No Address, No Next of Kin: Homeless in Life, Anonymous in Death

Having been a psychiatric nurse for 33 years and working in a Psych ER for the county hospital in SF for the last 10 years of my career, I guess you could say I’ve seen it all. Human beings at their worst, brought in by police often in handcuffs, screaming, threatening violence, high on drugs after creating a disturbance in the community. The homeless schizophrenic, sometimes shoeless and/or shirtless who is hearing voices, suicidal, off their meds because they are too disorganized to follow through with treatment. The homeless who are are alcoholic either by choice and/or biology who were robbed and beaten in a shelter or on the street and come to the Psych ER on their own or with police, social worker, etc because there is nowhere else to go or they will very likely die. The elderly Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered off from their home who can easily be mistaken by the public as “homeless” and dismissed and disregarded by passersby. The homeless person who lost their job and may even have kids who has tried many times to get another job but can’t for any number of reasons. So for some of the people who have responded to this article with such contempt and no compassion I just want to tell you - it can happen to you or your family member or friend. This homeless person is a human being! Look at them. They too once had hopes and dreams. As my pastor says every Sunday, “be swift to love, make haste to do kindness, move urgently to lighten the burdens of others. Amen.”

My friend received meals on wheels. She had cancer, was getting chemo twice a month, and eventually it took her to heaven. In the meanwhile, she split half the lunch she received and would hand it to the homeless guy who “lived” outside her apartment building, when she went out to the street. You’d know her, at one time she served as a Parish Nurse at St. Malachi’s. She was known as the Saint of Hell’s Kitchen. And that she was!

One of my loved ones has gone through periods of homelessness in an urban area. I gave him a Starbucks card which is linked to my account and tracks purchase history. Especially when I know he is unmoored, I keep $ on it and it is reassuring to see where he has made purchases, and to know he can legitimately take respite there as a paying customer.

Gosh, is this really the first time y'all have realize that the impoverished and unconnected to family die tragically? This is how it is all around the world, in most nations no notice is taken of people with no possessions and no family connections die by violence or starvation. It must be dozens of times a day that this occurs. It's not that frequent, locally, that such deaths occur because of falling down a manhole or getting beaten to death, but these types of deaths, of the unnoticed, go on all the time. If people want to do something about it, that will mean more attention given to taking care of children, and the elderly, and that will mean eliminating Republican power. If a system that enriches the rich and ignores the poor is maintained, as per Republican methodology, then this type of death will continue.

People are homeless without necessarily being on the street. They have no real place to live, they stay with friends or relatives or in shelters, never any certainty where they will be living next week or even next day. The best thing we can do is to be aware and to be kind. That doesn't mean picking them up like stray animals but it means being respectful and helping when you can and when help is wanted. Life is very, very tough sometimes. It is tough for everyone at times, but incredibly tough for quite a few all the time.

Homeless people drown resources which could help the working families in this country. They are often drug addicts and criminals with nothing to offer the larger society. In my city, they are a giant blight constraining economic growth. My sympathy is limited.

If these "families" can sue somebody with deep pocket, they will come out in no time.

As I read this article, I spotted an ad on the sidebar: "At a Pete and Gerry's egg farm, the hens are serenaded." What has our world come to? Hens are sung to that they may produce more and better eggs, yet people live and die on the streets unknown and alone? Some people disappear by choice; others do not. We must provide for the ones who cannot do for themselves. No one should have to suffer and die alone. No one.

I can relate. Been homeless for years, wrote a blog homeless-for-5 Have had a house for 5 years, only because I never made any debts, walked everywhere Tried hard to stay in contact with my professional brother, rebuffed but nicely Am 72, youngest son homeless also, brain trauma on school playground for which I never considered suing, reward being home taken and dumped out of town by cops who got the house. And this in a town where we lived honestly for over a decade as church members. I related my homeless years to another volunteer at the Green Bay Housing Authority and she said if I had done everything I said I had, I wouldn't be homeless. See, that's the idea, you are homeless because its your fault. Not because the cops wanted your house, or the community failed to embrace you, or because they couldn't find a fault on which to hang your dismissal, drinking, drugs, gambling, dog beating, but because you wren't sufficiently attached to the community thru family or time. I am now absolutely convinced that no one will believe that the house my husband and I built on land we bought actually was stolen by coercive hypnosis by a social worker in cahoots with the hired-in state cops.

My late older sister ended up on the street in LA several decades ago. We would only hear from her when she called to ask for money. When our father passed away in Ohio we had no way to reach her. A phone call from a trucker in the middle of a blizzard in Kansas contacted us to say he had picked her up at a truck stop while she was trying to hitchhike back to Ohio. She died within a year from an undiagnosed liver cancer. My mother and my sister's son were there with her when she died. We are amongst the lucky families that at least had closure with a loved one and know exactly what happened at the end of their life.

The homeless are a living testament to one thing. They are individuals each and every one of whom have a life that can be defined as a tragedy. They survive on the streets, many of them anonymous, because if they have families, those families have, for whatever reason, abandoned them. The large homeless population in America's cities today can in significant ways be attributed to this country's cultural standards. America has traditionally championed individual independence, the pull yourself up by your own bootstrap creed. Unlike other cultures in the world where families pull together as a collective support system, in America to be dependent on others for support emotional or material is a shameful condition. It's a sad commentary on the reality of life in America.

My father became homeless and an alcoholic, and we lost touch. It wasn't until more than 10 years after he died that we learned of his passing and his burial on Hart Island. He was killed by a train in Brooklyn and for a time it was unknown whether he was pushed, jumped, or if he fell to his death. The coroner's office sent me the autopsy report and his last photo. He was eventually identified through fingerprints due to his service in Vietnam. Now when I see homeless people, I also see the families they represent.

So this past summer, on a brutally hot day, I had an appointment to have dim sum in Chinatown with a friend of mine, his turn to pay. The day before pay day so I didn't have a dime on me, my subway card was empty, & I have no credit cards having emerged from Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy a few years ago. In midtown, but, being a New Yorker for decades, I cheerfully embraced the hike. Deep in Chinatown I had this sequence: a delightful kitsch window display full of happy red and gold Buddhas bopping their heads up and down to the clang of mechanical bells; one block later, a Chinese homeless man, neatly dressed, shoes off but carefully set next to his feet, leaning over his knapsack, thoughtfully reading a Chinese newspaper, very calm and self-possessed, reminding me exactly of the Buddhist itinerant monk ink wash silks at the Metropolitan museum; one block later an actual Buddhist monk closed up his temple, sauntered off and gradually dissolved into the crowd. Yesterday I went back for dim sum with my friend, my turn to pay. I went past where I had seen the homeless man, hoping to give him some alms. At his spot, there were dozens of bouquets, candles, notes, and a Yankee cap. My jaw dropped as I realized he was one of the five homeless murdered in Chinatown recently.

The other side of this story is the 15 families, co-workers, or friends that are wondering what happened to the person they used to know. In my extended circle there are two missing men - both wandered off from home-base in theirs 20s, checked in now and then from new locations and then...and then one day their aged parents and siblings realized there had been no contact for a year or more. In both cases Private Investigators were hired but no trace was ever found.

I wonder if there are family members of these lost folks who are simply too afraid of ICE to come forward and contact authorities?

We’re a couple in our 70’s and wonder whether we should even bother telling our children about the passing of either of us. We good, decent people ... and our kids are self-centered twits. Our sin? We have no idea ...

There but for the grace of God go I. Don’t walk by the homeless without compassion in your heart and the gift of a hot drink or a buck or ten. Lose your judgment. You don’t know the whole story staring you in the face.

Without an address, without names, they find a way to live anonymously among us. When they die, we want to know who they are. I feel for the families from whom they are lost. For them, it might be a comfort to finally know their fates. But the homeless themselves, don't really need the attention.