To combat homelessness, stop caricaturing it

Like many people who experience homelessness, I never slept on the street, on a park bench, or in a cardboard box. I never pushed a shopping cart around full of my belongings or incoherently spoke out loud to myself in public. I don’t have a substance abuse or alcohol addiction problem and am not formerly incarcerated.

And yet I have been homeless. One of the greatest difficulties in confronting and alleviating the homelessness crisis in America is overcoming the crippling shame among families forced into homelessness and housing insecurity. It doesn’t help when we see politicians blame us and implement policies that criminalize the victims of homelessness by arresting people simply because they can’t afford a place to live.

Across the country, we are at a point where the choices we make define our communities. Are we going to see things simply — as though some people just want to live on the street? Or are we going to understand that people end up without a place to live for so many reasons: a mental health crisis that spiraled because there aren’t enough mental health professionals to treat it, a job loss, or a huge spike in rent caused by the death of affordable housing stock that makes keeping an apartment impossible?

My story shows homelessness is not so simple, and the solution is not to withhold basics like food and housing. The answer is actually ensuring access to housing that helps families like mine get on a path to rebuilding our lives.

That’s what made the difference for us. My bout with homelessness was the culmination of a slow financial decline that started when my late wife Anjela was diagnosed with breast cancer. We moved to the two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx because it was the only place we could afford after she could not continue working as an architect. She lost her battle in 2017, sending my son and me into a deep depression that we haven’t escaped.

A year before the COVID-19 pandemic, when they condemned the building, the city ordered us and the other families in the building to move. We had nowhere to go but to the temporary shelters that the city sent us to in lower Manhattan, miles from the Bronx communities that had become our home for more than a dozen years.

I worked during the time we lived in the shelter and hotel, at a call center and as a writer and editor. I kept looking for more stable jobs, but like millions of Americans who make up the working poor, none of these jobs paid me enough to afford stable and safe housing. Instead, my son and I found ourselves sharing a single room in a Harlem shelter. Over the next two years, the city moved us to two different shelters, each time at a moment’s notice.

We actually fared better than some because the city designated us as “displaced,” which meant we qualified for shelter space and some food assistance. But those arcane bureaucratic distinctions don’t recognize the anxiety and stress that become the constant companions that never ease their grip on your chest or stop the pounding in your head.

Housing instability isn’t new to me. I grew up with a single mother who struggled to make ends meet for our family. We often slept on the couches of relatives or moved from place to place chasing cheaper rents. My experiences as a child and adult are far more typical of what American homelessness and housing insecurity look like. A recent report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates more than half a million people are homeless in America. Six out of 10 are in temporary shelters and housing.

If the most common experiences of homelessness are so broad, why is our understanding of it so narrow? The real answer: feelings of deep shame among those who are homeless which discourages them from seeking help; a condescending stigma of personal blame toward the homeless about their plight, and denial, as a country, that the problem is as widespread as it is, or that there are institutional and systemic ways in which we have either caused the problem or could fix it.

Only when we correct our inaccurate perceptions can we come up with the right solutions.

My nearly three-year experience with homelessness ended after finding a landlord who would accept my federal housing voucher, but my housing insecurity continues. It continues because housing security is tied to having a stable, well-paying job and good health to work that job.

I didn’t choose homelessness for me and my son. More than anything, we wanted a safe permanent place to live. I know more than most people that having a home is the soil from which families and communities either grow or wither.