Dialogue on Homelessness: Nurturing Our Capacity to Change
Trading stories
    
      Thomas, one of the homeless people who came to talk has it difficult. He’s been homeless for eight years and like many things in life, the longer you stay,
the harder it is to get out of it. What makes Thomas’ life even more difficult is that he is transgender. Bathroom facilities and sleeping arrangements are very
limited for homeless people. For Thomas, they are almost impossible.
      “I have a hard life, so hard that sometimes the normal person who is homeless has it easy compared to me,” Thomas said. “I have friends on both sides who
know what I am going through. I almost died on October 30 because of hypothermia. It’s harder for me to live. What I would like to see is a lot of people who
have homes should try for just one week living on the streets with no money and no keys, no lace they can run back to. They should live on the street for one
week to find out how hard it is to live and what we go through. Each individual that is homeless is a different case because the way they have to live is different.
That’s basically my whole life, living like that.”
      Thomas worked most of his life as a trucker, a farm hand and at a number of other occupations. But now that he has been homeless for so long, it’s almost
impossible for him to get work. And his street address, the streets, doesn’t help. “A lot of places won’t hire me,” Thomas emphasized. “I even tried to get a job
doing dishes at a restaurant. For the address on the application, I said ‘on the streets.’ They wouldn’t hire me. I was being honest that I was living on the streets.
But they think the person that lives on the street is going to rip them off. So they don’t hire them and give them a chance. That makes it hard.”
      Life is hard for Thomas. While some may look at the homeless as just wiling away their days, they are just struggling to survive. “There isn’t enough housing,”
Thomas emphasized. “The shelters last night at Grace Episcopal and St. John’s Lutheran were so full that there wasn’t even enough room to walk. That’s how full
they were. And they think the homeless have it easy. They don’t. All we are doing is surviving. We’re not living. If we were living, it would really be different. If we
had a way where we could actually live, we would.”
      Compared to Thomas, Robert’s chances of breaking the cycle of homelessness are better. Robert lost his trucking job three weeks ago when his boss decided
to drive the truck himself. Unfortunately, in the 30 years that he drove trucks cross country, he never established a life for himself. “I was a homeless truck driver
because I slept in the truck,” Robert confided. “And the company would run you a month and give you two days off. So when do you get the chance to look for a
place? Therefore, you find other avenues of spending your money. I was running from Wisconsin to Reno, Nevada a gambling spot and then back through Las
Vegas to Wisconsin. I lived from paycheck to paycheck. I thought I was living good at the time. It was just a decision that I made that there was always going to
be next week’s paycheck. I didn’t know I could be just two paychecks away from being in the position I am in now, lining up at 7:15 p.m. through the cold, rain
and snow waiting for someone to let you in the door that belongs to someone else. It’s choices that we make, a lot of us, that got us in this position right now.”
      Robert takes full responsibility for the position that he finds himself in. He doesn’t blame anyone except himself. And like for Thomas, it’s a game of survival.
“You spend all of your time trying to survive,” Robert said. “This is a survival game, but it isn’t a game, it’s our life. It’s either do or die. You don’t know who is
going to show up tonight when you see them in the morning. You shake hands and tell them to have a nice day. You don’t know if they are going to be back
tonight or dead or locked up. Anything can happen to these people. Or they can commit suicide because a lot of them have never been through it before in
their lives. It’s frightening. It’s scary. It’s the not knowing that really gets you. And then you think more about what is going to happen tomorrow because you are
now because you almost made it through this day. So now what am I going to do tomorrow? You run it through your mind.”
      The homeless are not a homogenous group of people. Each has his or her own story. Each has his or her way of doing things. “We are very much alone,
each of us in our own world,” Robert said. “We don’t know each other. This is worse than being forced to be in jail. You’re forced to live with your bunk mate or
whoever is in your dorm. But this is a choice. Either you sleep on the streets in a bush or around the corner in a trash can or now you are coming into a shelter
where you have multifaceted personalities. You don’t know who you are sleeping next to. There are those who take a shower and there are those who can’t take a
shower. There are those who are mentally ill and those who have a grudge because they are living in a shelter. It’s a dangerous place. It isn’t home by any
stretch of the imagination.”
      While Robert doesn’t feel that he is a part of the homeless scene, he is scared to death that one day, it will become his permanent home. “It is hope that is
keeping me alive,” Robert emphasized. “I have to have hope because if you don’t, you’ll succumb to this homelessness and you give up. Then you belong to the
crowd of alcoholics and dope fiends and just wandering around. What is so sad is the philosophy that if you are a drug addict, you can get help. If you are
alcoholic or a mental patient, you can get help then. They’ll take you to treatment centers. But if you have some kind of whit about yourself and where you are
at and what you are doing, then you catch it out here because you’re not sick in the mind or addicted. They will put you up if you come out of jail. But if you just
made a mistake and you are down on your luck or whatever, you have to start from the bottom because a lot of people’s perception is ‘You know better. You put
yourself in the situation, so crawl out of it.’ There isn’t any forgiveness, but first, you have to forgive yourself. Once you forgive yourself, you can move on. You
have to forget what happened in the past to be able to get where you want to go. It’s a fight dragging your bags around and all of that, everything you own. You
have to watch where you step and who is going to grab your stuff. It tests you and you don’t ever want to get in this situation again if you ever catch a break. You
have to be blessed to get another break.”
      Robert’s attitude and his life will be changed forever if he can just catch that lucky break and he will never forget where he came from. “John Kennedy said
‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’” Robert recalled. “I came away with ‘Ask not what your community can do for
you, but what can you do for your community.’”
      Dialogues on Homelessness are open to the general public. They are held once per month on a Saturday, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. For more information, contact
Donna Astif at 251-6610 or e-mail her at dcassociated@gmail.com.
By Jonathan Gramling

    It’s almost like two separate worlds. The men line up near Grace Episcopal Church on the Capitol
Square with flakes of snow swirling by or hang out in the basement of the State Capitol when it is open or
await a meal at First United Methodist Church on Wisconsin Ave. It’s always a waiting game of survival as
the homeless wait for the next act of largesse or the lucky break that will uplift them from the ranks of the
homeless.
    And then there is the hustle and bustle of the workers and residents of the Capitol neighborhoods
pursuing their daily living and carrying out their daily chores and for the most part avoiding and ignoring
the men who are waiting for Godot. While they are in close proximity, they are worlds apart.
     Donna Astif, a member of Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc. executive committee who has four decades of
experience in human services, wanted to do something about the plight of the homeless. After trying some
direct interventions that didn’t quite work out, she started Dialogue on Homelessness, a monthly meeting
during non-summer months when members of the community and people who are homeless come
together to discuss homeless issues through a facilitated process.
Two participants of Dialogue on Homelessness -
Nurturing Our Capacity to Change talk at the
Madison Public Library on Mifflin Street..