Can You Hear Me Now?

I am homeless. I have been homeless for a long time. It's been a yo-yo life, up and down, good and bad, homeless, not homeless, and back homeless again. And since I come to most people through the homeless door everything about me is perceived a certain way. They believe that the error of homelessness that made me homeless, this malfunction, must taint everything about me - what I believe, what I know, what I do and say. Everything about me is suspect. They take me with a large grain of salt, if they don't totally dismiss me.

But I am motivated to help, not for my own benefit, but for of others. The powers that be, though, can't bring themselves to see that.

Today's events at the Wednesday lunch for the homeless brought this all home again. The police are now making their presence at the lunch very well known.

Before the lunch starts, the homeless gather. Most times the church feeds between 200 and 250 people. Some of these people start camping outside the door at 9am. By 11:30am there's a fairly large crowd. And the crowd is usually so large that it causes problems for foot traffic on the fairly narrow sidewalk, but a little on the street as well. In the past, sometimes the police would usher the homeless back some. Yet no big deal was made of it.

There were other issues with the crowd of homeless folks outside the door as well. As the time grew closer to lunch, the homeless would grow increasingly tired and hungry and agitated. And since there was no crowd control outside the building, some less respectful homeless people would push themselves through the crowd to put themselves closer to the door, so to be some of the first served. The situation would sometimes become volatile. Pushing and shoving and cussing was the norm. It was not a good situation for the homeless to have to deal with every time they came into the church. Yet, this is how it went down every single week, year after year.

A few years ago I brought this to the attention of the guy mostly in charge the event - a wealthy man who spends most of his time in the church. He just shrugged his shoulders and said 'that's outside, there's nothing I can do about that.' (paraphrased)

Well, last week the church was talked to by the police about the situation. And today, with several police officers present, including the division captain, two members of the church worked outside, before the lunch began, directing the homeless to form an orderly line outside, off the sidewalk, and along the wall of the building. The homeless were very cooperative, everyone got along and the process of bringing the homeless inside ran smoothly.

When I had brought up the notion of controlling the crowd outside, what I said was quickly dismissed. I'd be amazed if the person I talked to about it even remembers. But now the city police are involved, and the church is eager to comply.

Another issue I brought up years ago, about the Wednesday lunch for the homeless, was concerning the issuing of tickets for the lunch. Usually, a place will issue tickets because they can not feed everyone who comes to their door, and so to avoid conflict, they only allow in those with tickets - and the homeless know this and deal with it. I'm not sure why this church started the ticket system, I was not around when it started, but it really didn't seem to make any sense considering the current state of the lunch - for years now, they haven't had to turn anyone away, they've always had enough food for everyone who wanted to eat - who showed up on time. There is another church that also feeds lunch to the homeless on Wednesday as well, which alleviates the demand somewhat.

For a homeless person to get a ticket for that lunch, they had to go to another homeless service provider, over a mile away, get in line, and wait til 10:30 am for the distribution of tickets. Then they'd have to walk back up to the church and wait in line for the church door to open at noon. To me this seemed like a big waste of time and energy. People with tickets always got to go in and eat before the others, but still, everyone got to eat.

When homeless people should be making the most of their time, this ticketing system seemed much more of a hindrance than a help. When I talked to the same person about this, as I did about the crowd, again he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "well, we like to be in control." Although I didn't quite understand what that answer meant, it was obvious they were not going to change, and where not going to give my input any serious consideration. Well, I saw today that they have done away with the ticket program.

I had done what I could to try and help them run their lunch program better. They chose to disregard what I said. What I had to offer was of no worth to them.

What can I do when people won't listen to me? when they discount or outright disregard my input, my efforts, my expertise on the subject of homelessness?

Not long ago, I was asked why I didn't speak up more in this church. Could it be because I know people won't really listen anyway?