This marks the first of what I presume to be many future blog entries on the subject of Chronic Homelessness (in Houston) of just one person’s 20+ years of homelessness story. I don’t know where this will eventually lead or end up, but I am entering this space in hopes to gain greater clarity on the, uncommon* but often seen (and ignored), societal problem.
As mentioned above, this blog series will be focused on only one individual who has been living without a place to call home for 20+ years; we (Hangout Ministry) have engaged with this person for over ten years now. I will call him, John.
I will be sharing from the perspective of my own personal interactions with John.
And I will start from when I first met him. First off, I wish that I could remember the manner in which I met him, and how the introductions went. Was he sitting down? Was I introduced to him by another person? Or did either one of us introduce ourselves to the other? But, these questions are beside the point or focus of this series.
I’ve come to learn about this person, his past, his hopes, and his dreams. I’ve learned about his family and I know his birthday. I’ve also come to know a few of his different demeanors and characteristics under different stresses of the economy, weather, and other local happenings. Through it all, I’ve seen him to take on the stresses of having no physical shelter/security with humility, grace, and above all, hope. John has shared with me that he would not be alive, if it were not for the grace of the Lord, but he is not the preacher type; you will not see John on the corner warning us that, “The end is near.”
With each encounter, I am always glad to see him, but I also hope that maybe next time, it would be under different circumstances. Though this is not like an elephant in the room, for we often talk about how we can get him set up for the future. And in our last encounter, I asked him, “What do you think is your next step?” And after a short refresher of having tried so many things in the past, his response was, “Sometimes after being out here so long, you don’t even know where to start anymore.”
* I don’t like to get to caught up on technicalities, so I won’t use exact numbers to do the math, but here are some from articles, where the US Census says there are 2,300,000 people in Houston, Texas in 2017 and the Houston Chronicle saying there are 12,000 homeless in Houston, Texas in 2011. 12,000 divided by 2,300,000 equals 0.005217. That means in the population of Houston, 0.5% (that is ½ of 1%) is homeless. Those that are chronically homeless is a subset of that. Types of homelessness are described on the National Coalition for the Homeless Website. Now that we have the numbers out of the way, homelessness is indeed an uncommon occurrence. Another paper analyzing the types of homelessness from University of Pennsylvania.