A Room Of One's Own When I've been homeless, the hardest part has been the lack of privacy. The *privilege of privacy* is something many take for granted, but for those of us who have experienced homelessness firsthand, privacy becomes a mindset, rather than a physical reality. And that fortress of privacy within one's *mind* adds to the wide chasm between the housed and the homeless, often making homeless people seem "crazy" to housed folks. And when one has been forced to make *mental* doors that shut, since physical doors to shut for safety are nonexistent, it is as if there is a change to one's soul.
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Seattle, WA 2008 (Photo: K.Anderberg)
Homeless Kids Versus The World I walked by a vacant lot of overgrown weeds today, in a suburban neighborhood of American single-family homes. The lot had a camper parked on it, with some things scattered around the front of the camper. A woman in her 40's came out of the camper, followed by a young boy about 12 years old. They were talking and interacting, but when I walked by, and the boy saw me, I saw shame all of a sudden come over his face.
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Once You've Been Homeless, You Can Never Go Back I was riding the bus today, lost in thought, when the bus pulled up to a stop and I looked out the window I was leaning against to see several women, with their baggage and small children, sitting on the pavement in a parking lot, looking weary and forlorn. I was immediately overcome with a familiarity; it reminded me horribly of my mom and me, when I was a child. I immediately realized this was a pick up spot for homeless shelters. As my bus rolled on, I saw the next block was lined with women, young and old, carrying their bags, hovering around, looking agitated, anxious, hot, worn out, and desperate, waiting outside the YWCA in downtown Seattle, to see if they will have shelter tonight (as local shelters cannot accommodate all of the women who need shelter nightly). By the time we had rolled past that block, I was in tears. I looked around me on the bus. It seemed no one even noticed what was outside our windows for the full length of the previous block.
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Seattle, WA 2008 (Photo: K.Anderberg)
Mental Hospitals as Homeless Shelters Many homeless people use mental hospitals to survive the winter. This has been an accepted fact for as long as mental institutions, insane asylums, and psychiatric hospitals have been in existence. In the earlier "insane asylum" days, homeless people were committed to these "sanatoriums" against their will, merely for being homeless. But I guess we saw thresholds come into play and as homeless populations soared, the mandatory mental hospital stays for the homeless populations also dropped, as the state could not keep up with the demand. To reduce mental hospital services to the homeless populations, many states began to frame the help as unnecessary "welfare," as did Ronald Reagan so superbly, instead of public health and/or protection, which people willingly paid for. Archaic insane asylums, as well as modern state mental hospitals, always have a population of predominantly poor people, as families with wealth can usually afford to pay an attendant to stay with the "unruly" family member, often to avoid their namesake being "tainted" by public knowledge of their family member's situation. Most will agree that issues applicable to state mental hospitals always revolve around issues of the poor. So it is ironic, and not ironic, simultaneously, that nowadays, homeless people are trying to get into these institutions as shelter from the cold and for regular meals.
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How and Why People Squat Adverse Possession, is squatting, basically, and it occurs in many countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Scotland, Australia, Canada, Spain, Ireland…as well as in the US, in New York City, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, DC, Philadelphia, and more. Interestingly, when I was in law school, the students complacently sat through inheritance law and property title law without incident, but when we hit Adverse Possession, all hell broke loose from students fearing they'd lose their land owning privilege. Adverse possession, or legal squatting, has been in place in Europe since the 1400's, and in America since the 1600's. Reasons for squatting vary from political motivations to economic necessities. Some reasons for squatting are bringing community and media attention to the homeless and affordable housing crisis, to save lower income housing from demolition, to create community and lifestyle alternatives, to monkeywrench capitalism, and to challenge land ownership systems.
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Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.