Chasing the Homeless Lady

I like to give out money to people who are begging on the streets. I have a couple of rules. They have to be over 40 and they can’t have a dog. I have broken the dog rule, though. A couple with three dogs broke down and were stranded in Portland. I gave them a $20 bill. That’s a lot more than I usually give. Usually it’s just $2. That’s my standard. And I always try to find out what brought them to ask for money on the street. I look at it this way, giving out money is cheap entertainment. I always learn something. It’s not easy to live on the streets or to ask for money from strangers. I also consider giving money is an investment. Rockefeller used to like to give out dimes. He considered it like planting seeds. Whatever he gave away, he knew it would come back to him tenfold. That's what I believe will happen. I know that I am continually showered with blessings, at any rate. I prefer to work from a model of abundance rather than scarcity.

I also buy Street Roots, the magazine written by homeless people. Homeless people sell it on the streets in Portland and get 70 cents out of every dollar sale. Because it’s a business transaction, I generally treat it as such and don’t necessarily ask for their story. After all, they’ve got a business to run. However, the other day I was riding my bicycle to work and because of construction I got off at a different street and had to walk my bicycle up 5th Avenue. I passed a woman sitting on the corner selling Street Roots so I stopped to buy a copy. The lead story was about a man from Dignity Village (a tent city sort of housing project for homeless people) who had moved to London. I commented on the story, telling the woman how in my twenties, I used to help homeless families fix up squats in London so they could move into them. She said the man who was featured used to be her partner when they lived in Dignity Village.

I asked her if she was still at Dignity Village and she said no, she was sleeping on the street now. She was on disability because of health problems and had moved into an apartment at the Rosewood but it had smelled very bad, like cat piss, and it made her sick to be there. In fact, she ended up in the hospital because it smelled so bad. When she got better, she refused to go back there and they wouldn’t give her another apartment, so she ended up having to go to a women’s shelter. However, the shelter was closed down for lack of funds, so she was back on the street. She was working with a case worker from Cascadia hoping to get another apartment, but it could be a long wait.

I have an MSW and I’m a certified drug and alcohol counselor but it didn’t take a master’s degree to figure out that she had been housed in an apartment where methamphetamine had been cooked by a previous tenant. Because ammonia is used in the process, former meth labs generally smell like cat piss. And she was made ill by the toxicity. The social worker wanted to take her in hand. I gave her my card and asked her to come see me, but she was afraid that somehow that would compromise her relationship with Cascadia and her ability to get housing. I assured her I wanted to help her as a friend and that I wasn’t looking for more clients. She was still apprehensive so I let the subject drop.

She asked me if I knew of a public bathroom nearby. I said that when I was downtown I usually went to a department store. She said that since she had to carry a sleeping bag, that wouldn’t work for her. It labeled her as homeless and she would be thrown out of any department store. I told her that she was welcome to come with me to my office and she asked me what floor it was on and I said the sixth. She quickly shook her head no. She doesn’t ride elevators and given the state of her health she couldn’t walk all the stairs. She said that she was once trapped in an elevator for 4 ½ hour and hasn’t ridden one since.

I’m an EFT practitioner, among other things, and this seemed like a good opportunity to remove that phobia. Phobias that stem from one incident are pretty easy to deal with, and with everything going on in this poor woman’s life, removing a phobia would be helpful. I told her I could help her with that, but I’d have to come back later because I had to get to an appointment. How about one o’clock. She said okay, but she looked somewhat alarmed. I think I was too much for her.

I came back at one. I was walking towards her, about a block away, when she got up and left. I walked after her, quickening my pace, until I finally caught up with her couple of blocks away. I reminded her of our appointment, but she said, no, she had to get to a doctor’s appointment. She was flustered and breathless.

Here I was chasing a homeless person around, terrifying her, foisting my gifts upon her. Sometimes I amaze myself in my insensitivity. Still, there are so many stories like hers out there and I was trying to help. She was such a sweet person yet bad luck and bad health were her lot. How does one turn that around? How could she finally get her own apartment only to have it be a former meth lab and poisonous to her? How could anyone not know that was the problem with it and that she wasn’t just whining, but had been exposed to toxins? I was ready to march in and do battle for her, but I became yet another problem for her.

What a world. What a world.