FEATURE-Washington homeless brave winter nights (fwd)

P. Myers (mpwr@u.washington.edu)
Thu, 8 Jan 1998 13:26:17 -0800 (PST) 

this is what we're up against.  PatM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:33:12 PST
Subject: FEATURE-Washington homeless brave winter nights

  	  				 
	 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ten o'clock on a winter's evening and  
the thermometer was falling fast in downtown Washington, capital 
of the richest country in the world. 
	 Bobby, who used to put newspapers together around the corner  
at the Washington Post, stretched out on the sidewalk wrapped in 
standard-issue blankets, all his remaining earthly possessions 
stuffed into a couple of plastic bags. 
	 ``I just got tired of living between four walls,'' he said,  
joking about how he began the descent from working and housed to 
jobless and homeless. 
	 He is one of about 400 men sleeping on the streets of the  
capital on an average night, even in sub-zero weather, say 
welfare workers who patrol the streets to keep an eye on them. 
A blot on the city's attempts to project an image of grandeur 
and prosperity, they are also an indictment of a patchy U.S. 
welfare system and the visible tip of the iceberg that is drug 
addiction and family breakdown. 
	Nonprofit groups estimate the number of homeless people  
nationwide has risen to 750,000 from 600,000 in early 1987. A 
recent U.S. Conference of Mayors study of about 28 cities found 
that homelessness was up three percent in the last year. 
	 But the figures are highly controversial. Most homeless are  
in shelters because of short-term emergencies. They are not 
living on the streets, and women and children on the streets are 
almost unknown. 
	 The men on the streets could crowd into shelters too but  
they say they stay away because the shelters are dirty and full 
of thieves or because they do not like the company there. 

	 ATTITUDE IS 'LEAVE ME ALONE'   	
	 ``Some are mentally ill and not really competent to make  
good choices. They are also very hardy, very independent, 
cussedly independent. Their attitude is 'Leave me alone,''' said 
Steve Cleghorn, deputy director for programs at the Community 
Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. 
	 Cleghorn thinks homelessness in Washington peaked in the  
late 1980s and early 1990s, partly because of a drug epidemic 
and because the government reduced access to mental hospitals 
without ensuring adequate community care to compensate. 
	 The federal government eventually woke up to the problem.  
Under the McKinney Act of 1987, it provides more than $1 billion 
a year to help people who are homeless, and it is a McKinney van 
that cruises the streets of Washington on winter nights, handing 
out blankets to the homeless and responding to emergency calls 
to a hypothermia hotline. 
	 Other organizations run daily mobile food handouts.  
''There's a homeless economy based on outreach groups, suburban 
groups and church groups. I can safely say that no one needs to 
go hungry,'' Cleghorn said. 
	 He said deaths from the cold are almost a thing of the past  
since a winter plan for the homeless began with government 
money. ``Last winter we had one hypothermia death. There had 
been none for the previous three years.'' 
	 So what more can be done? A lot, says Hal Gordon, director  
of Community Action Group (CAG), a rehabilitation charity which, 
in nine years of work, has changed the lives of hundreds of 
homeless addicts. 

	 'I AM A MIRACLE'   	
	 ``I am a miracle,'' said Brynda Spencer, one of the latest  
batch of Gordon's 'graduates'. ``The person you see standing 
here today is not the person who walked in 12 months ago,'' she 
told an upbeat graduation ceremony in southeast Washington, the 
poorest, mostly black part of the city. 
	 ``They take all the people that nobody else would mess with  
and give them a second chance. Apparently they saw something in 
me that I didn't see in myself,'' Spencer added. 
	 ``Drinking, gambling and cocaine took everything I had,''  
said Kelvin Batts, another of Gordon's 33 graduates. 
	 ``Any problem the homeless face can be addressed if you have  
sufficient resources. Mentally ill, that can be addressed. 
Substance abuse, that can be addressed. We just have to be 
ingenious,'' said Gordon, whose regime mixes hard physical work 
and a heavy dose of Christian spiritual inspiration. 
	 It may not work on hard cases like Charlie, a disabled  
former electronics technician whose life began to fall apart 
after a traffic accident in the 1980s. Charlie, who leads a 
group of about 10 homeless people bedded down outside a travel 
agent's office in a good part of town, veers wildly between 
pride at his own capacity for survival and anger at a government 
he thinks let him down. 
	 He speaks mainly in questions: ``What's going on in America?  
Where has all my tax money gone? Where's my fair housing? Are we 
not cold? Do you think we cannot survive the blizzards of God?'' 
he rants. 
	 Charlie manages better than many with his street savvy and  
impish charm, cadging drinks at the upstairs Ethiopian bar 
across the street and sweeping restaurant floors in exchange for 
a meal. But the life is wearing him down. His right hand shakes 
and his hair is thinning. 
	 ``Do you think I look like this because I want to?'' he  
asked. ``Sure I would like to go back to a way of life I am 
accustomed to.'' 
-=-=-	 
Want to tell us what you think about the ClariNews?  Please feel 
free to <<email us your comments>> <comments@clari.net>. 
-=-=-	 
		   C O P Y R I G H T * R E M I N D E R 	

   This article is Copyright 1998 by Reuters.  
   All articles in the clari.* news hierarchy are Copyrighted and licensed  
to ClariNet Communications Corp. for distribution.  Except for articles 
in the biz.clarinet newsgroups, only paid subscribers may access 
these articles. Any unauthorized access, reproduction or transmission 
is strictly prohibited. 
   We offer a reward to the person who first provides us with  
information that helps stop those who distribute or receive our news 
feeds without authorization.  Please send reports to reward@clari.net. 
[Use info@clari.net for sales or other inquiries.] 

   Details on the use of ClariNet material and other info can be found in  
the user documentation section of <<our web page>> <http://www.clari.net>. 
You can also read ClariNet news from your Web browser.