Homelessness Meeting

I went to the meeting last night, mostly to watch Garberville sink to the lowest common denominator and see what could come of it. We made some great progress, we scheduled another meeting. What is this a government program?

As we listened, mostly to all the problems, it occurred to me that people really haven't taken the time to understand the people that live on our streets. Most are extremely dysfunctional, their bathroom habits are mostly the same as displayed in a mental ward, and they continually leave a trail of destruction and filth behind them.

I loathe to lump them all together, because some are pretty decent people, helpful and polite. Some have even done me favors and helped me out, those people are not the problem, but the mental cases and the thieves filter in amongst the simply disadvantaged. I won’t go into detail about the problems that some of them cause, because if you don’t take the time to know them, you won’t try to sort the good from the bad.

I have video’s of some of them shoplifting, very brazenly, like they have the right. One man from ***** park, came in every day, we charged his cell phone for him, no charge, it's the least that we can do for someone down on their luck. When someone pointed out that he was a thief, we went back through our store security videos and sure enough, he was a thief. In watching the video, he walked past a row of bright red radios. As he came to them, there were three on the shelf, after he passed, there were two, otherwise there was no indication that he took anything. He went to another corner and altered it for concealment. (Hey, I can’t reveal all of the security tricks that we have to use to catch thieves, but isn’t it sad that we have people in our town that think that somehow honest working people should provide for them.) We called the sheriff and they found him in ***** park proudly displaying his loot.

Now, the thing that runs through my mind is, do the people in the park know that he is a thief? Are they, compelled to rat him out, or are they complicit in the crime?

One lady got up and proudly stated the she bought the homeless a porta-potty for her birthday, and somewhat chided the townspeople for not providing toilet facilities for them. I mused about that, and remembered a time that we allowed the street people, and tourists, to use our store restrooms. Then the guy from up north came through town. He sued everybody that allowed people to use their restrooms for the general public that didn’t have a handicap accessible restroom. If you saw where our restrooms are, you wouldn’t question why we can’t make them accessible. By notice of our landlord, and by our own recognition of the problem, our restrooms are closed. Nobody is allowed to use them, that makes them equal access to all. No access! Seems like a shame, but I guess that it is fair.

The other thought that I had about the lady that proudly bought a porta-potty for the homeless. Does she know that she is in violation of a federal law, making it a Civil Rights Discrimination charge? For providing a restroom that discriminates against the handicapped? Quite a few of Garberville’s street people have been in wheelchairs, what do they do?

Anyway, I didn’t hear anything that I haven’t heard before. It was suggested that we all adopt a homeless person. I know that that might sound a little alien to you, but there was a young homeless person that came to town a few years ago that I could write book about. Myself and another fellow did adopt him. We eventually became his legal guardian. He was a paranoid-schizophrenic with a hopeless dependency to any mind-altering substance that would fit in his mouth. He proudly proclaimed that he was not a drug addict, because he would not stick a needle in his arm. He also proclaimed that he was not a bum, because he earned every penny that he ever had, which was true. He was too paranoid to seek help. He washed windows. As he would leave a job a person could see the other homeless gather around him and "borrow" his money from him. I got so I would let him out the back door with the hopes that he would have the time to get some use out of his money before it was extorted away.

Like I said earlier, I could write a book about this guy, our attempt to house him, his medical care, etc, but the long and short of it, I got an unsigned note in the mail, no return address, other than cancel stamp from some city in Oregon , that he had died.

They guy came and went, as a paraniod will do, I didn’t realize how close that I had gotten to him. It kind of took my heart away from getting too involved in helping the homeless, so I put it on the shelf for a while. Going to the Homeless meeting last night, reminded me of it all. I think that I probably won’t be attending any more meetings.