Connecting With The Homeless by Matt Pauluzzi

Waking up the morning of April 24, a Friday, was somewhat a difficult process. The clock read 7:00 A.M. and I was so tired to the point that I did not want to open my eyes. When I finally realized a few seconds after turning off the alarm the reason I set my alarm so early for a Friday, a shot of anxiety shot up my body. Project Homeless Connect took place this morning and this event consisted of volunteer work I had never done before. I’d participated in many different volunteering for the homeless programs in the past, as I had attended Catholic school since I was a boy, but had never done something this direct before. At Project Homeless Connect, I was paired up with a homeless individual and spent the day with him. I knew from the moment I woke up that I had a responsibility to ensure my client had the chance to at least try and receive every service he wanted to receive that day. I don’t know about how another person would feel about that in my shoes, but to me that creates a good amount of anxiety in my system.

Nonetheless, I popped out of bed, got ready for the day, and made my way over to the Ritchie Center on the DU campus. Upon walking into the Ritchie Center, I noticed the early crowds of homeless clients and yellow shirted volunteers already had crowded the hallways. Remembering what I was told on checking-in at the north side of the Ritchie Center, I made my way, walking briskly, to the north doors. My body seemed to bend over with the large sigh I emitted after seeing the extremely long line going all the way from the bottom of the north stairs into the building about 50 feet. I signed in downstairs and took my place in line nonetheless, but was greeted by a few friendly faces, which made the first few minutes go by pretty quickly. The reason I only mention the first few minutes is, once I reached the north doors, someone called out asking for a yellow shirt to take a client who had no volunteer. He looked directly at me and my initial thoughts were, “well, it sure beats waiting in this line!” I accepted his offer and am extremely happy to this day I did, as I met a good guy because of it.

We’ll call my client Greg, as I would like to keep his identity private. Greg was an African-American Army veteran of 68 years old, probably around 6’3”. We made our way through the sea of yellow shirts (there were a lot of homeless clients around as well, but when you’re looking at a crowd as a whole, it sure seemed like the Yellow Sea) and during that I got to know a little bit about Greg for the first time. He talked little and sometimes his voice was a bit difficult to understand, but he always had something to smile about. I learned right at this discussion how much I was going to enjoy hanging out with Greg that day. He knew what he wanted, he got to the point, and he was willing to work hard for it. Greg had been living with friends for the past few years and hadn’t been able to get a place of his own. He worked a part-time job delivering for a company, a company he mentioned later was T-Mobile, the popular phone company. He enjoyed working a paying job, but needed to get a better one, one that allowed him more work hours and one that hopefully paid a little more than his current job at the time.

This related back to a fact I had known previously before volunteering at Project Homeless Connect, the sad fact that a large percent of homeless are hard-working and work a paying job, but still cannot afford housing just for themselves, alone. The fact is 44% of homeless people work at least part-time (SAMHSA). I felt happy and relieved that luckily Greg at least had a good group of friends who had been lending their house to him to stay in for the past few years. Nonetheless, it made me wonder how Greg could take advantage of the housing he had been given. If Greg could have obtained a full-time paying job and saved the majority of that money, he could have made a great future for himself. Georgia Wettlaufer’s client's situation was similar to Greg's in that he “[was] able to save money as well because he [was] staying with a friend and just paying for food” (Wettlaufer). Her client already had the job Greg was looking for; a job that paid $10 an hour and thus she had similar feelings that “if he were to save up some money then he could definitely build a life for himself” (Wettlaufer). This situation Greg found himself in confirmed a lot about what I had read in Barbara Ehrenreich’s study of low-wage jobs in the truth of how difficult succeeding in America (self-sufficiency) really can be off of low-wage jobs. Nonetheless, in past volunteering experiences I had found a lot of the homeless I worked with to be unwilling to work hard and unwilling to do something different in their lives to change their situation. I was glad to find and bond with an individual who was willing to work hard and make a difference in his life that changed my views on the homeless population.

Unfortunately, Greg and I did not hear what we wanted to hear at the job fair. After introducing ourselves to each other at the north side of the Ritchie Center, we moved down to the lower, south side of the Ritchie Center to grab the services Greg named most important to himself: a better job, housing, and clothing. Greg was excited to try to get a new job to improve his income so I decided it would be best to check out the job fair first. We pushed our way through the crowds as we made our way over to the job fair line. As we waited in line for the next five minutes, I noticed my writing professor, Geoffrey Bateman, who introduced me to Project Homeless Connect and told Greg a little bit about who he was and why I initially came here today. However, when I looked up at Greg, I noticed he wasn’t paying much attention, but rather seemed quite eager to find out what the job fair had to offer him; this made me smile. To our disappointment, and my frustration, however, we found Greg had to register beforehand to get into this job fair. I felt that made the entire service quite private and not useful; it actually irritated me a bit. Here I stood excited to hopefully give Greg something he needed and something that would help him better his attempt in doing something with his life and he apparently was not informed of this pre-registration. Apparently we were not the only ones who felt not good enough and shocked by the job fair, as Suzanne Allbright’s client’s “friend mentioned that the job fair was not useful at all. They required a recommendation or referral in order for them to assist anyone, and this man had everything besides a referral” (Allbright).

This actually drew back on my experiences with research for my literature review on the effects of transitional shelters on the homeless. At a point in the review, I mentioned research on barriers against re-entry to self-sufficiency. As Matthew Marr states in his research, barriers such as homeless discrimination, lack of employment options, low wages, or lack of public benefits change the outcomes of transitional housing’s impact on the homeless and their future lives (Marr). Barriers seem to be a good explanation for what had happened at the job fair station, of just how difficult and frankly stupid some barriers can be to pass; in this case, Greg just had difficulty obtaining a full-time job. However, things brightened up when I brought up Greg could most likely grab some goodies at the clothing station and the veterans station. Sure enough, Greg obtained a shirt to his liking and potential affordable housing provided by the veterans station as he was an Army veteran. I received a gesture of approval from Greg and it made me feel a little bit better about what had happened at the job fair.

Greg and I continued on to see what else we could find around, as we had made great time with the other stations; we got in lines quickly and got to the front of the lines in good time. As Greg and I continued to move along through the crowds of people, we passed by the Birth Certificate/ID sign. Greg immediately turned to me and exclaimed in a neutral, but excited voice how much he would like to go over there. He then went on to explain his story of how his driver’s license has been expired for around a year and how he had wanted to get it renewed. Greg didn’t have the capability over the year, for whatever reasons unexplainable to me, maybe it was the money, the transportation, or just lack of time, to renew his driver’s license; he now sought the chance to do what he had not been able to do in the past. We went over to the black drapes with the large paper sign reading “Birth Certificate/ID” and then, with smiles on both of our faces ready to accomplish another thing that day, glanced left as we had noticed other people. I wonder what it must have been like to be someone else in the line looking at us as our big smiles turned to frowns and signs of frustration when we slowly followed the long line all the way to the back.

We both laughed to some extent as we first took our place in line, as everything we had done so far that day had been so quick, so easy, and successful; except for the job fair, of course. I swear, and I believe I speak for Greg as well in this, that line felt like it took years off of my life at some points. Greg, like myself, can be quiet at many different times. There would be times where the both of us would be sitting in line staring at different parts of the room, just hoping the line would move faster. It’s the kind of quiet and sense of impatience where my legs start to feel weak and I have to start moving around in small circles to pass time. I don’t know how much Greg felt about that, as he seemed pretty content just standing in one place staring at the black curtains without a thing to worry about. To break the quiet every now and then, I would ask him questions about different aspects of his life he had pointed out earlier to me. It was in this long, time-consuming line that Greg and I really got to know each other. For the first time Greg asked me about my background and if I was from around here (him obviously not remembering the comment I made about my writing professor in the job fair line) and I listened as well as he opened up some funny stories about trips to California with friends and his encounter with the California Highway Patrol holding an expired license. I also learned another good reason he had for obtaining his license, that being he rides along in the delivery truck during work rather than driving it himself as he has no valid license. A valid license gives him the opportunity to maybe drive his own shifts.

That line also brought the most laughs Greg and I had shared all day. The ID line required the client to have obtained a voucher from a desk on the opposite end of the room, however, the voucher desk told Greg he had to find out what the DMV required of him before he could obtain a voucher. So, Greg and I waited in line until we moved halfway up, only to be told he needed a voucher, which turned out he needed to get back in the ID line to find out what he needed. Once we reached the lady at the front of the line, she told Greg what he needed and then told him to go obtain a check paying for his DMV examination at the voucher. Every time we were redirected Greg and I seemed to laugh under our breaths to ourselves and walk with big sarcastic smiles to the next line. After Greg obtained that check, he decided it was time for him to take his leave. As we reached the north end of the Ritchie Center, Greg turned to me, shook my hand, and said, “Thank you very much, I appreciate it.” This made the largest impact on me out of everything that entire day, the fact that I made such a large impact on someone enough to make him say something like that. Greg taught me a lot that day and introduced me to a different side of homeless that I’ve never seen before. Similarly, Suzanne Allbright has a view that Project Homeless Connect “was shocking. It just goes to show that whatever you think homelessness is, you're wrong” (Allbright). Every time I have volunteered at some type of homeless organization, my experience turned out different. This experience just seemed to reinforce the research Barbara Ehrenreich conducted on the reality of low-wage workers in the United States. It was sad how great of a person Greg was and how hard-working he was yet he still could not get the best out of that perseverance. Greg has some advantages to his situation with the help of his friends and I look forward to him taking advantage of it to make himself a better life; he certainly has the effort for it.


Works Cited

Allbright, Suzanne, "Field Notes from Project Homeless Connect." Weblog entry. Civic Engagement Blog for WRIT 1133-01, Spring 2009. 24 April 2009. 4 May 2009. Web.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.

Marr, Matthew. "Escaping homelessness in Los Angeles: a qualitative comparative analysis of barriers and strategies shaping housing outcomes of transitional shelter users." Conference Papers -- American Sociological Association; 2005 Annual Meeting, Philadelphia 1 (2005). 15 April 2009. Web.

SAMHSA. "Homelessness - Provision of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services." SAMSA's National Mental Health Information Center. March 2003. 4 May 2009. Web.

Wettlaufer, Georgia, "Field Notes from Project Homeless Connect." Weblog entry. Civic Engagement Blog for WRIT 1133-01, Spring 2009. 24 April 2009. 4 May 2009. Web.