Houston’s homeless shrug off riding out Harvey on streets
HOUSTON — To the masses, it was a vicious blast of nature’s cruelty, a bruising brawl to survive, a forced trip to an uncertain future. To the few, it was just another miserable day.
For all the hardship and pain unleashed by Hurricane Harvey, many of Houston’s homeless shrugged it off.
“We ain’t got nothing to lose anyway,” said Eric Brian, one of the thousands of the city’s dispossessed.
Brian is 63 and is resting against a chain-link fence in midtown Houston, where he’s lived on the streets the past two years. He’s not interested in elaborating on the family problem that drove him here, and doesn’t think people care too much what happens to the homeless anyway. He says he never thought twice about seeking shelter even as the torrents came down.
A few blocks away, beneath an overpass for Interstate 59, about 20 tents are clustered with dozens of bikes, numerous charcoal grills, the occasional piece of furniture and mounds of trash. Many of the dozens who live here chose to brave Harvey in this place they call home, where pigeons gather to pick at food scraps and the steady hum and clacking of overhead traffic sounds.
Asked why he did not fear the storm, Billy Matthews, 46, points upward, to the tons of concrete overhead that shelter him. He began staying here about two weeks ago, when he said he finished a yearlong prison stay for stealing a pair of Gucci sunglasses from the mall. For him, he said, Harvey was nothing.
“It’s just rain,” he said, echoing the words of others on the streets.
Some who live in the camp have phones or try to follow the news, but others rely entirely on the scraps of information passed along by their neighbors.