No Shelter
As a Winter Nor’easter Descends on the Region, the Homeless Continue to Struggle. Part of ‘Book of Plagues’
#Frontlines, a #pandemicdiary 89a. 1/2: A billboard on Route 1: “There is no good time to be homeless.” Child pictured in a hug. “Donate” on the billboard. “Help Now” on the Website. Homefront (https://www.homefrontnj.org). Annual appeal. In the face of COVID. Job loss. // Temperature in the teens. Snow. Ice. This is a bad time to be on the street. Worse than normal. Coldest time since the pandemic began. // Walter Herres, an advocate for the homeless in New Brunswick, tells me the homeless have scattered. Some use the shelters. Some find whatever space they can. “I literally spent the whole day giving out blankets and hand warmers,” he says. // New Brunswick announces a Code Blue. Unity Square Communidad to be open all night. // City is ground zero for the county’s homeless. Nexus of rail and car routes. Home to hospital and university. // The unhoused used to congregate in the train station. Rutgers libraries. On university buses. Under the bridges and rail trestles down town. NJ Transit chased them off. Rutgers has made it more difficult for them to ride the buses. // Unity Square is a mile and a half away. Near the soup kitchen and small shelters always at capacity. Unity Square is an outpost of hope in a poor, Latino neighborhood. But under-equipped as a shelter. Not designed to house the houseless. // The lack of services in the city leaves them to “cluster together in abandoned houses,” Herres says. Most lack masks. “No one is informing these people,” he says. // (Photo from Homefront website: https://www.Homefrontnj.org)
#Frontlines, a #pandemicdiary 89b. 2/2: Yesterday, I saw a man at an intersection as I drove past. He had a small cardboard sign. Could only make out “homeless,” written in marker in all caps. One of half a million on the streets on any given night. A rough estimate. Based on a point in time conducted biennially. Canceled this year, because of Covid. (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/21/us-homeless-population-street-count-pandemic?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) // “We won’t know where the pockets of the unsheltered population are, to bring services,” Lisa Glow, of Arizona Shelter Services, tells The Guardian. “We’ll have to rely on last year’s data.” // Too many Americans don’t want to know, Herres tells me. We blame the men and women who live on the streets. In tents. Along river beds. They drink. They drug. They rave and holler, captured by mental illness and alienation. There is truth in this, but it’s not the whole story. Just a common thread. // Herres tells me of a man with a pregnant wife. “He’s paying out of pocket to keep himself warm,” because there are not enough services, Herres says. “Is this his fault? No. Definitely not.” // It is our fault. America’s fault. Capitalism sets them up for failure. Says they only have value if they contribute to profit. Like unwanted by-products of chemical equations. Discarded. Dumped as effluent into the waterways. I keep coming back to this metaphor. To this reality. In America, the poor are the refuse of our economy. It’s disregarded remainders. // There is no good time to be homeless. No good time to be on the street. But until we move from the materialist mindset. From capitalism itself. Homelessness will remain with us. // (Photo from SHILO, Supporting Homeless Innovatively Loving Others, https://shilowebnj.wixsite.com/mysite/about)
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