Seeing the homeless

I've had a very nice place to live for a very long time. Before that, there were some places that were pretty nice, some just ok, a few that were sketchy, and a few places that weren't any place at all.
We'll be hearing a lot more about the homeless as the weather turns colder. There will be good programs to bring people in at night, to bathe, clothe, and feed them. Good programs run by good people that will keep many a folk alive.
Those who work with the homeless know how to find them. Most of us, even those who know something about homelessness but have been away from it for a while, won't know that there are homeless in our midst. We know how not to see and the homeless know how not to be seen.
Last week, I had a dinner with a guy who'd been homeless. He's living indoors now, in one of those single room occupancy buildings that we used to call rooming houses. You get a room, share a bathroom, and that's about it. He has a job collecting carts in the Walmart parking lot.
Funny thing. You wouldn't know that this guy was living in an SRO or that he was or had been homeless. He looks like just a guy about my age. He's articulate, undramatic, and affable. He's serious about stuff, including some stuff that's beyond what I can even begin to think about. We talk about what we have in common, which is quite a bit. He and I are graduates of the same college. By chance, we knew some of the same people in towns 100 miles away.
Plenty of people on the street have trouble with booze and drugs and mental illness and plenty on the streets don't. Each person got there by a singular path, a unique series of collapsing events. That's what makes homelessness so vexing. It's like health care. There are broad prescriptions that have to be tailored to the individual. We want big and fast answers. The trouble is, the good answers come one person at a time.

There are plenty more stories about the homelessness of friends, families, and others who are connected to you and me. For example, a high school classmate of mine who showed up on the front page of the Telegram recently. You can read his story, Finding a home, if you're a Telegram subscriber. The stories have wit, cleverness, endurance, tragedy, and so on. As a friend once said, however, the story is a lot better than the experience.