Wednesday, February 10, 2016 // The Statement
4B
Editor’s note: The names of some individuals
have been changed to protect their anonymity,
denoted with an asterisk.
“Rain is no respecter of persons
the snow doesn’t give a soft white
damn Whom it touches.”
- e.e. Cummings
Mary*, who for soon-to-be obvious reasons
asked that I not use her real name, sits cross-
legged on a sheet of cardboard in between two
large brick buildings in downtown Ann Arbor.
Her face is sandpapery from the wind, with a
burgundy smear beneath each eye. She says each
breath feels like Altoids chased with ice water.
She’s swaddled in many layers of coats and
blankets. In one hand she holds a plastic coffee
cup half-empty with bills. In the other, a sign
that reads, in block letters, “PREGNANT AND
HOMELESS.”
“I left my home, my family and my teaching
job,” she tells me. “My husband is very abusive.”
Mary took a bus to Ann Arbor a few months
ago from another Michigan city, she says, after a
particularly brutal episode left her with broken
facial bones and a broken sense of safety. She’s
lived on the streets ever since.
“I spent three days in the hospital. He beat
the hell out of me — he’s been doing it for six
and half years, but this time it was really bad. He
spent one night in jail, because he’s a cop,” she
says. “It’s pathetic that I’m safer out here in the
middle of the Michigan winter than back with
him.”
Food isn’t an issue — her sign seems to
inspire generosity in passersby, who bring her
sandwiches and cups of soup. Most nights, she
can panhandle enough to get a cheap motel room,
or crash, for a small fee, with an acquaintance.
But one or two nights a week, she and a few of
her friends crawl into sleeping bags and huddle
together behind a church. She’s on the waitlist at
a battered women’s shelter, because she doesn’t
want to sleep in the same shelter as “strange”
men.
“I won’t have a baby on the streets, so
hopefully I can figure things out,” she says.
Pending some atmospheric disaster, Ann
Arbor will always be cold in the winter. Some
winters are so brutal that, such in 2014, the
University cancels classes. Others, like the
current one, are like autumns with a dusting
of snow. But at night, when the thermometers
plummet, when fingers begin to resemble frozen
shrimp, and when the wind slaps you across the
face, the cold transitions from uncomfortable to
unsafe.
Pending some societal miracle, Ann Arbor
will always have a homeless population. The
more visible individuals, the ones panhandling
or selling newspapers on downtown streets,
often go unnoticed as fire hydrants. Others
you’ll never see. Suffice to say, being homeless
is never easy. But in the winter, the struggles
are intensified. There’s the struggle to stay
warm, of course. But there’s also the struggle
of local resources to provide for individuals
in need, the struggle of individuals to balance
self-sufficiency and self-preservation, and their
combined struggle against social and economic
forces that can feel as cold and oblivious as the
air outside.
If you’re going to discuss homelessness in Ann
Arbor, you have to begin with the Delonis Center,
a local homeless shelter. An official-looking
building, it stands on the corner of Huron and
South Ashley right across the street from LIVE
nightclub. I met with Ellen Schulmeister, the
executive director of the Delonis Center, to get
a better sense of the problems of the homeless
in the winter. She began by correcting my
terminology.
“It’s ‘being homeless in the winter,’ not ‘the
problems of the homeless in the winter,’ ” she
explained. “It’s an experience in your life. It’s
not who you are.”
The distinction between the two terms
reveals the contrasting ways in which we talk
about homelessness. In his book “Making Room:
The Economics of Homelessness,” economist
Brendan O’Flaherty describes the evolution
of American discourse on homelessness. In
Britain, he notes, “homeless” has historically
been a residency classification — for whatever
period one is without a home, one is homeless. In
the United States, on the other hand, “homeless”
typically describes a certain scruffy lifestyle —
panhandling, transience, reliance on charity
— regardless of residency. The United States
government switched to a British definition in
1984, but, as O’Flaherty notes, “most Americans
feel comfortable about labeling someone
homeless without having to know where they
slept last night.”
In 2014, the number of individuals classified
as “literally homeless” — sleeping in the streets
or in shelters — was estimated to be 49,895,
according to Michigan’s Campaign to End
Homelessness. The total number of individuals,
which included “those living with friends
or family due to a housing crisis and (who)
are facing immediate eviction with no other
resources,” was estimated at 97,642. Racial
discrepancies are stark — African Americans
make up 14 percent of the total population of
Michigan, but are 52 percent of the homeless
population.
Delonis is the largest shelter in Washtenaw
County, and sees the most individuals — 1,459
according to their latest annual report. It’s a
shelter with services, providing medical and
economic support and stable residency, as
opposed to a mission-style shelter, which offers
night-to-night rooms. It only services single
adults — two other local shelters, Alpha House
and Ozone House serve families and children
respectively. Delonis has room for 75 residents,
but during the winter it operates as a warming
center for those without a place to sleep at night.
“In the summertime, being homeless is
difficult at best,” Schulmeister said. “In the
wintertime, it’s life-threatening.”
To get a better idea of the dangers of winter
homelessness, I spoke on the phone with Dr.
James O’Connell, president of Boston Health
Care for the Homeless Program, who’s been
caring for people experiencing homelessness in
Boston since 1985. To my surprise, he said it’s the
comparatively mild weather that can prove the
deadliest, because individuals assume that they
can tough it out.
“When the temperature starts dropping at
night early in the winter, people are particularly
vulnerable, because it’s still cold enough to get
severely hypothermic and frostbitten,” he said.
In fact, the worst case of hypothermia Dr.
O’Connell ever saw was on an October night
in Boston when the temperature was about 30
degrees. The patient was found with a core body
temperature of 72 degrees, and had to be put on
cardiopulmonary bypass. The threshold body
temperature for hypothermia is 95 degrees.
Most states have “danger to self” laws, which
allow the police to take someone to the hospital
if they believe that person poses an imminent
threat to their safety. Michigan’s law decrees
that “If a peace officer observes an individual
conducting himself or herself in a manner
that causes the peace officer to reasonably
believe that the individual is a person requiring
treatment … the peace officer may take the
individual into protective custody and transport
the individual … for examination … or for mental
health intervention services.”
These laws operate in an ethical gray area,
where the police are forced to balance the
civilian’s right to autonomy and the state interest
in preserving life, particularly when individuals
are sleeping outside in freezing weather. Dr.
O’Connell had mixed feelings about these laws.
“The bar is often set so high that we often err
on respecting someone’s autonomy and possibly
allowing them to die,” he said.
The imminent threats of hypothermia and
frostbite — which can be exacerbated by the
Down and Out in Ann Arbor
An investigation into homelessness in winter
numbing effects of drugs and alcohol — are
coupled with the long-term effects of exposure.
Weakened immune systems are susceptible to
flus and pneumonia, which are more common
in the winter, and easy to catch if sleeping in a
crowded shelter. According to Dr. O’Connell, the
leading cause of death among those living and
sleeping on the street is not hypothermia but
cancer, followed by heart and lung disease, all
brought on by harsh lifestyle and deadly without
stable medical care. As for being pregnant while
living on the street, Dr. O’Connell said it was
“dangerous and to be avoided at all costs, during
any season.”
Clearly, medical problems are an effect of
homelessness. But the causes of homelessness
are, contrary to popular belief, primarily
economic. To be sure, Delonis sees many clients
with debilitating physical and mental illnesses,
addictions and unsafe familial environments.
But at the risk of sounding obvious, the main
problem when experiencing homelessness is
that you don’t have a home, and the main reason
people don’t have a home is that they can’t afford
one.
Homelessness has not always been a position
of economic despair. Peter H. Rossi, in his
book “Down and Out in America,” explains
the shifts in the economics of homelessness in
America. In between the Civil War and World
War II, the homeless were primarily migrant
laborers who moved from city to city seeking
seasonal, unskilled labor. Theses laborers
were so prevalent that by the late 19th century,
most major cities had a Skid Row, a specialized
neighborhood that provided cheap housing and
amenities for the workers. Permanent residents
had little affection for the migrants — Skid Rows
were also designed to keep them out of sight,
and “transient workers were characterized
as tramps, hoboes and bums and were often
warned to leave town when there was no
demand for their labor,” Rossi writes. But they
were still a major labor force.
By the 1940s, technological advancements
in industry, agriculture and construction had
eliminated the need for massive amounts
of cheap, temporary labor. The homeless
population became less of a workforce and more
of what Karl Marx called a lumpenproletariat —
an unorganized, unemployable class that exists
on the fringes of society.
In the absence of temporary paid labor,
many individuals experiencing homelessness
are stuck in a vicious cycle. Without a steady
income, you can lose your residence, and with
a bad line of credit it’s difficult to find a new
dwelling. Without a permanent residence, it’s
difficult to find and hold a job. In light of this,
Delonis assigns all residents a case manager, and
together they work toward three primary goals:
establishing a steady income, finding housing
and saving money to pay for a security deposit
and a first month’s rent. They estimate that
50 percent of clients find permanent housing
within the year.
Ann Arbor is clearly not a place one would
want to be without a home during the winter.
But it’s also one of the most difficult places to
find affordable housing in the state. In the latest
ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained,
Employed) assessment by the United Ways
Foundation, Washtenaw County received the
lowest rating for housing affordability, and 58
percent of rentable properties in Ann Arbor cost
more than 30 percent minimum wage a month.
The Atlantic recently named Ann Arbor the 8th
most segregated city in the country. This gradual
bloodletting of affordability, as MLive reported
in 2014, is most likely due to increases in renting
by both families and young professionals.
It’s the bittersweet irony of an affluent
community like Ann Arbor — it simultaneously
prices out low-income residents and has the
resources to provide shelter and services for
those experiencing homelessness.
So what’s it like to be without a home in
Ann Arbor during the winter? I went to the
Groundcover News office in the basement of
Bethlehem United Church of Christ on South
Fourth Avenue to find out. Groundcover is
the homeless newspaper of Ann Arbor, which
functions both as a community news source
and a source of employment for individuals
experiencing homelessness. I sat with the
publisher, Susan Beckett, and three of the
vendors, who candidly spoke about their past
and present travails.
A home, especially during the winter, isn’t
merely a place to stay warm. It offers security
and stability. It’s a place to store and cook food,
access the Internet, maintain a mailing address
and have intimate relationships. There is a
popular perception that if someone is homeless,
they must only have the clothes on their back and
a few coins in a Styrofoam cup. But as I learned
during the research for this piece, the rises and
falls of homelessness are less the bungee-jumps
of the American imagination, and more a series
of tedious, yet traumatizing, stumbles. Take,
for example, the dilemma of losing one’s home
and still having possessions that need to be
protected.
“You just can’t part with them,” Louis, a
somber-looking man, told me. “I keep my stuff
with me at all times, keep my bags with me at all
times, even when I sleep.”
Lit, a vivacious woman who is Groundcover’s
most successful vendor, explained how she
is forced to rent out a storage space for her
possessions, including her bulky winter boots
and coats. But she’s missed several payments
and cannot retrieve her warm clothes until
she settles her debts. The management is being
relatively generous, she explains — with another
storage space, she lost a whole cache of family
photos and papers when she missed payment on
storage and her unit was auctioned off.
“I’ve worn the same bra for a year and a half
now. I have all these nice ones in storage with
the right cup and padding. It’s just a fact of life —
without the right padding, I feel like the nipple
lady,” she said with an easy laugh.
But those storage problems don’t compare
to a night during last years crushing winter. Lit
was sleeping in her car when the heater broke
and she was left with only a sleeping bag and
the car’s thin walls for warmth. Already ill, she
began having trouble breathing as sub-zero
temperatures set in.
“I thought I was going to die,” she told me. “I
thought I was going to freeze to death.”
She managed to get to the hospital, where
they told her it was just a bad cold and prescribed
medicine. After that, she began scrimping to pay
for a motel at night.
The most banal aspects of everyday health
and hygiene suddenly become difficult without a
home, especially in the winter. Most businesses
require that someone be a customer in order to
use the bathroom. Even if one is near the woods,
food stamps cannot be used to purchase toilet
paper, not to mention tampons.
“For most of the winter, I wore incontinence
pads,” Lit explains. Unable to go to the bathroom
outside or at night, she would try and hold it in
until 5:30 in the morning, when she could go to
the YMCA to use the toilet and take a shower.
But with membership prices at $50 a month, it
was difficult to make the payments without an
income. Louis can’t afford the YMCA, and he
often washes himself in the church bathroom,
using hand soap and the sink.
Qualifying for food stamps is no guarantee
though. Able-bodied adults must work or be in a
work program at least 20 hours a week to receive
SNAP
(Supplemental
Nutrition
Assistance
Program) benefits, but finding that much work is
difficult for anyone without a home. Even if one
works, a single adult’s net income can’t exceed
$981 a month, a sum that is quickly gobbled up
by the ancillary costs of storage, motel rooms,
gas and car insurance.
“I just wish the government would recognize
that there are expenses associated with being
homeless,” Lit said.
Food is, generally speaking, less of a concern
than housing and hygiene. Local shelters
often serve meals, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal
Church has a breakfast program. Lit has made
friends with the kitchen staff of a Main Street
restaurant, who give her leftovers. Sometimes,
passersby will just give the vendors food. But as
Theresa*, an elderly vendor with a honey-thick
southern accent, explained, relying on others
for food always has unintended consequences.
Driving around to different shelters and
churches for meals costs precious gas money.
Without a fridge or cupboards, she has to eat at
a restaurant when no free meals are available.
And when people are nice enough to buy her
food, she’s sometimes unable to eat it because of
dietary restrictions.
Theresa used to work in a plastics factory,
but she fell and eventually lost her job because
of the resulting disability. She was rejected for
worker’s compensation, and lost her home.
“My doctor tells me I’ve got to keep myself
warm during the winter, especially the joints
I injured,” she said. “Sometimes the pain is so
horrible that I’ll just be crying.”
After stories like this, I was left wondering
why anyone wouldn’t head to a shelter during the
winter. When I brought it up with Schulmeister
from the Delonis Center, she sighed, as if she’d
heard the question before. She explained that
it was ultimately up to individuals to seek help,
and some of them just don’t like the idea of
committing to any type of program.
“It’s hard, because it’s institutional, and
many people don’t like that, but our goals are
short-term,” she said. “We are accommodating,
but sometimes people don’t read us as
accommodating.”
Louis, from Groundcover, won’t go to Delonis
out of spite — he received a trespass, or one-year
ban, eight years ago for having a loud verbal
altercation with his girlfriend in the doorway,
and said he has no interest in reapplying for
residency. The Delonis Center doesn’t comment
on individual cases but noted anyone can request
to have their ban lifted. He’ll go there for meals,
but only because those are served by an outside
organization.
Others I met were just unaware or
misinformed about Delonis. Daniel, a tall man
with a wiry gray beard, became homeless a
year ago when he left his apartment after it was
repeatedly broken into.
“I’ve been finding myself lately just crawling
up someplace and going to sleep,” he told me one
frigid afternoon in between puffs on a cigarette.
His favorite place is a heating vent in a parking
garage that is big enough for him to lay down on
at night. Other nights, he’ll just walk around all
night to stay warm. When I asked him why he
wouldn’t go to Delonis, he shrugged and said,
“I’ve heard it’s crowded there.”
It’s understandable why some individuals
are resistant to seeking help. Many have been
betrayed by people they trusted: landlords,
bosses, lawyers, family members. And for some,
the supposed shame of accepting help outweighs
the very real risks of the cold.
PHOTOS BY ZOEY HOLMSTROM/Daily
Each night, blankets are handed out to everyone sleeping in the warming shelter. The blankets are washed daily
to prevent bed bugs or other issues in the premises.
John Schippers, director of operations for the Delonis Center,
looks out into Ann Arbor on the women's-only floor of the Center.
By Giancarlo Buonomo,
Daily Arts Writer
Read more online at michigandaily.com
5B