Category — Homeless

For most Americans, it is hard to understand how it feels to be homeless. To not be able to turn the key and walk into their warm, cozy, personal environment is beyond their imagination. But to thousands of Americans, not having a place to call home is their daily reality.

In 1983, I was homeless for almost a year. I lived in a hotel for homeless families. It was a converted 5-story transient hotel converted into a shelter, located in the dreaded Tenderloin of San Francisco. I moved into my “home”, a single room with a bath, for me and my two young sons.

The circumstances of our becoming homeless is very long and too complicated for this submission, but suffice it to say, my life was in turmoil. As was the other 49 families in the hotel.

For the first couple of months, we were required every two weeks to pack all our belongings, move to another hotel down the street for a couple of nights, then return to our hotel where we were given a different room. The purpose of this musical relocation was for us not to establish residency. Some of the more lucid residents were able after a few months, however, to find lawyers willing to fight to have this situation revoked and we were able to remain in one room for the duration of our stay.

Although that was a long time ago, the situation of homelessness exists for many Americans families, and for many more, the crises of limited income, home foreclosures, and unemployment brings the threat of becoming homeless closer and closer.

The demands of OCCUPY WALL STREET and OCCUPY POVERTY is for our government and the powers-that-be to take the plight of the homeless into consideration when funds are dispensed and bills and laws enacted. Protesters are experiencing the nightly cruelty of the homeless by being forcefully removed from our parks, but the homeless are subjected to this victimization on a consistent basis.

We are grateful for those protesters willing to stand up, so that one day others maybe able to lie down in safety and comfort.