Why I Am Not Homeless

This morning I went for an early morning jog in downtown Santa Barbara.  The bucolic streets of this beautiful city were whisper quiet at 5 am, the only lights glowing were inside the bars where some still labored at cleaning up reveries now complete.  Somewhere between the strain of my run and the solitude of the morning another awareness dawned: people were sitting up in doorways, rags piled on benches began to stir.  Suddenly I was awash in the realization that the differences between us were few, if any.  I held a hotel key card that was my temporary reprieve from homelessness--but what else?

And I began to wonder:  why am I not homeless? 

I could only think of one reason.

You see, I'm "white" and descended from Europeans.  I was born in America into a family that was middle-class and well-established.  My family, though at times quirky and challenging and certainly not without problems, loved me, fed me, clothed me, educated me.  They made sacrifices, yes--because they could--and those sacrifices resulted in the things in which middle class sacrifice results:  higher education, experience, opportunity.  My brain came along for the ride and for the most part works pretty well (thank you, genetics)--and so I believe it to be true of myself that I can do what I set out to do.

In other words, the reason--the ONLY reason--I am not homeless is simply accident of birth.

OK, maybe there's another reason--I've not experienced trauma, at least not to the point where it has debilitated me. 

That's probably luck.

If my ancestors had been enslaved, if my skin were a different color, if my family didn't have the resources or ability or desire, if I'd been subjected to trauma and my brain were not able to comprehend a different reality (let alone work toward it) that would be me on that bench, in that doorway, sucking on that crack pipe just to make it through another miserable day.  You?

It's been said that the homeless crisis in America is "complicated," and that, my friends, is true--the reasons are as many as the people who have no shelter, no family, no home--the people who need someone to love, something to do, and someplace to be--just like we all do.

But it also may be said that the cause of the crisis is simple and singular.  Some have, others do not.

And that, I'm afraid, is no accident.

(c) Steve Fiechter, 2016