Abstract
As someone who has lived and worked in Catholic Worker communities for 34 years with people experiencing homelessness, books on the topic often strike me as patronizing, sentimental, clinical, and or myopic. Far from falling prey to those pitfalls, Journeys Out of Homelessness threads the needle between heart and head expertly. Wrapping analysis, conclusions, and suggestions around the lived experience of nine diverse individuals, the book dispels many misconceptions, provides needed information, and offers actual solutions.
The authors defy the Calvinistic notion that most homeless individuals are at fault for their plight. The personal stories highlight the role that income inequality, non-living wages, inadequate insurance, un-equal access to higher education, racism, sexism, bureaucracy, and, perhaps most importantly, the lack of support from caring individuals and groups play in trapping people in homelessness. The featured stories provide ample evidence that the problem is not confined to stereotypes like bag ladies pushing shopping carts and alcoholics begging at street corners. In a couple of instances, homelessness arises out of parental neglect, abuse, and or abandonment, but others show how successful people, who never imagined they could ever be homeless, abruptly lost their housing. As one person wrote, “I was the person that people used to count on for help, the one that took people in, served those experiencing homelessness and then, almost in the blink of an eye, I lost my home” (p. 122).
Journeys Out of Homelessness exposes how the US Department of Housing and Urban Development disqualifies people who double up in homes or apartments of family and friends or live in motels as homeless, leaving at least five million Americans without assistance. Rife and Burnes document how the wealth gap leaves half of all Americans unable to pay an unexpected $400 expense, how the minimum wage provides less than a third of the income necessary to afford housing, how the criminal justice system, far from being correctional, condemns mostly people of color to poverty, and how racism prevents the few people of color who earn higher degrees from equal employment. They remind us that “homelessness is generally caused by a series of systemic factors over which individuals have little or no control” (p. 8). As Caroline, one of the featured individuals says, “As long as we perpetuate the myth that people without homes have failed in some irreparable way that justifies us turning our backs on them, we kick issue downfield where we run the risk of running into it again, and maybe end up without homeless ourselves” (p. 146).
With remarkable prescience, the authors say, “As Caroline discovered, she was one, or two, or three paychecks away from housing disaster, like many of us. Consider what would happen if you, the reader, suffered a major medical catastrophe or if you face a major natural disaster, like a flood, a hurricane, an earthquake, or a tornado” (p. 156). The coronavirus pandemic proves their point. Emergency relief checks for $1,200 are pitiful substitutes for living wages and affordable housing, healthcare, and education.
Most significantly, Journeys Out of Homelessness is, exactly as the title suggests, replete with examples and suggestions of what is being and should be done to alleviate homelessness. The authors support living wages (more than three times the current federal minimum wage), housing first, minimum basic income (Andrew Yang looks smarter and smarter), universal healthcare, and other systemic changes that seemed out of reach before the pandemic, but they also stress the importance of personal attention and respect for those individuals facing homelessness. In instance after instance, caring individuals, made a huge difference in whether a person escaped homelessness or did not. I couldn’t help but think of Craig Mitchell, a superior court judge in Los Angeles who, after being invited by a former inmate to visit him in a shelter, founded a running club for the homeless and brings those who put in the work and maintain sobriety to international marathons each year, including the prestigious Rome Marathon. Like Journeys Out of Homelessness, the 2019 documentary Skid Row Marathon wraps the judge’s story around those of the women and men who, empowered by the personal relationships in the club, overcome homelessness.
Clearly, all people need more than just adequate food and a roof over their head. We also need love and respect. Rife and Burnes conclude, “Caring individuals, natural networks of support, and community are essential elements in helping people without homes become more self-sufficient and productive members of our society…. Someone once asked, will we ever truly end homelessness?…That, we think, is ultimately doable, if we have the political and collective will to accomplish it” (p. 185). The pandemic mantra “We are all in this together,” wherein even conservatives now realize that crowded shelters, jails, and slums endanger everyone’s lives, gives me hope that the change of mind and heart necessary to dramatically reduce homelessness is now within reach.
Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, along with his spouse Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, is a founding member of the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker in Worcester, MA. He is the author of Nothing Is Impossible: Stories from the Life of a Catholic Worker. He holds a BA in religious studies from the College of the Holy Cross.