Simple and free (a poem dedicated to my beloved grandpa)

I’ve grown up so old

It’s a long-winding process

A tough tale no one knows

I’ve grown up…oh so old

Quietly, humbly among the vast rice paddy fields

Sometimes scorching hot, sometimes freezing cold

I don’t ask for richness, I don’t ask for no show

Just peace, love, food, and someone to hold.

Mirror

Looking into the bathroom mirror
Under the gentle neon light
There is a voluptuous Asian female standing
Ample bosom, pretty face, well-rounded figure
So attractive, so fine
Ten years ago, with the same features and height
But with much less weight 
She used to feel fat and ugly and shy
So why does she feel different now? No longer hurt, no longer shy?
The answer probably is
That mirror just lies
That mirror is just so stupid
making me cry.
 

Homelessness Epidemic in the DMV (DC-Virginia-Maryland) area

Once in a while, you encounter an incident that deeply impresses your mind. That happened to me three months ago, when I was on my usual night bus ride to the Rhodes Island Avenue metro station. Dozing off from the exhaustion after a long hustling day, I was awakened by the commotion of a violent fight. Two black women were wrestling with each other in an animalistic manner for nearly twenty minutes. Bystanders jumped in, hollered racist language, tried to pull them apart, but could not stop the aggressive actions of punching, clawing, kicking, and throwing groceries at each other. Looking at the videotape of this, one might guess that it was a scene cut from a typical American comedy filmed in a ghetto neighborhood. However, it was not all that funny. I later on found out that the fight had been started by some irritating exchange of words when a passenger unknowingly swiped her grocery bag into a homeless woman’s infant baby’s face and refused to apologize afterwards. The homeless lady was miserable looking, dressed in a tattered white shirt, and pregnant with another child. She had been strolling around with the infant baby for nearly a year, begging for scraps. What surprised me even more was the nonchalance of other people. She was offered no help, no free food or service, just a dry, emotionless prying from a police woman. 

Unfortunately, this grim reality is experienced by millions of homeless people in the United States. The population has been increasing rapidly, so much that it can be called an epidemic, especially in the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia) area.  How can such a grave issue be so prevalent in the wealthiest nation of the world? Why has it not been successfully resolved? What are the multiple causes behind homelessness? How are these factors interwoven into a complex web that perpetuate the problem, preventing these downtrodden individuals from reaching a better life? In this short essay, let’s explore all these facades. 

According to the 2022 Point-in-Time count, on a single night, there are estimated 582,462 people experiencing homelessness. This refers to individuals sleeping outdoors or places not typically used as a sleeping accommodation, for example: streets, sidewalks, train stations, woods, parks, abandoned buildings, etc. Surprisingly, men are more affected by homelessness than women, currently encompassing 60% of the population. That leaves 38% of homeless population to women, whose majority experience high rates of domestic, physical, and sexual abuse. 5% among these people are youth under the age of 25; 7% are veterans; 20% are chronically homeless, which means they have been unhoused for more than one year or have had multiple periods of homelessness throughout the preceding three years (lotuscampain.org). On any given night in DC, there are 3,705 single persons and 1,172 adults and children experiencing homelessness (community-partnership.org). Each year in Maryland, 50,000 people experience homelessness (hchmd.org). That is much more than the homelessness statistics in Virginia, which is approximately 5,783 (brha.com). 

Walking on the street or riding the bus in the DMV area, one can easily catch the depressing sight of a homeless elderly pushing a cart full of food, unclean clothes and dirty personal items. At the peak of Covid 19 pandemic in 2020, unhoused individuals roamed around the Northwest street of DC like ghosts, begging for change and trying to survive in disease-infested streets while others are safely quarantined inside their homes. Not to mention the danger of being physically injured during the largest political movement in the US history Black Lives Matter, to stay alive while being homeless is nothing short of a miraculous feat. The worst case that I have ever witnessed is a grotesquely obese dark-skinned middle-aged man with severe mental problems lying on the sidewalk of the Riverdale road in New Carrollton day and night. He stinks badly and is wrapped up by a nasty blanket, surrounded by spare food, insects and birds (which probably mistake him to be a dead animal). According to my own judgment, unless a random stranger helps him, he will never get up on the street or live a normal life. I personally tried to call the police one time to make people pay attention and take action but nothing changed. Bystanders gave absolutely no care despite my urging. They only cursed, shook their heads, or pretended they could not understand me. Another case presented in the Youtube channel Tales from the street is Mrs. Katherine, an old woman who used to be a registered nurse, lost her job and her marriage, had been living on the street for 16 years, despite being a mother to several adults. That has shown me the cold harsh truth of our society, like Neil DeGrass Tyson portrays in his book Letters from an Astrophysicist, that in America, people would walk over a homeless person to cross the street to give a dog a treat. To me, it is tragic. 

Not surprisingly, poverty tops the list of reasons that lead to homelessness. Mahatma Ghandhi is not wrong to say “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Stagnant wages, unemployment, high housing and healthcare costs are the main factors that lead to poverty. The people at the bottom are caught in a vicious cycle that is hard to escape, since poverty leads to the lack of housing, food, education, healthcare and vice versa. Mental illness and addiction are also great factors. According to Human Rights Careers, 30% of the homeless population suffer from mental problems, 38% depend on alcohol, 26% on drugs. In the rat and rubbish-infested street of the famous Skid Row of LA, drugs are abundant: heroin, fentanyl, weed, crack, and crystal meth are the most popular. In Seattle, the Fentanyl crisis has sunk millions down to homelessness. People walk around half-naked, scream and talk to the air, and defecate in the middle of the streets. 

              Racial discrimination plays no less an important role in pushing people into homelessness. In America, racial minorities are more likely to experience homelessness than white people. The stress of being discriminated against is a great contributing factor that leads to relational trauma and hence, mental illness. The negative impact of racial discrimination can, according to first lady Michelle Obama in a White House interview, “tear a person’s soul apart.” This affects the youth greatly, as illustrated in the book Reaching Teens, where the effect of racial tension on teenagers is claimed to “deliver a toxic level of stress.”  Systematic discrimination also prevents marginalized people from obtaining decent jobs and education, leading to high rates of crimes and incarceration. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Black and African American people comprise 45 % of all homeless population, despite being only 13% of all U.S. population. Hispanic people make up of 18.5  % of the homeless population. 

Needless to say, homeless individuals endure endless humiliation on a daily basis that not only leaves physical injuries, bums, and scars, but also cripples one’s sense of self, dignity, and human spirit. Violent attacks permeate every corner of our society, like beating, rape, setting on fire while sleeping, etc. Hate crimes against the homeless are widely portrayed in the media, for example: the film Bumfights, which unfortunately creates a disturbing trend where teenagers record their own attacks on the homeless in imitation. In addition, severe weather, poor diet, and unsanitary living conditions lead to common illnesses among the homeless population, like HIV, infection, wounds, lung disease, malnutrition, mental disorders, etc. This, of course, leads to a shorter life span: 48 years for unhoused individuals, which is 30 years shorter than the national average of 77 (nvhs.org).

Personally, I have no idea why other people can perpetuate crimes against these highly vulnerable people. In many cases, even family members and friends ignore or even disown their close ones once they get into troubles. If these people have made some serious mistakes like abusing drugs or getting jailed or beating up their own parents, then that is understandable. However, I have known some seriously sad situations where relatives would not admit their close ones into their houses just because the persons lost their jobs or got sick  and could not pay the rent. Meanwhile, when their “close ones” are doing fine, then they act so sweet and beautiful. Why can’t they at least take the person to a shelter, give them some free food, or help them make a phone call to the homeless hotline? This has proven to me that human hypocrisy and cruelty can be unlimited. 

However, it also amazes me that the U.S government has offered multiple charity services that uplift homeless people. In D.C, Bread for the City is one of the programs that I joined during college that offered free food and clothes for homeless people. They also connect in-need individuals to social workers to help them get access to housing and job opportunities. Staff and volunteers are so well-mannered and nonjudgmental that everybody feels welcome and dignified. So Other People Might Eat (SOME) is another facility in D.C that gives out hot food, medical service, and personal items to homeless people. Multiple shelters are available to help preventing unhoused individuals from being attacked at night or freezing to death in the winter.

In reality, being homeless is a very difficult situation to get out of. The vicious cycle of poverty, battered self-esteem, and joblessness can be near impossible to escape. There is hope though. In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, Chris Gardner, a real-life stock broker millionaire, struggles with homelessness for one year while raising an infant son after being left by his partner in his late twenties. The story not only sheds light on the struggles of being homeless but also talks about determination, grit, and human spirit. I believe that no matter how grave a circumstance is, if a person keeps hope, he can still learn something, like Chris Gardner says, “I was homeless, but I wasn’t hopeless. I knew a better day was coming. Right now, things might seem hopeless but I know better days are coming.”

References

https://nvhs.org/the-dangers-of-homelessness-for-veterans/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmtGjBhDhARIsAEqfDEcE6Z_s42kdvImvrNJTixA0UQ6A5lAP5JKd93mex0B4wVbV570nR5MaAuj-EALw_wcB 

https://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/hatecrimes/hatecrimesmanual12.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmu-hIgFmIA

https://www.lotuscampaign.org/the-challenge?gclid=Cj0KCQjwtsCgBhDEARIsAE7RYh3nOyjDFdUNrNX1GZccz0olo7sMig2YHzRhFQUgsGDJJIS00sQ7QycaAmaCEALw_wcBlot

https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/root-causes-of-homelessness/#:~:text=Enroll%20Now-,Poverty,a%20person’s%20or%20family’s%20risk.