Homelessness: no one gets there without help

"God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes 'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues..." (Everlastʻs What itʻs like, from their 1998 album, Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, Universal Music Publishing).

I make no secret that at this time, my kids and I live in that place called "the hood."

What you have seen on television pales in comparison.

The shopping cart, the trash cans, the ugliness - this is the actuality, the reality. Unless you know what it is like to have to deal with it, you actually know nothing.

Namely not how a whole lot of people ended up in a situation where they find themselves without a roof over their heads. What we are shown on television only shows the blight, but never the underlying causes for anyone to end up pushing an over-filled shopping cart with items that you or I would think was merely trash.

At one time, because I see it everyday in this town, at least in this part of it, I found out that the homeless here in this town, in every town, dig through the trash, but it is not what anyone wants to believe it is about (theyʻre hungry) - too many people are more busy trying to figure out how to make them leave.

And leave without finding out why they are in that predicament.

I get it - people DO end up homeless because they end up addicted to drugs, but, people also end up homeless because they were being trafficked, were being used as drug mules (even minors), were being beaten, robbed, tortured, then abandoned.

It is NOT always being addicted to dope. It could be a whole lot of things that happened that no one considers.

It could have been that they lived in a home with a violent person, or perhaps an entire group of people who perpetrated heinous acts onto the persons of others...and just because they could.

No one ever thinks or believes that the reason for a person ending up without a roof over their heads is not because of addiction.

What else no one ever thinks about is exactly whose addiction is creating havoc for anyone else, but namely the people who they live with.

When it comes down to it, we can say all we want about homelessness, about addiction and about how people end up living in places like the one depicted in the photo.

Talking about it, and studying it, and then actually being able to do more about it than hand out free food, clothing and school supplies, are two very different things.

We feed the homeless way more than we ought to - a majority of them want the food, but, what they will not eat is what a whole LOT of those care packages put together by food banks contain, which is a whole lot of stuff that contains way too many things that we would not even feed our dogs, let alone another human being.

"But theyʻre homeless and should be thankful for anything they are given to eat...they need not be that choosy," to which I am always replying to someone with a decent car, who lives in one of the towns on either side of Pomona, and who has no idea what it is like to have to go without their meds, let alone the food that will make anyone on those meds lots sicker than they already are (diabetes is a HUGE issue with the homeless population - I know, because I ask the "neighbors")- that they ought to actually consider that they are very lucky that they, themselves, did not grow up knowing what it is like - there are children who know way too well.

"But theyʻre homeless, and there are a lot of jobs available to anyone - you just have to apply ..." and then what? Magickally the issue is over with? Just because they are homeless, it does not mean that they are that way because of drugs or crime - it NEVER occurs to all those who want the homelessness issue to be made right that a WHOLE LOT OF THOSE PEOPLE ON THE STREETS ARE, THEMSELVES, VICTIMS OF HEINOUS AND DISGUSTING CRIMES...but all you see are these dirty humans who should have known better.

I think my favorites are the ones who talk about the prostitutes, as though they might not be witnessing more of my "neighbors at work" doing something OTHER THAN THEIR HOMEWORK...and I am NOT talking about COLLEGE HOMEWORK, either.

Yet, no one thinks that way. No one thinks that way because too many people have been conditioned to be tired of the guy at the red lights, at the freeway offramps, on the side of the road, sometimes in the middle of the road during broad daylight, naked and yelling into traffic - because they are not able to get their meds for their mental conditions. Are those the drugs and the prostitutes you are talking about? Or, are they the ones that you think everyone on this side of town does?

This photo was taken by me last week.

I do not know this personʻs name - I just know that he is not dangerous, and neither is he mentally ill.

I know this because I do a whole LOT of work with my friendʻs non-profit organization, and I know this because of the years that were spent with my parentʻs church where we went out into the most dangerous neighborhoods just to make sure that kids were eating and being taken care of, and that old people were doing the same.

But, whenever we would happen upon people like this guy in the photo, someone whose name I do not know, but someone who, no matter what, asks anyone passing by NOT for money, but how their day is, and if they might not know where anyone is hiring for what he does.

It is an executive position that he is always asking about - and unfortunately, he is out of luck, all because he does not have a "permanent" address, as opposed to the only one that he does have at this moment - his former employerʻs home address.

That used to be a thing that you could do, but, anymore now, people are worried about their money and property - I get it, because I used to also own a home...but I rarely recall myself being so...horrifically evil...about the people who dot the streets these days, even in the best neighborhoods.

It is not always because of dope - sometimes, it is because of a job loss (which a whole lot of people in my age range are very familiar with lately - not that we are not qualified, but that we are too qualified. I miss the days where my generation were able to actually try the job out ....not anymore), sometimes, as was in my case, it was because of domestic violence.

No one thinks that way.

People tend to think in the manner that is "protect my stuff from that dirty filthy homeless person" not realizing that they might actually know the person who they are saying nasty things about. It happens more than you might think it does.

In fact, the photos above are just down the street from where I live. On either side of where I live are two towns that tend to chase these people down, into this town, as though this is the graveyard for the living.

It seems that way sometimes.

The cops donʻt really do much, because they are not allowed to.

Figure that one out .

They are not allowed to do what they can to better the community, but at the same time, they come running to the scene fast when it happens to be a report of a break in, and a break in that may have happened hours ago.

This is how much they care - and this is not the only place this happens.

It happens all over Los Angeles county, as though this is the dumping ground for other countiesʻ homeless population.

What the reality is, is that regardless of what your job is, your income level, where you used to live, who your friends or family are - no one really knows how people end up in the dire circumstances they find themselves in.

The hardest thing that this minister hears, almost everyday, is that a mom with kids is struggling to pay the rent on her daily unit, and she has to choose between feeding two small kids, or feeding two small kids outdoors.

And no - no it is not always because the mom did drugs, and if she did, she started doing them when she ended up in a position where her emotional self was so overwhelmed that she did dope to escape.

No it does not always happen that way...the dope thing - I am living proof.

I was abused.

Not only by my kidsʻ dad, but by more than only that one person. When you have lived your life trying to figure out how to just stay clear of the things that your litle kid ears heard, and then you have to protect that inner child who is still trying to figure things out, things could get very ugly and violent.

In fact things were very ugly and violent for more than two decades. When I finally had enough I filed divorce. When he would not leave it caused it that I would be, along with my kids, out of the only home I had since weʻd lost our house - my parentsʻ house.

That was three years ago. I am able to talk about it now. The pain no longer feels as bad as does the mixed emotions I feel when I see some of my "neighbors" struggling, with their carts some of them, and here I am....eating, living indoors, and even though my kids and I do so by the very skin of our teeth at times, together we manage.

The Trap House

I ended up at what my kids referred to as being "the trap house," which is where drugs are made and used, 24 hours a day. The way that things happen in places like that one is simple - it is not that they are allowed to do the drugs, but rather that the places which put people in programs might not know that their programs are the reason why places like the one in the photo of the shopping cart exist.

This same thing happens with single mothers who end up in places like it - they had no place else to turn to, their family believed the abuser, their family turned their backs on them because of the abuser....I could go on and on, but I wonʻt.

I survived abuse, and my abuser died in 2020. I received word about it from a former neighbor who worked with the local homeless programs.

The person who made it so that I would have ended up in the trap house, through no fault that was mine or my kidsʻ, ended up being housed someplace safe...because he was sick, and he played the victim very well, and he made it that everyplace I went, people knew my name, and not in a good way.

Things are far different now.

I am not stating where I live, and neither what it looks like, because it is not any prettier than the photos - it is not pretty at all. People are constantly fighting. Women are constantly screaming at each other in the middle of the night. Children cry out in the back parking lot, sometimes late at night, and other times early in the morning.

And speaking of parking lots out back - this one is right outside my kitchen window.

That back lot ought to be actually called "the international marketplace of illicit and ill gotten gains and prostitution," because at all hours of the day and night there is trading going on...of money and drugs and women who are so high out of their minds, on God knows what or for how long.

No one stops it.

PD is ALWAYS bothering the guy sleeping ...the guy is never seen at the trap house. The guy is always only seen doing what he calls "urban camping" and always moves his stuff three hundred yards from the light....something about it being too close to La Verne.

Claremont has bushes and big parking lots and the homeless people along Foothill Blvd in that town are not as nasty. All they do is sleep.

I get that it is an eye-sore.

I, myself, am sick of looking at it, am sick of always being on high alert, and it is NOT the homeless people who scare me - at all.

It is the criminal element.

And sadly, sometimes, it is PD.

But ALL the time, it is people who need to be indoors.

We ought to all be indoors.

All of us.

The ones who continue the horrid cycle through manipulating the programs that are meant to help them get out of that lifestyle are the very ones who are a step ahead of the programs and have found a way to benefit from it.

No social worker can handle these people.

I know plenty of them who have already been to the place with the shopping cart, and all of them have said the same thing - that it is a symbol and a product of a system that seems to be broken intentionally, but they are not allowed to say so. They have to be creative in the way that they say what they say.

I do not.

I am who they call when they, themselves, need an ear, need some words of wisdom, hope and most of all, safety. They leave the place with the shopping cart exhausted, every time. Some of them call me in tears, glad to know that there is Clergy somewhere nearby, because God and Goddess both know it is needed here, dearly.

Not every homeless person who you meet got that way because of drugs. I will be the last one to state or even believe that among our homeless population that they are not or cannot be dangerous - the homeless people here in Pomona, the majority of them, I have found, are mentally or emotionally ill, some of them so disturbed that they cannot find themselves in the manner that they are in that moment.

Some of them are so incapacitated that it astounds me that they are still alive - and yes I have fed them, have made sure that somehow an abulance came to their aid, or simply just said good morning to them when I take my walk along Foothill Boulevard.

If there is one tiny ray of hope, it is that there are still people here who actually give a damn.

I Am one of them.

That I have lived in a place like the one with the shopping cart amazes a whole lot of people, even myself.

But, I find at this time, while my kids and I search for a kinder place to live, the one thing that living in a place like the one with the shopping cart, and hell yeah, Pomona, CA, is that it builds resillience, and that one thing that not a whole lot of people on this planet can truly claim having.

A clue.

And a sense of knowing what other people go through everyday, even if they are not the reason why they are in the predicament they are in.

Been there.

Done that.

Donʻt judge - you really have no idea what you are looking at, only that it bothers your sense of what the world ought to be, rather than what it really is.

#PTownCA