It’s a rainy Thursday morning in Austin, Texas. Yesterday I booked two more nights here. With the rainy forecast, I’m kinda regretting that decision. My Airbnb host told me about a nonprofit project, Community First! Village, on the outskirts of town. It’s a community of tiny homes and RVs designed to provide housing, employment, services, and community to homeless people. They’ve also built a small section that they operate as an inn. I’m assuming the inn is set up as a social business venture where the proceeds help support the nonprofit. Both the inn and the village provide job opportunities for the residents living there. This is where I’ll be staying for the next two nights – in/near one of America’s model communities designed specifically to provide permanent housing for people who are experiencing homelessness. Based on the news articles I’ve read, it’s been a successful program, and other cities, including several in California, are trying to replicate it.
Housing and homelessness has been a subject running through the back of my mind for much of this trip. It’s closely related to the nonprofit work I’ve done, but it’s something I see every day in every city that I visit. It’s also something people frequently mention when I say that I’m probably moving to the Bay Area – where it’s a significant problem. But there are two other things that have kept the topic of homelessness in my mind: this experience of living out of my car and in hotels, and my experience with some of the Airbnb’s that I’ve stayed in.
Life on the Road
While I have the luxury of staying in hotels during my trip and I’ve only slept outside (by choice) a couple of times, I’ve had my share of frustrations that are mostly attributed to living “out of a suitcase” for a prolonged period of time. Nearly every time I face one of my minor hardships/setbacks, I think about how much harder it would be if this were my life every day and if I didn’t have the benefit of a roof over my head and the ability to just leave or find food or shelter.
On more than one occasion, I’ve been flustered by having to deal with the elements (rain, cold, and heat) as I’ve camped, walked, or tried to rearrange my stuff in my car. I’ve experienced the discomfort of getting soaking wet, and not having a place to dry off or change for hours. It’s often in those moments that I wonder how people living on the streets manage to do this day in and day out. Even now, as I write this, I’m watching the clock because I have to check out of my current Airbnb, but there’s a torrential downpour and in the four minutes it’ll take me to walk to my car, shove stuff in my trunk, and hop in, I’ll get soaked and be that way for most of the day. Which, I’m realizing, makes it difficult to focus on anything other than how to navigate this immediate next step.
Living this way has also made me more aware of just how much time there is in a day. I’m always looking for a place (preferably free or low cost) to spend my time. Basically, unless I want to spend all of my time in my hotel room, I frequent a lot of coffee shops, restaurants, bars, museums, and parks. But with most of those spaces come financial costs, and in some cases there’s a cost to access the space in the form of parking fees. Not to mention that when I’m out all day, I sometimes have to use a bathroom but many establishments only allow paying customers to use the restroom. Again, I can pay for a cup of coffee and manage my needs pretty easily, but I’m seeing just how inhospitable our cities can be towards people who don’t have a lot of options.
As I’ve navigated the geography of several cities, I’ve also become acutely aware of, and sometimes worried about, having my stuff stolen. I’ve sometimes longed for a little more privacy and space to re-pack and re-group (as opposed to doing it on the side of the street). I’ve had to spend more time, energy, and thought on what possessions I have where and what I need when and how/when/where I’ll take care of routine things like laundry, and haircuts, and meals. I’ve learned that when cooking isn’t an option, I’m often on the hunt for food somewhere. At these moments, I am extra thankful that I have the means to buy a meal. I don’t know what a person is supposed to do when they can’t cook and they can’t afford to dine out every meal.
These are all very minor hardships (annoyances) compared to what a person living on the street has to deal with. I can always spend money to address my problems. I can go to restaurants. I can book hotel rooms. But for me, these minor annoyances force me to imagine some of the daily logistical challenges that people who are unhoused face. They have no privacy for anything. They always have to worry about their stuff. They have to find places to hang out and most places don’t want them hangin’ out. They have no secutiry and no protection. They’re constantly exposed to the elements with little reprieve.
As I’ve traveled, I’ve thought about how frustrated I sometimes get over what feels like bad luck or timiing, or how I might mutter some curse words when something doesn’t go my way, and then try to imagine a life where nothing seems to go my way. I try to think about the dozens of painful inconveniences our unsheltered neighbors face – and how unrestful their sleep must be. I imagine that after a few days of living like that, I’d be angry and shouting at people and begging to have someone believe me or hear my story. For the homeless, I imagine it all feels unreal and overwhelming at first and then, at some point, the mind stops trying to make sense of the situation and simply goes into survival mode.
In Dallas, I watched a man scream at and hit the side of a security guard’s truck. The man was furious at the guard for having confiscated his possessions. Also in Dallas, I saw man, overweight and in bad health with an amputated leg (probably from diabetes) with no visible wheelchair or crutches to help him get around. In Tulsa, I watched a man bathing his feet in rainwater runoff by the side of a parking garage. In Charleston, a man took off his shoe to show me his blackened toes. In Austin, I saw a woman whose hair looked like it had been pulled out or is falling out, sit shirtless on a street corner rocking herself back and forth mumbling incoherently. In every city, I’ve seen feet peeking out from under tarps and blankets. I’ve seen people sprawled out across sidewalks. Most people look away from these things. Or worse, some of our politicians use these images as publicity stunts in their political attacks against “failed liberal” policies. I choose to pay attention because I know the first step in trying to help is always acknowledgment.
In a follow up to this, I’ll write about the second thing I’ve noticed while staying at some Airbnbs and how the levels of homelessness were seeing is, on a fundamental level, a series of policy choices that favor profits over human dignity.