Poverty and our unhoused in America is one of our greatest disappointments, as one of the richest countries in the world. Often, we speak of people experiencing these realities as if this is a new or limited reality. We don’t take into account the very real possibility that generational poverty is their circumstance. In this story, that is set on the streets of every city in America every day we meet a young woman in her early twenties speaking about her life as someone who has only known living on the street going back three generations. She talks about the assumptions that people have about people like her and the life that she is living. While she shares her childhood, day to day life, joys and struggles with us we are left with the feeling that all people are different. We all have our origin story that will never be identical to anyone else, and we all can learn from hearing someone else’s. She leaves us with the reminder that “normal” is only “normal” to other people like us and other people who have lived the way we have lived. A person experiencing generational poverty doesn’t miss having what they have never had or living a life they have never lived. In essence you can’t miss what you’ve never had access to. A simple story of treating every man, woman and child as if they are someone special. Accepting that we can all be different and still matter, whether our home is on a street or on a street corner, we absolutely matter.
Change for Change
The secret? People who are new to this don’t know what the secret is. The secret to making it, I don't know that it's so much a secret as much as its perseverance and hard work. That's the secret. When people see me out here or any of us out here sitting up against buildings with cardboard signs or standing in an intersection with our hand out, there's always unconscious judgement. We tend to have these conversations wondering how someone got to that point in their lives not realizing that some of us were born homeless. I have never in my 22 years of life lived in a house or an apartment that was paid for legally. I have never experienced having a home address that wasn't connected to one of the shelters downtown. I have never known what it feels like to not have everything that I own living in my backpack, ready to go at any moment. Ready to go because the seasons are changing, and I have to find someplace to keep warm to stay alive or ready to go because the police are messing with us and won't let us sleep in the park anymore. We understand you know. We understand that having a homeless encampment at the end of their street ain’t good for business. Brings down the neighborhood. Messes with the prices of your homes and let's be honest it scares the hell out of you. Maybe just maybe going to bed homeless holding a knife under your head and waking up homeless maybe that's just as scary.