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"The biggest problem is not having any privacy," says Imelda. At thirty-four, she, her husband Jorge and their four children are one of the sixty-five families allowed to live at L.A. Family Housing for as long as two years while they search for work and affordable housing with Carrillo's help. "I can't remember the last time we went on a date," she says.
Two years ago, Imelda was supporting her family as a teacher's aide in the Antelope Valley, an hour from Los Angeles, when she injured herself at work. Eventually her worker's compensation ran out, and she resorted to turning her living room into a convenience store, selling candy through the front window. Now, she and Jorge sleep on twin mattresses pushed together on the floor, which they have to replace on their bunk-bed frames so they can open the bathroom door.
Imelda and Jorge sound like two more victims of the soured economy. But, as with so many homeless couples, there's more to the story. Imelda was born homeless, she tells me, the daughter of a prostitute who left her with a neighborhood babysitter, Lena, who raised Imelda as her daughter. Years later, fifteen-year-old Imelda was impregnated by twenty-five-year-old Jorge, another of Lena's boarders, and she soon married him. A few years later, they learned that Jorge had become HIV-positive from sharing needles, most likely after the birth of their third child. Imelda stayed with him, and also took in the two daughters of a biological sister she had only recently met. But seven guests in a single room proved too much for Lena, who gave Imelda the choice between sending her nieces elsewhere or simply leaving. Imelda chose the latter.
"I guess I was kind of born into this situation," Imelda says. "I wouldn't do to my nieces what my mom did to me."
It's hard not to respect the noble intentions behind these kinds of life choices. What if Paul had stuck with his education instead of dedicating himself to helping Sharon keep sober? What if Imelda had left Jorge because of his drug addiction and subsequent infection? Our culture celebrates such devotion, however impractical it seems.
And yet it demonstrates how being one half of a couple can actually make it harder to get off the streets — being part of a pair may offer protection, but it can also lead to enabling. People are generally homeless because of some problem in their lives, be it medical, emotional or financial — being a homeless couple essentially doubles the magnitude of these problems.
Kitty Galt and Ruben Gallegos, two veteran mental-health outreach workers, have sought out homeless encampments where couples are likely to be found. Their conclusion is that staying together on the streets isn't a mark of devotion, but dysfunction.
"It's so much harder to reach the people we're trying to help when they're trying to depend on each other," says one social-services provider. |
"There are no fairy tales," says Ruben. "It's nice to think that when you see a couple on the streets, there's some romantic explanation, like they just fell on hard times. But I've never seen it. There is always some exploitation happening."
Ruben explains that the exploitation isn't always overt. He tells the story of a family who lived in a van because the father claimed he couldn't get work. After the father lost several jobs Ruben had found for him, he discovered the father was a junkie.
"By dragging down everyone else, he was really just avoiding his own problem," Ruben explains. "The family's homelessness became a convenient cover for his addiction."
The other kind of relationship, says Kitty, is the kind that develops on the streets. A decade ago, she says, she ran a cold-weather shelter, whose rules allowed couples to sleep beside each other. She doesn't recall seeing a single couple who remained together over the course of a season.
"A couple would come in, claiming to be married," says Kitty. "A week later they would be sleeping with different people — in a non-sexual way, of course. The woman is with the man for protection, and the man is just lonely."
Ruben concurs. "It sounds harsh and cynical," he says, "but it's so much harder to reach the people we're trying to help when they're trying to depend on each other. Wouldn't you rather your girlfriend be able to get help, even if it meant separating from her?"
As if to illustrate Ruben's point, Paul recently got a job doing construction, and started saving money to rent an apartment for him and Sharon. But during the day, Sharon had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. She spent each day sitting at a bus stop in the sun just outside the construction site.
"I couldn't let her do that anymore," Paul says, and so, after a few weeks, he quit the job.
After getting to know Paul and Sharon, I have to admit that I can't imagine the two of them splitting up. Together, they aren't starving or lonely, and they're proactive in other ways. They're both politically involved. They attend rallies in the neighborhood and listen to NPR on their portable radio. They spend a lot of their time debating whether their situation will improve after the November election, and whether they will be eligible for more services, such as Section 8 housing. Paul supports Obama; Sharon is suspicious, as usual.
On the other hand, I have a feeling that both of them might be more motivated to seek stability outside their relationship — by having a home and a job, for instance — were they apart. "We're too old to be sleeping on the sidewalk much longer," Paul says. So far, they're exposed but not hungry. Together, he says, they may not have money or a home, but they're getting by.
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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A recent graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Justin Clark has written for L.A. Weekly, Psychology Today, Black Book, Architecture, Fuse, and The Fader, among other publications. He is currently researching a history of the American child prodigy, and writing a mystery novel set in Los Angeles.
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©2008 Justin Clark and Nerve.com |
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