact, in my entire time at the shelter I have not met one single person who mans the commercial job hunt and is really trying to work themselves out of the system - rather, they learn how to gig the system - how to get the most out of it that they can in legal or less than legal ways. It is not exactly a breeding ground for role models.

And so now I have learned what I cannot be. I cannot be a poster-child for the homeless. I cannot beat the system and show others how to bootstrap their way out. That is simply not possible - because the system is not built to make that happen. That you must do for yourself. I came to see this a week or two ago when I realized that a number of people thought because I was white, good looking, well spoken and waspily-dressed that I could put a different face on the issue. I could, but that won't solve a goddamn thing. It will simply be a deckchair rearrangement on a Titanic that I didn't build. And as much as I have learned a new-found respect for the issue and acquired a desire to affect it positively, I can't do that as a homeless man. 

But I can, as a man with a job and a voice. It's just that simple.