My aunt asks me, “Why are people homeless?”
It is Christmas Eve. My cousin, two aunts and I are sitting around the table while everyone else is watching a movie in the living room.
I want to say, “Google it.”
But I do not. She may actually be interested in the work I do and the people I work with.
I explain some reasons: mental illness, drug abuse, lack of supportive family, lack of family, unemployment.
I tell her about the volunteer in our office who is also homeless, because he lost his job and his house. He can’t find a job. So he sleeps outside and volunteers during the day.
She says to me, “Oh, he probably can’t get a job because he probably stole from his last employer.”
My other aunt and cousin nod in agreement.
I say, “I don’t think that’s it…” but I can’t go on because they do not want to hear me.
They are my family. But they are everything I am not. They go to church. They consider themselves “good Christians.” They play out white-picket fence gender roles. They live in the suburbs and send their children to good schools. I feel like an outsider in my extended family. I live in the city, and not in a great part. I work with the homeless. I believe in relationships other than heterosexual. I voted for Obama. I’ve been in interracial relationships.
I come back to work Monday to publish a newspaper. I am understaffed with a lack of interns and lack of planning on my part. I am worried that the paper will not come out. I have one volunteer who can do layout. But he is also the office volunteer. I need someone to sell the newspaper to the vendors.
Enter the “stealing homeless” volunteer. He saves my butt and sells the newspaper so the other volunteer can do layout. He drops whatever he is doing that day and comes in to help. Even if he was a “no-good stealing homeless man,” he still would not deserve to be homeless. Even if he had not helped me out, he would not deserve homelessness. He does not deserve it.
I hope one day I will be brave enough to stand up to my family. For myself and the homeless people I work with.
