Homeless in My Own Home
by: Aaron Juni

        Poverty definitely is alive and well in California and has been an under addressed issue and has been for decades. What makes this issue go unnoticed is its physical appearance. In order to see this sub-culture one must look beyond the common misconception of poverty and understand what causes it. By taking a closer look at homeless in California, one sees that virtually no one is prone to homelessness and that Californians are blind to the true homelessness problem.

        To some, it is an important to expose the majority of victims of homelessness. For Anne Maloney, a high school teacher at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, poverty is “a serious issue that many people don't see any more, or even acknowledge, and when they do see it they ignore it thinking that someone else will help” (Maloney). Anne is also one of the high school's social justice core group leaders and engages students and faculty in discussion and action for social equality. To Anne, part of the struggle is getting the people of the area to become aware of the place they live in order to assess the problem as a collective. According to Maloney, “these people drive by the parks in our city and don't realize the kinds of people that sit on those benches. It's not just a playground to take your kids, it's a placeholder, a place for the homeless to be while the shelters are closed” (Maloney).

        I participated in a tri-annual immersion trip with Anne Maloney called The Urban Plunge, in which she takes on six students to completely immerse themselves into the subculture of those in poverty living within San Jose. The whole event lasted the entire weekend, starting on Friday afternoon and ending Sunday night. Students were allowed a small backpack, a few pieces of extra clothing and a toothbrush, but encouraged to bring nothing but the clothes on their backs. I opted for the latter. The whole journey began with Anne announcing, “As of this moment, you are homeless, you have no income, you have nothing but what you carry with you now and this city” (Maloney). At that point I had to let out a little smile as it seemed contradictory that a poverty stricken person could own the city, but it was also a profound statement that I could not shake. When I asked, she replied, “Everything that this city and its people do directly effects how these people live, both positive and negative” (Maloney). We walked a half mile to the bus station to purchase day passes for everyone, then Anne announced, “that's all the money we had for this whole weekend” (Maloney). She emptied her pockets and showed us her empty wallet. Her matter-of-fact attitude and speech was unsettling, yet I kept an open mind as the journey began.

        It seems as though homelessness is caused by many factors. What we Americans typically believe is that homelessness is a choice that people make; people choose to break the law, fall into drugs, or escape life. But there is an overwhelming factor that causes homelessnes in California that goes unnoticed: circumstance. I uncovered it when I found myself in the dining hall of, what the clients referred to as “Little Orchard,” a homeless shelter at the edge of the city. Anne explained to the students, “they call it Little Orchard because of its location. If you noticed, this place is on Little Orchard Street. The names that the clients over the years have chosen [for these shelters] help them find their way around town” (Maloney). Little Orchard's real name is the Emergency Housing Consortium or E.H.C. for short and its focus is to house the homeless and offer programs to get them back on their feet. It surprised me to see just what kind of people these clients were. One man in the dining hall named Jonathan Aguirre wore clean clothes, was clean shaven and had a brand new laptop open on the table. He had been laid-off recently from his position as a programmer and had lost his apartment and car. He explained, “I guess it's circumstance or even fate…but I'm a victim of it. I'm here not because I chose to be, but because of what some higher-up thought would make his company profit more” (Aguirre). There seemed to be a reoccurring theme that night during dinner. Most people I spoke to were victims of circumstance and not homeless by their own doing. I eventually learned that while people do become homeless because of their own doing, most people have the bad economy and unemployment to thank.

        Although the circumstances were surprising, the look and feel of homelessness puzzled me the most. There is the stereotypical homeless person: dirty, haggard and with worn clothing. But overwhelmingly, homelessness looks like any average person who walks the street. Anne Maloney says, “Part of the reason why people don't see the homelessness problem is that it doesn't look like how they imagined” (Maloney). Throughout the entire weekend, the signs of homelessness could not be more vague. From the bus rides, the walks in the city and Little Orchard, the only way I could tell that people were homeless was by the fact that they were in a homeless shelter. I had, for most of my life, identified homelessness with the media portrayal: the dirty clothing and soda can filled shopping cart. Anne continued to say that “poverty comes in many shapes and sizes. When we close our eyes and only see what the media shows us as poverty, we skew our perspective and never reach the heart of the problem” (Maloney). I asked Jonathan if he had ever been discriminated against as a homeless person and he responded saying:

Oh, of course! I walked in to a job interview the other day at a Best Buy store, you know, the Geek Squad thing. I had put there that I lived here at the shelter. I couldn't lie, of course that would have been worse. Everything went well. He couldn't tell I was homeless unless he looked at the address. But they turned me down because I didn't have a permanent residence. They said they couldn't hire me because my situation was unstable. (Aguirre)

For others whom I interviewed that weekend, the unemployment situation was commonplace, and even with homeless shelters creating job programs, employers are still hesitant to hire a person without a stable residence. While it may be understandable not to hire a homeless person because of issues of reliability, the argument for the homeless is stronger. What is not understood by employers is that if hired, these people would have an even greater dedication to their job. Their responsibilities are limited and therefore they can devote more time to their job. Jonathan explained, “They totally missed it! Hiring me would have been better for them, you know? You see, right now I don't have a home, so I'd rather be at work than anywhere else. I really don't have anywhere else to go at the moment” (Aguirre). These people never wanted to be homeless and are only victims of circumstance; they are victims of the state of the economy.

        Homelessness is not hard to see if one understands what homelessness is and how it is caused. This experience cannot be left as a mere memory to me but a testament to an ongoing condition in California. There are many forms of homelessness and by acknowledging all of them, there can be a greater effort to reintegrate these people back into the society that has forgotten about them. Once we ignore the widely believed construct of poverty, we become more open to understanding the real homeless issue.

Works Cited

Aguirre, Jonathan. Personal interview. 14 Nov. 2008.

Crown, Terry . Personal interview. 15 Nov. 2008.

Maloney, Anne. Personal interview. 14 Nov. 2008