Homelessness Sucks

It's 4am and I just had a homeless person evicted from my porch.  First time in over four years of living at this address.  I feel bad because the man was sleeping rather soundly in a tidy arrangement of blankets and tarps, trying not to disturb anyone or be a burden, though his snoring was so loud it woke me up on the other side of a closed window.

At first we thought it was the cat, not entirely out of the question if you know the beast, but time and volume proved otherwise. After 30 minutes of internal debate with myself and my half-awake wife, I called the police and guiltily requested an eviction.

As with any temperately weathered city we have our share of homeless and destitute.  A few are junkies, a fair number are psychotic or delusional, but most are harmless in my experience.  It is hard to witness their suffering, even on the best of days, and one learns to live with a certain hardness of the heart.  Unfortunately my porch is neither a shelter nor a refuge.  There is also the question of safety and sanitation.  If the adjacent Catholic and Anglican cathedrals actively evict homeless sleepers from their porches, why shouldn't I?

The best I can do is hope he finds himself help at the new Bud Clark Commons or one of the other homeless shelters and kitchens down in Oldtown.  If you're unfamiliar with BCC, it's a fabulous piece of architecture that assembles a shelter, transitional housing, and social services all in one building. The idea is provide a unified center to deliver basic daily needs (showers and laundry), access to social services like mental health and addiction treatment, and 130 studio apartments for those ready to move off the street.  If you weren't aware of the building's purpose, it would be hard to mistake it for anything other than one of the swank new office or condominium projects going up in the neighborhood.  Just blocks aware are other shelters run by the Catholic Church and other nonprofits, all are well used and overburdened given the lines one sees on the sidewalks.

I happen to know at least one person who resides at one of the shelters in Oldtown.  A pleasant and gentle man who cleans my office but has obviously known hard living in another life.  I don't ask about his past, but am happy to see he's got a future.  Let's hope there are more stories like his.