Hello, today we look at what is called family. Each of us has a story or two about family. Each of has a family of birth, adoption, blending and they come with unique blessings and complications. What about a family that is knitted together on the street, with other homeless folks, is that a family unit? Not all are blessed to have family at their side as they journey through this life, life happens, families split. Sometimes life designs are new family into, even on the streets. But with no family recovery is manifold times more difficult, compassion needed.
Simply My Family, Please Welcome Them
I want to take a couple of minutes to quickly introduce to you some of my ‘friends,’ although we don’t really have friends out on the streets. The simple definition of friend, out here, one you can talk to in confidence or sleep next to for safety. These are like friends to me. I need for you, the reader, to understand the diversity of the stories out on the streets. If you do not begin to see the humanity behind the numbers, statics, the graphs and charts you will never get involved with solving a very solvable problem called homelessness.
Hey, hello, I am Deb, I don’t like to talk to anyone, I am hiding as best I can out here, there is really no safe place for me or my young daughter. There are no beds or shelters available, I have tried and tried, but no shelters are opening, no enough beds around here, it is so very hard. I get hit, I get hurt, I am so scared to go home, but I am not safe out here either. It seems to me that there is no hope or help or way to go for me anymore, should I even try anymore?
Hello, everyone just calls me Cowboy, it’s not my real name, but all else has been lost out here so why not my name as well. I have been out here, struggling and suffering and looking for help for a while now, not finding anything and truthfully, I turn to alcohol to just help cope. I served this nation honorably and came home messed up in head, heart and there in no help for me.
Hi guys my name is Tom, I am, or should I say was, a chef a good one at that, but I got hurt a while back and can’t work right now. I got something really hot in my eye and can’t see from that eye and now am not able to hold a job of any kind while they treat that eye. Workers Comp you say, it is not handed to you and to fight just to get medical is a battle of intense measures and then they may settle with you. So, I lost my job, my apartment, my income and possibility my sight which means I cannot do the job I love again. Yes, I am angry right now.
Hey, I am Mike, you really want to know why I am homeless and roam the streets, really? Most of you guys simply think that I am a bum, which I am not. My story is short and to the point. A few years back I get a phone and went through an experience that broke and from that I have not recovered. That phone call brought me news that there had been a very, very bad accident in which my wife and daughters were involved, none survived. I buried my family on the same, all of them, I have simply never recovered and there is no one to help me.
I am Joseph and I am just a kid and I have a life of hard knocks and I have family I have turned away from them and they from me and I do not care anymore. Yeah, I grew up in foster care and there was junk from my childhood but now I am out here and I can do whatever I want to do, but this homelessness is actually worse than being in foster care. See, here is my problems I do not make good decisions, I live moment to moments, bad decision to bad decision and I am trapped.
Will You Allow Family to Continue to Be Absent
OR
Will You Simply Help Us Find Family
