After I recovered from severe mental illness, I began to volunteer with Cincinnati’s homeless. I was curious, wanting to meet homeless people. During my own four years without an address, I was isolated. I never entered a shelter, visited a food bank, or asked for help. But there is great diversity in the homeless community. […]
The Dream of the Homeless
As of the time I am writing this, March 2016, I have been recovered from schizophrenia and healthy for over eight years. But every night, when I look out my bedroom window, I remember what it feels like to sleep outside on the ground in a dirty sleeping bag, homeless, and affected by untreated schizophrenia. […]
The Homeless Experience: Givers and Takers
As I interact with the homeless and formerly homeless, I find there is a certain stigma that I have always felt, but had difficulty expressing in words. There are so many “fake” homeless people who have muddied society’s whole perception of the homeless. The truth is that not all of the homeless are fake. Many […]
The Homeless Experience: A Revolving Door
During my first incarceration, in October of 2006, I was severely mentally ill. After being arrested for trespassing and jailed, I found myself with about thirty other women, locked in a pitch-dark room. Hours went by where we were moved from room to room, many without any light. There was no toothbrush or shower. Through […]
The Homeless Experience: Money Talk
One of the most surprising things I’ve learned about homeless people (and myself) is just how expensive they are. I always thought that homeless people were free, housing was too expensive, and the government had other priorities. The reason homeless people are expensive is because they circulate through jails and hospitals before landing back on […]
The Homeless Experience: Criminalization vs. Care
A couple days ago, I was invited to speak for a seminar held at a Lutheran Church. When I arrived at the church, the first thing I saw was a person in a thick sleeping bag resting beside the church’s front door. The weather was bitter cold, with strong, freezing wind. On seeing this person, […]
The Homeless Experience: Relationships
From a reader: When you were homeless, what were your interactions like with other homeless people? My response: The only other homeless people I saw living outside at that time were men. I had no interaction at all with any of them. However, I did develop friendships with a photographer who worked in the park […]
The Homeless Experience: “Hardcore” Homeless
I hear so often that about 40% of the mentally ill are “homeless” (1). But I think this statistic does not consider the full picture. First, there are homeless people who have had struggles or bad luck, and their resulting homelessness is a temporary situation. They want to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” overcome […]
The Homeless Experience: Finding Shelter in Bitter Cold Weather
It was especially cold today in Cincinnati, in the teens. While I lived outside in the churchyard in southern California, it never reached far below fifty degrees. The moderate weather made it possible for me to spend almost every night outside, from February of 2006 until March of 2007. This afternoon, I was in a […]
The Homeless Experience: Celebrating Christmas, 2014
While I was homeless, I never begged, I never pushed a shopping cart, and I never spent time with other homeless people. Had I not been so anti-social, I could have accepted help from a women’s shelter, and socialized with other homeless women. (Of course, had I not been mentally ill, I could have accepted […]
