Last month featured experiencing homelessness from their eyes, nose, ears, taste, and touch, as best we are able anyway! We mentioned “anthropology” as a beneficial skill set, possibly essential to designing a viable resolve. Although our twelve-year sample size asserts only potentially credible findings, they bring insight with respect to our community of homeless addiction disorders (HADs).
Housed or Unhoused
A concern with housing active addiction is preventing the establishment of shooting galleries, smoking stem dens, and/or toxic imbibing havens. On the flip side, isolation and loneliness can be problematic too, depression / suicidal ideation. Excessive isolation and too little social affirmation make things extra difficult for individuals on the mend. It’s navigating interpersonal and group dynamics that require a unique anthropological skill set. These folks tend to go either way: supporting a healing process (remission and/or psychological wellbeing) or contributing to bad medicine (poor self-medicating practices), like enabling and exacerbating unhealthy conditions.
As for more lived experiences, looks like you’ll have to read “Twelve Marble Stairs” which contains twelve years of engaging with homeless OUDs. Some have moved on to become, “Slim Survivors” and productive members of society: mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. A few moved on up to Heaven! A few remain in a sort of civil war, a battle within! They climbed old marble stairs to get to our office located in an old brick and mortar building built in 1912. The title is drawn from Doc’s reminiscing, regression, and rumination over an old path he once traveled leading us to the here and now, today. During his teens Doc worked for Community Teamwork Inc. (CTI), while attending Lowell High. He climbed and washed old marble stairs leading up to the Superintendent of Schools office.
June is looking at how local action matters: (a) neighborhoods supporting housing efforts, (b) addressing the – not in my back yard syndrome, (c) faith communities and grassroots initiatives, and (d) volunteer roles that truly help. First thought that enters the mind is “what will people think if I choose to help?” Another is how many initiatives over the years have been counter-productive, not for lack of compassion, but for lack of comprehension. A third local-action barrier is stigma. Many of our supporting resources do so in confidence and wishing to remain anonymous. Having worked closely with our local food ladies for example, a couple years ago, their feeding our malnourished neighbors became viewed as enabling by some. Enabling what, nutritional healing? The lack of harm-reduction awareness can turn social & interpersonal dynamics into harmful gossip though and incite reoccurring/repetitive trauma and/or self-defeating acting out behaviors. You may think – not a big deal, right? Wrong, deadly wrong! How about another poem from Ebner?
Not in Your Backyard?
When someone says, “Not in my backyard!”
It seems like the words of a Celtic Bard.
I prefer the sounds, of free form poetry.
Does affordable housing have to be an eye-sore?
I’d rather a cute little house out back, then a prison wall.
This America, but only when we stand Tall.
If you are a church goer, ever think about the homeless?
I think I read somewhere about helping them.
They are not helped, by being put in a pigpen pigeonhole.
A reminder for some of our community leaders.
Someone’s wealth does not make them a citizen. Our Constitution reads that way for a reason!
In closing, our editors meeting brought up a couple new relevant articles, thank you so much Ms. Gilbert. The one covering demolition of a couple local eyesores by S&R was on the table along with our Fed’s HUD take on finding resolve for our homeless crisis. The mention of one approach competing with another approach sounded more like “it’s all about the money.” Isn’t money a means for interacting with each other and sharing resources? What is wrong with one way collaborating with the other way? Seems like competing for resources, especially financial ones, outweighs the integrity of social dynamics that prioritize love and respect over the almighty dollar. Maybe we at VSN are simply looking at things differently or delusionally even. Wraparound is viable…