Homelessness and Mental Illness: A Comment on Nicholas Kristoff’s Blog
I sent the following letter to Mr. Nicholas Kristoff in response to his Feb. 9, 2014, story in the New York Times about mentally ill inmates in jails.
Dear Mr. Kristoff:
While you were describing the plight of these incarcerated people, I submit to you that the people illustrated in your story are the lucky ones.
As a coordinator of a food pantry in Ulster County, New York, I interact with mentally ill people every time the pantry is open.
It’s difficult for a mentally ill person to navigate in our culture. Many of them end up homeless. On January 31, 2014, we were out in 9 degree weather doing a Point in Time Census of homeless people for HUD. We went under bridges, behind the mall in Kingston, to the cemetery, into abandoned buildings, etc.
Not everyone who is homeless is standing on the street with a sign and a cup. Every time I walk down a street now anywhere, I see inconspicuous and unnoticed homeless people. The sidewalks and streets of America have become one large ward for the mentally ill.
Homelessness accompanies a number of mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Mentally ill persons have a tendency to become chronically homeless. According to a HUD definition, a person who’s been homeless at least 4 times in the past 3 years or who has been homeless for more than 1 year, is considered homeless. It’s believed by MentalIllnessPolicy.org that there are over 250,000 seriously mentally ill homeless persons in our country.
The bottom line here is that many people are living on the streets coping not only with the problems of homelessness but also the mental illness they are afflicted with. While a seriously mentally ill person is trying to survive on the streets dealing with things like dumpster diving for food, s/he is also dealing with being robbed, beaten, etc. And, finally, s/he is not being treated for disease.
My conclusion: better to be in jail.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Everytime I Walk Down a Street Now, Anywhere, I See, Inconspicuous and Unnoticed, Homeless People.
One young man was allowed to come into the pantry and take pretty much whatever he wanted when he shopped because he was so far in another world that we couldn’t communicate with him. This was a very sad situation for me. This young man, blonde, appeared to be in his late 20’s and had a beautiful face and demeanor. About the closest we could come to describing his hair was dreadlocks.
His mother also shopped at the pantry. Sometimes, when he was off his meds, he was just so far gone that we couldn’t talk with him. Somehow, she would get him back on the meds and he would be easier to communicate with. We went through these cycles with him. He would go along for several months on his medication and then quit taking it.
According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, 25 per cent of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. These mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in our country according to the NIMH.
Research tells me that over 40% of the homeless population includes people with disabilities. My observations of shoppers in the pantry seems to confirm this statistic which I got from disabilityscoop.com.
The disabled homeless person appears to live below the poverty line.
That’s because those receiving SSI payments are really getting a very small amount of money each month. There’s just not enough money for a person to live on if s/he includes a rent payment. There’s also the employment factor for those with disabilities. There are fewer jobs and the jobs pay less. The old term “last hired, first fired” applies here.
The next post will include a copy of a letter to Nicholas Kristoff.
After that post, we’ll be returning to the pantry room with several posts about the pantry itself.
Thanks for reading this blogged book.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
They Live Under Bridges, In Abandoned Buildings, In Cemeteries, Behind Shopping Centers And Malls
Homelessness accompanies a number of mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Mentally ill persons have a tendency to become chronically homeless. It’s believed by MentalIllnessPolicy.org that there are over 250,000 seriously mentally ill persons in our country.
This statistic is very telling. What it says:
there are more homeless people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses than there are people receiving care for their diseases.
To understand this, think of the streets as a large ward for the mentally ill.
The bottom line here is that many people are living on the streets coping not only with the problems of homelessness but also the mental illness they are afflicted with.
Releasing patients out of hospitals saves money for the mental health system but it shifts the costs over to jails and prisons which are much more expensive.
While a seriously mentally ill person is trying to survive on the streets dealing with things like dumpster diving for food, s/he is also dealing with being robbed, beaten, etc. And, finally, s/he is not being treated for disease.
We had several of these very ill people who visited our pantry regularly. as long as they were not physically aggressive, they were treated with dignity and shopped however they wanted.
Not All Homeless People Sit On The Sidewalk With Signs And a Cup – Not In Woodstock, Anyway
It’s estimated that 10% of households visiting pantries are homeless. Most shelter clients have no other place to live. Many of them have jobs but simply don’t make enough to pay rent. It’s estimated that 24% of soup kitchen clients have no home.
Occasionally this gets a little complicated. One shopper came into the pantry as a homeless person. “I live in my car” he said. (How? Here it is February and the temperature goes below freezing every night).
“My wife is pregnant. We’ve got her in a women’s shelter. I’m working 2 jobs to get the money together for the baby.”
SHELTERED HOMELSSS are those living in a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including shelters, transitional housing and hotels/motels paid for by charitable organizations or by Federal, State, or local Government programs.
UNSHELTERED HOMELESS are those individuals or families living with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designated for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings including cars, parks, campgrounds, abandoned buildings, bridges, etc.
CHRONIC HOMELESS are those who have been homeless at least 4 times in the past three years. Or, they have been homeless for more than a year.
Thanks for reading this blog/book.
In the next few posts we’ll examine the plight of the mentally ill homeless persons.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Meet a Few of Your Woodstock Neighbors
One shopper always visits the pantry without shoes. “Take these bags and wrap them around your feet.” instructs Guy Oddo each time he comes by.
At first, we were made uncomfortable by this situation. However, over time, most of us adjusted to Shoeless Joe’s situation and realized this is just (ho hum), another pantry event. Once we became more comfortable with the situation, he did too.
The female homeless shopper is in a special category because most of them take such care with their skin and hair. Where do they shampoo their hair?
And, of course, the homeless family is, for me, so tragic. It’s hard enough for a homeless man or woman to keep clean but what about the kids, the baby? How do they do it? And, yet, the families come into the pantry looking the best they possibly can to shop for their three-day supply of food.
We had one family, a mother, father, 3 children, who lived in a small camper throughout one summer. They were living at a campground and doing their weekly shopping at the pantry.
One week the mother related: “I’m really stressed out today. I don’t know where we’re going to go. We got evicted because I don’t have the money to pay the camping fee. The lady next to us gave me $5 for gas because we had to leave.”
I don’t know what happened to them. I never saw them again.
Thanks for reading this blog. There are many, many stories to share here.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
Everyone is Different – at Least in Woodstock, Anyway: 26 Reasons For Homelessness
For a time, our trusted Gene Huckle was even homeless. His partner, Nancy died and her children didn’t want him in the house he and Nancy had lived in together for many years. He fought them for over a year with a lawyer, several trips to court and the whole enchilada. He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. Gene eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
if you’ve seen one homeless person, you’ve seen one homeless person.
They come to be homeless for many reasons:
abusive relationship
addiction
being kicked out of home or feeling unwanted at home
decline in available public assistance
domestic violence
eviction
family breakdown
gambling
home foreclosure
lack of affordable child care for low income families
lack of affordable health care
lack of availability of suitable housing
lack of employment opportunities
lack of ongoing support services
loss of benefits
mental illness
overcrowding
poor or no communication tools to include cell phone, computer access, physical address for receiving mail
poor credit
poor or no transportation
release from jail/prison
release from military service
sexual abuse
significant illness in the family
substance or drug abuse
lack of affordable childcare for poor working families
Thank you for reading this post. In the next post, we will learn about yet another homeless person and a homeless family.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Volunteers Make Our Pantry Special
Arlen arrived the next day and proceeded to prepare a carload of fresh veggies and fruits for the shoppers. That day was such a gift! Our shoppers went home with perfect produce: no yellow leaves, no soft spots, no carrot tops. Everything was ready to prepare…just as if it had been bought at Gracie Balducci’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. WOW!
On top of that, Arlen conversed with the shoppers in their native language: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Haitian, Creole, Esperanto.
From that day on, whenever Arlen was in Woodstock, he worked in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry. He made us all feel our pantry was special because we’re a vegetarian agency. Arlen is a vegan and absolutely will not touch anything animal based.
So how is Arlen homeless? Well, he moves around a lot and has a selection of friends who host him when he’s in their area. When Arlen arrives, there’s always a flurry of activity because he participates in every area event. When we had our first festival fundraiser, Arlen was on hand to help put up the tents, keep the grounds clean, etc. He offers the same enthusiasm to his hosts. Arlen makes himself an integral part of any place he stays.
And, Arlen truly is a part of any place he’s visiting. When Holly, his Woodstock hostess, put her house on the market to move to Rosendale, Arlen was upset. “Holly’s got her house for sale and we’re moving to Rosendale” he said with feeling. Wherever Holly goes, Arlen is going, too. I’m sure that, although Arlen will miss Woodstock, he and Rosendale will love each other.
Thanks for reading this post. Tomorrow’s post will focus on yet another homeless person we know as well as some of the causes of homelessness.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock
Meet a Special Woodstock Resident
In the last post, I introduced you to Fancy Pants.
After Fancy Pants explained about his kitchen being in his shirt pocket, we tried to keep individual serving cups of applesauce, jars of peanut butter, boxes of crackers, individual serving cans of food with pop top lids, cereal bars, etc. The HPNAP people made sure we had access to fresh fruits and vegetables that can be eaten raw such as apples, blueberries, apricots, carrots, celery, bell peppers, strawberries.
Some of these homeless shoppers were shy about their situation and didn’t want the world at large to know about their lifestyle. Unsuspecting congregational volunteers in the pantry often urged the homeless shoppers to select food which they couldn’t prepare. Rather than reveal their living situation to the volunteers, the homeless people would take the food.
Occasionally, we found it on the ground outside the pantry at the end of the day. Other times, they took the food to friends with kitchens.
I finally made the decision that our volunteers in the pantry room needed to be a permanent team of people who would know the shoppers more intimately than someone who just showed up once or twice every year or two. This was a real turn off to some of the congregational volunteers and the congregations themselves and I was criticized throughout the community for it. However, I felt it was necessary for the dignity of the shoppers. This was just one more in a long line of decisions that made me no friends in the community. However, the volunteers who worked in the pantry on a daily basis understood.
Not all homeless people shopped at the pantry weekly like Fancy Pants. Arlen came to our pantry periodically when he was in town. Arlen was a very well educated gray haired gentleman with a poly tail.
“Can I volunteer at your pantry tomorrow? I know about food and can help you” Arlen asked politely one summer day as he visited our pantry for the first time.
We’ll learn more about Arlen in the next post. Please join in.
Thanks for reading this blogged book.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
The Homeless Shopper – Part 1: How Do You Cook Without a Kitchen?
THE HOMELESS SHOPPER
“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altamirano-Segura
This post is the first of 8 focusing on homelessness.
Woodstock has more than its share of homeless people. One reason, I feel, is the community has a way of respecting or not respecting a person regardless of whether or not a roof is involved. Some of my absolute favorite shoppers were homeless shoppers who visited the pantry weekly.
One of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry’s regular homeless shoppers came into the pantry one day during a lull and taught me the rules of feeding the homeless. I suppose he was tired of coming to the pantry and not finding enough food to take away with him because Fancy Pants visited the pantry weekly and depended on what he found in this small room for his food. He was a very upbeat guy who saw as much positive in life as he could in spite of the fact that he spent the nights of his life on the floor of the bathroom in Town Hall. The place had no heat so he definitely was cold in the winter. However, even with the cold, hard floor, he was protected from the rain, snow, sleet.
His girlfriend came to the pantry with him each week. They made a date of it. He really loved her. This beautiful woman had a multiple personality disorder and was a different person with each pantry visit. And, of course, that was exactly what Fancy Pants loved about her.
Fancy Pants kept himself well hidden behind a lot of facial hair and baggy clothing. It was definitely hard to tell what he looked like underneath all the costumery. However, try as he might, he simply could not hide his intelligence, his outgoing attitude toward the world he lived in, and his love of life in general.
“The dietary needs of the homeless are different from those of people in all other categori
