Here I am, starting over, I say to myself as I step off the Greyhound bus. I have no job. I have no money and no place to go. The place to start I decide would be to make some money. I grab a newspaper and find no jobs that I qualify for. It might be a job that I can easily do. But because I am not bilingual, I don’t get the job. As my job search continues, let’s say I find someone that will hire me, then I tell them that I am homeless and they start thinking: If he is homeless, how well rested will he be when he comes to work? Will he have on clean clothes? How will he shower? He makes the decision that I’m not such a good candidate for the job.
Then I decide that the first thing that I need to do is find a place to live. Problem solved! So I go to the nearest mission. Yes, they do have a program that will give me a fresh start. I will have a place to shower and rest so I can put in a good day’s work. “Great!” I say to myself. I go and sign up for the help, but there is a problem. I don’t drink and I don’t use drugs, so I’m told that their programs are designed to help those who have drinking problems and you don’t qualify. I go all over town going just to hear, “I’m sorry you don’t qualify.”
What can I do? Where can I go for help? Should I start drinking and doing drugs so I can qualify for help? That can’t be the answer. If I do that then I can’t get the job. They don’t want an addict or a drunk working for them.
I need money. I say to myself, what can I do? And as time goes on you find you will do just about anything that your conscience will allow. So you decide to try panhandling. I make up a sign and go out with it and find 15 other sign holders on every block. There are so many that the people just walk by! It is so overwhelming; they don’t know how to help. I can’t afford to help them. Is it their fault that their lives are like that? And without stopping and finding out your story and seeing that you are clean and sober, they just walk on by shaking their head, saying what a shame.
Homelessness in America has changed over the last few years, it is an ever-increasing a problem that has no easy answer. But something needs to be done. It’s not just drinking or drugs that are the blame for homelessness, I know a homeless woman who has her master’s degree in math, who had a good life, till the day of the accident that took the lives of her family. Is it her fault that she is homeless?
Another homeless man I know was a professor at the University of Texas in Austin.
During my time of being homeless, just trying to find a safe, dry place to rest, all the time I’m woken up by the police and told I can’t sleep here. I just ask the simple question. Where can I? How can I?
Johnny Williams is a Street Roots vendor.