Lance’s Urban Odyssey
By the conclusion of the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference in Washington D.C., my head was spinning. The conference was held at the Hyatt Regency near the Capital, a five-star conference center with high tech services, polished wooden banisters, escalators, a sun-lit atrium, elegant food served by suit-clad waiters, cloth napkins, and cheesecake. During the “networking” cocktail hour, I felt a surreal disconnection from the day to day realities of working with the homeless. Yes, the workshops were professionally done and full of valuable information, and the conference staffing and logistics were second-to-none. The caliber of participants created a network for me for years to come. Still, something was amiss inside of me and I felt that for all the information I had gathered on how to run a homeless program, I needed to be grounded in order for the relevance of everything to come together inside of me. I was not sure what was missing.
I often lose my grounding at La Puente Home, the shelter where I work in Alamosa, Colorado, and the best medicine seems always to be to take a time out and have lunch at the soup kitchen and visit with some of the guests. With that in mind, I decided that I would go spend a night at one of DC’s shelters. I didn’t want to take a bed from someone, so with that in consideration I chose to go to the large Franklin School Shelter for men, where they had 300 beds. I had learned that at many of the shelters it was necessary to get in line early in order to guarantee getting a bed. I just finished meeting with my senator and USDA officials; it was 4:00 in the afternoon, so the timing was right.
I put on my t-shirt, ball cap, jeans and sandals, and shoving my dress clothing in a box along with all the conference information, I headed on foot to the shelter. Along the way, I located a small shipping center and sent my box on home to Colorado. When I arrived at the Franklin School Shelter, I saw a gathering of men out front and a stream of men heading towards the back. I was sent around back, where a security guard went through my backpack and then searched me with his metal detector. I continued to wait in line, not sure if I would get in. I could see that the facility held crowded quarters and was very dirty. Many of the residents had been staying there for months on end, and to them the filthy walls and crowded conditions were a simple fact of life.
A shelter guest did the intake on me. He was kind, joking if I was “Lance Armstrong bike rider.” He skipped over most of the questions on the intake, having sized me up with his eyes. He seemed sure he knew how I might answer most of the questions, and I think he wanted to save me the intrusiveness of the intake. He shoved a 5-page handout of policies in front of me, had me quickly sign them, and then led me down a hallway to a room with 15 other men. He handed me a single white bed sheet and pointed toward the upper bunk against the wall. The city temperature had reached 96 degrees that day, and the shelter building had heated up like an oven. The room was sweltering, and I could hear my roommates complaining that it was going to be “another hot, unbearable night.” I climbed up on my bunk and fitted the sheet around the narrow vinyl mattress. I put my wallet, camera and cell phone in my pocket, and then strapped my backpack to the bed post for the only measure of security that I could think of.
I went outside to a patio where shelter residents were allowed to hang out when not in their bedrooms. Most of the men were sitting quietly by themselves, but a handful were conversing and sharing cigarettes. I had a few conversations while we waited for dinner to be served. A young woman walked in, and her looks commanded the attention of everyone. Dressed in tight-fitted clothing and sunglasses, she walked up to and put her arm around a gentleman; they turned around together and walked out. The meal was announced, and then served in waves. I was in the second seating. The entree was fried chicken and green beans. It tasted pretty good. Greasy and thirsty, I searched in vain for a napkin or cup to get a drink of water from the sink. The residents seemed pleased with the evening menu and didn’t seem to notice or care about the cockroaches scurrying about the floor or the mosquitoes descending upon us from the wide open windows.
After dinner I went to the bathroom sink to get a drink and noticed the poster on the wall warning residents of the symptoms of tuberculosis. Hearing a continual a continual chorus of coughing and hacking, I wondered if there had been any visits from the Department of Public Health to assess the health needs of the residents.
I spent the rest of the evening in the dining hall watching the movie “Hotel Rwanda” on a small 13 inch television. The tiny TV sat next to a larger, broken 24 inch TV, and both of those sat on top of an apparently broken 6 foot wide screen TV. I’ll allow the reader to reflect on the symbolism that experience held for me.
I went to brush my teeth before bed, waiting while several men in front of me finished using the three sinks to wash out their underwear and socks. The lights did not work in our bedroom. As evening fell the room darkened and my roommates began to crawl into their bunks. I laid down and started the profuse sweating that all of us would experience though the night. Many of the guys fell asleep right away, but I knew that for me it was going to be a long night. I started to get drowsy, yet once I began to relax, I was startled awake by loud violent coughing, or residents getting up and going to the bathroom with all the associated noises, or a staff member’s bawdy laughter and shouting echoing through the halls. Every 30 to 45 minutes an emergency vehicle, sirens blaring, would roar by, flashing its bright red strobe light upon the wall of the room.
It was during one of those flashing sprees that I noticed the wall adjacent to my upper bunk seemed to be moving. I got out my cell phone and opened it up, using the screen as dim flash light. Under the illumination, I could see the wall was teaming with bugs! Upon close examination, I recognized them as lice. I immediately began to itch all over. I pulled a used pill bottle out of my backpack and captured a couple of them. It was then I noticed tiny brown wafers gliding across my bed sheet. I open my cell phone again to illuminate this new creature. “Sick! Bed bugs,” I murmured under my breath. I went to capture one with the pill bottle, and after securing it, I felt a sharp pain on my ankle. I lunged to strike at whatever was biting me, and in the process the pill bottle fell to the floor behind the bed. I went down to retrieve it, but the gentleman on the lower bunk woke to see me rummaging under the bed. I told him I had dropped something, yet he insisted I was going through the possessions he kept there. I understood his perspective, so I stopped my pursuit of the pill bottle and climbed back in bed. I could not sleep. As I laid there, I felt welts raising up on my skin all over my body. I looked at my cell phone clock, and it was nearly 4:30 AM. Some of the men were already getting up to beat the rush to the showers, so I decided I would do the same.
I went to the main desk, and stood patiently while the staff member and security guard conversed and joked with each other. I knocked on the desk in an attempt to get their attention. The staff member frowned at me, annoyed at the interruption and barked, “What do you want?”
“Could I have towel to take a shower?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes as a declaration of my ignorance, and flicked his finger to gesture towards a nearby table. There sat a small stack of square paper towels. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I thought. I glanced back at the staff member to confirm that these were the towels designated for showering. He had re-engaged his conversation, so I used the distraction to take an extra square.
I scrubbed myself thoroughly, blotted my skin with the paper towel and began to dress. When I felt my camera in my pocket, it sparked me to try for a few pictures, even though I was told taking pictures was forbidden. I approached the stairwell that led down to the smoking patio. At first I thought I saw a small dog scurrying at the base of the stairs, but as it turned and started climbing toward me, I recognized it as “the mother of all rats!” I pulled my camera out, ready to shoot, but suddenly it ran back down the stairs out of sight. I turned to discover the security guard towering above me, his approach having scared the specimen away. The guard asked what I was doing, but when I shrugged in silence, he didn’t pursue the matter.
I was clear that it was time for me to leave, and I would simply walk the streets until sunrise. Other men were exiting the shelter already, so I joined them as they walked across the street to the park. The park accommodated a number of people who either slept on the benches or the ground. I noticed a fellow sleeping on the grass next to his wheelchair, which sported a bumper sticker declaring “Veteran Pride.” After my night at the Franklin Shelter, I understood why some folks would prefer to sleep in the park.
While I was paced the streets of DC in the early morning hours, I re-visited the term “homeless.” To have a home means so much more than having a roof over one’s head. Though this big city shelter was one answer to getting people off the streets, the men at the Franklin School shelter were still homeless. From my experience, the only piece of home that I felt inside the shelter was the casual camaraderie that existed between the resident men. The building, facility, and attitudes of staff did little to create a sense of home.
Hubert Humphrey once said, “The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped." Why, I wondered, does our nations’ capital have one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country, and facilities where homelessness seems institutionalized? As a country, we can do better, and from my perspective, the men at the Franklin School shelter definitely deserve more.
Since the date this article was written, Until We're Home, in conjunction with the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, successfully lobbied for the installation of industrial air chillers, which will hopefully bring the temperature throughout most of the shelter down to a more bearable level.