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Housing for Disenfranchised People
Eagles Landing
It was a gorgeous summer day…
It was a gorgeous summer day when I learned that Steve Shields had just been found dead, face down in a stream in Auburn, New York.
Some of his friends sat with me that day at the soup kitchen where I often have lunch and told me that Steve had left their group the preceding Friday evening to return to his regular sleeping spot under a bridge along the Owasco River in downtown Auburn.
When he didn’t rejoin them on Saturday, friends went to look for him. They didn’t find him in any of his usual places so they assumed he’d gone to stay for a couple of days at an area relative’s house, something he was known to do from time to time.
Sadly, Steve’s body was spotted by a passerby traveling over the bridge four days later.
Some people feared foul play because a man who was with him on Friday evening had been seen on Saturday wearing Steve’s cherished baseball cap. Others wondered whether Steve might have experienced a seizure. He had previously suffered a head injury, they told me, and often forgot to take his medication.
The man with him that fateful night had reported that Steve fell and hit his head on a rock. Assuming he’d just “sleep it off,” the man hadn’t contacted authorities for help.
Steve was found lying in an area with such tall, dense weeds that he wouldn’t have been noticed by people looking for him on the ground. Eventually, we heard that he’d been dead for about 24 hours and we assumed that he’d crawled to that area to get to water.
Steve was a sweet, kind, upbeat and charming man whom I’d met about a month earlier. He was 48 years old, disabled, and he had a history of homelessness.
Across our country, premature deaths of homeless people may not be investigated very thoroughly or even recorded accurately. In San Francisco, as an example, a city official reported in 2011 that 28 deaths of homeless people had been recorded that year. The Coalition on Homelessness, however, collected the names of 60 homeless people who had died there in 2011; names added to the list by contacts of the deceased brought the total close to 100, about the same number as in 2010.
To their credit, Auburn detectives initiated an investigation immediately and we read in the newspaper later that his body had been sent to the medical examiner for autopsy.
While a report would be released to his family, it would not be made public so we never learned Steve’s official cause or manner of death but we are not aware of any arrests.
People at lunch that day were distraught but one man seemed much quieter than usual.
Although he was not one of Steve’s closest friends, he helped out at the soup kitchen every day. He would generally come up to my car just as soon as I arrived in the parking lot and he’d walk with me to the entrance door of the church, chatting continuously about ways to obtain help for some of the other people who congregated there each weekday.
He had never requested anything for himself but when I talked with him that day, he mentioned that he’d like to visit the area downtown where Steve had lived and died.
Steve’s body had been found in an area fronted by a big, ongoing, hotel construction project. That site and the areas beyond it were rigidly cordoned off by a chain link fence.
We walked all around the outer perimeter of the site for a couple of hours and over the bridge on both sides of the street, anticipating that we would spot bright yellow police tape at the scene of Steve’s death but the foliage in the area was so dense, we couldn’t figure out precisely where his body had been found.
We did notice an area by the far back corner of the construction site fence where there was a narrow, muddy opening and we wondered if that were the route by which Steve got into the area that was his sleeping spot at night and back out again in the morning.
The next day we learned that Steve’s wake and funeral services would be private so, in a very sad way, this walk turned out to be our own “wake” for him and it had given us an opportunity to grieve together while absorbed and immersed in Steve’s own home area.
Jim O’Connell, MD, founder of Boston Health Care for the Homeless, is the leading researcher in the United States on the death rates of homeless people. He commented to a reporter for The Dartmouth in 2010, “People who live on the streets of cities in America have the highest mortality rate of any subgroup, bar none.”
I already knew that the average age at time of death for a chronically homeless person is 46 while the life expectancy of a housed American is 77 but the isolation and desolation of Steve’s premature and tragic death at age 48 in this sunny, lively downtown environment personalized that abstract academic data in a manner that stunned me.
I’d been involved in homelessness awareness activities but on that day I made up my mind to shed an even brighter light on this harsh, degrading and truly deadly social and cultural phenomenon that I’d been studying for nearly ten years, chronic homelessness.
I also resolved to take action myself and to do whatever I could do to help bring an end to the ongoing national violation of our most basic human rights to housing, to clean water and to safe sanitation and I decided then and there to use my teaching, counseling and advocacy skills to help get those homeless people at highest risk of death off the streets.
Finally, I resolved to write a series of articles about chronic homelessness because, for whatever our reasons, we seem to treat homeless animals with much greater care and concern in our country than we do homeless human beings – but people need shelter and ethical treatment too.
This is my first installment. I invite you to return to this site to read more as it’s posted.
© 2012 Mary M. McLaughlin, PhD. All rights reserved.
Spare Change News published my letter re: alleged “serial killer.”
Boston’s Spare Change News also published my letter to DA re: alleged “serial killer” of homeless men.
http://sparechangenews.net/news/vulnerable-homeless-targets-highlight-pervasive-issues
Re: Alleged Serial Killer of Homeless Men
Read my letter to the Orange County, California District Attorney:
My Holiday Message for 2011
I wrote a new holiday message for this year that’s quite different from my earlier ones. It reflects a very different perspective, one that I gained over the past year conducting research among chronically homeless people.
Holiday Wishes of a Homeless Advocate
My latest article for Spare Change News
Brenda Rosen is the Acting Executive Director of Common Ground in New York City.
I recently interviewed her for this article.
Expanding Supportive Housing in New York
***JUST ANNOUNCED: Brenda Rosen new Executive Director of Common Ground.***
She has been Common Ground’s Acting Executive Director since January, 2011.
************
***Community Solutions, a new non-profit, launched today.***
Incubated at Common Ground, it will focus on national housing initiatives.
Roseanne Haggerty will head the new organization.
Hold That Thought
A great way to illustrate a point is to tell a story that embodies the concept.
I tell a lot stories in my work. They are all true to the very best of my recollection although I change or omit identifying information in most of them.
Some are personal stories, like this one about my uncle. It illustrates the most liberating lesson I ever learned in my emotional life: that is, during difficult times, we are not helpless victims of whatever racing thoughts or rampant fears first pop into our minds. Instead, we can choose to focus on a thought, a phrase, a word or an image to empower us. Continue reading »
My Memorial Day Tribute: Homeless Veterans
Veterans comprise the highest percentage of chronically homeless people in our country. In “… the land of the free and the home of the brave,” the brave should never be without a home.
My article was published on Memorial Day weekend.
Nation Must Address Needs of Most Vulnerable Citizens