These few hours opened my eyes. I learned so much. It was like a fire hose attached to my eye sockets on full blast (but without the pain of course). While maybe only a small slice, I learned about their lives. I learned some of their vocabulary too. I want to forget everything I wrote in my last blog entry about panhandling, because I wrote it without ever having sat down with someone who is doing it.

They call it “Flying”. At first, I thought that was a term for taking drugs, but it is what they call it when they are on the street holding up a sign and asking for money – because they are ‘flying’ the sign. Not all of them go flying, but some do. These seem like very resourceful people in many ways.

They know where to go in town to find the best left over cigarette butts where others leave them partially unsmoked from being on hurried smoke breaks. They call this ’sniping’. They also know where to go to find clothes that people drop off at charities after hours. One day, one of them was hoping he could find a new t-shirt and he stumbled on an old semi-beat-up mp3 player/recorder. Him and a friend took it to a local music store and recorded some original music with the store’s guitars. I got to hear one of their recordings and it was awesome. The production quality was horrible, but who cares. The lyrics, the two guitars (lead and rhythm), and the fact that it was two homeless guys in a music store singing about their life stories made it priceless.

He just found out that one of his “flying” friends has a brain tumor and only has 6 months to live. So they spend time each week under a bridge in Austin with the little recorder recording his life stories so he will have something left behind to share with the world. He also plans to write some songs about his friend’s stories.

He used to work in customer support for a high tech company helping end-users with hardware problems. He said this is what enabled him to figure out how to use the mp3 recorder he found – although his eyesight is getting bad.

Looking back, there are lots of things I want to ask – like what caused the transition from high tech to homelessness. But I hope I get to continue to hang out with him and get to know each other better.

The ministry volunteers were saying that they mainly get “traveling homeless” or “gutter punks”. Right now, with it still being the end of summer, most of them aren’t here yet. But come some cooler weather in September, they will start seeing from 20 to 30 a day. It was refreshing to see their ministry style too. They aren’t the in-your-face-repent-or-go-to-hell type of guys. They are all about meeting people where they are at and building relationships. As the relationships develop, the people know that these missionaries are Christ followers – they can see Christ through them and at work in them – and then the non-believers or seekers start to want to know more.

I also learned a little bit about crime. One of the homeless guys who stopped by was telling me how unfortunate it is that some of the traveling homeless might resort to crime to get money – even go as far as mugging UT students in dark allies as they walk home alone at night. So here I was – almost in tears as I heard the amazing stories of one of these guys caring for his friend in his last 6 months of life – while at the same time – almost in fear or rage to hear about the almost certain upcoming muggings of students. But now it makes sense.

Why should I expect any different? These are people. And all people are broken and have baggage. They come from all walks of life. They have all sorts of various sets of values and morals and hopes and struggles. They are a cross-section of society. I could now care less about whether or not they are lazy. I and many others I know are too. It doesn’t bother me to know that they beg for their money. Many of us do too don’t we – isn’t the sucking up we do to our bosses or clients sometimes the same if not worse than begging? Sometimes we say that they are annoying. But aren’t there countless annoying people out there who have jobs and homes too? It doesn’t bother me to know that many of them might spend their money on drugs. Many of us spend our money on things we either don’t need or shouldn’t have and we certainly don’t want anyone telling us how to spend our money.

The artist called Lazyboy wrote and released a song about this called Underwear Goes Inside The Pants. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I think he hits some truth.

We’re in one of the richest countries in the world
and the minimum wage is lower now than it was thirty-five years ago.
There are homeless people everywhere…
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought
he’s just going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought: “That’s what I’m going to use it on!”
“Why am I judging this poor bastard?”

People love to judge homeless guys.
Like if you give him the money he’s just going to waste it.
He’s going to waste the money.
Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do?
Save it up and buy a wall unit?
Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack?
He’s homeless!

I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and goes:
“Why don’t you go get a job, you bum?”
People always say that to homeless guys,
“Get a job”, like it is always that easy.
This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
I’m guessing his resume ain’t all up to date.
I’m predicting some problems during the interview process.
I’m pretty sure even McDonald’s has a “Underwear Go Inside The Pants” policy.
Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically,
I’m sure it is on the books.

Here’s a link to the rest of the lyrics. Here’s a link to download the song from AmazonMP3.

I’m not at all saying I think it is great that they are homeless or on the street corners or having to beg for money. But I’m also realizing that it can’t be up to me to decide what is the best way of life for someone. Who am I to say that people shouldn’t stand on corners and ask for money? Who am I to say how they should spend that money? Just because it might annoy me or make me awkward while I’m walking down the street or stopped at a light in my car, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen. I don’t recall anything in the Bible that says, “thou shalt not beg for money or bother others”. But I do recall that it says to love my neighbor.

Each of us has to decide who our neighbors are and what it means to love them. To me, my neighbors are people who I come in contact with which pretty much includes most of Austin. It includes anyone sitting in the same room as me, anyone I pass on the street, anyone I drive by on my way to somewhere else. I take neighbor to mean the people around me. Some go farther and believe that it means all of humanity – which even drives them to go serve people in other countries. I can’t disagree with that, but for me, I still feel like it means the people physically around me. I’m not sure yet what all it means to love them.

My gut feeling tells me that to love them means to put their needs before my own. But I’m not even sure what that exactly means sometimes. It can’t mean to give them all of my money. It can’t mean to sell all of my furniture and lay down blankets for as many as possible to sleep under my air conditioning. Or can it? The only way I know to figure that out is to take one step at time – and continue to pray and listen to God along the way. I believe that the first most important steps any of us can take to love anyone is to get to know them – to build relationships – to listen – to understand. Without that step, anything else we come up with might likely miss the mark and do more harm than good.

I wondered how does God come into this? I believe that the only way for any of us to connect with and pursue our deepest desires and be truly fulfilled and satisfied is if we follow Christ. It seems pretty well proven that if we try to do it on our own, that we eventually screw it all up. One of my first thoughts when I met all of these folks, was how do we get them to follow Christ. Then I recalled something I heard Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, say once. He said that getting people to follow Christ was like setting them up on a blind date. We introduce them to God and the rest is up to Him. That’s cool, because if it was up to me, I’d screw it up for sure. After the initial blind date, God will continue to use us and work through us to reveal Himself more and more to others. Taking this analogy further – people have to be willing to go on the blind date. I believe this happens when they see what all God is doing in our lives and see our relationship at work with Him – all sometimes without us having to say a word about it.

In addition to getting to know them and understand them (and allowing them to get to know me), I’m working on two other things now and I’d love for any of you who might be interested to contact me and get involved. One is that there seems to be an opportunity for an awesome homeless record label of sorts. A lot of these folks seem to be musicians and they have amazing stories to tell and sing about. I suppose it might be more than a label and could include written and spoken word as well as music. So I’m on a quest now to find a studio, other musicians, and maybe a music attorney to get involved and come up with ideas. I’m thinking about helping them release their material both as CDs they can sell and also have available as downloads (with a portion maybe from the downloads going back to the ministry). Maybe it can be an annual compilation CD that raises money for socks and blankets for the winter – or Ramen soup – or whatever. Maybe it even includes art and photography and putting videos on YouTube (as long as it is all for the right reasons). I don’t see any of them becoming the next American Idol (nor would I ever wish such harm on anyone), but I do see some possibility of working as a collective group to create value to the community (and even international community).

Another aspect of this is that I really feel that college age students in Austin could join together and serve a ministry like this. Many come from high school church youth groups and get to college without the community they were once used to. By serving together, they can create community for themselves, learn more than any class can teach about humanity, and help others – basically love their neighbors. Other students may come from a background of not knowing anything about Christ or anything about their purpose in life – and the best way to figure all of that out is to invest in others.

So hit me back with any ideas or requests to get involved. Or, whether you agree with any of this or disagree with all of it, please leave comments below.

I don’t know if I’ll ever truly understand the full story or have all of the facts. But I’ve scraped together a few things.

Back in July 2005, the Daily Texan ran an article on the topic. Back then, there were a bunch of laws proposed that we going to basically outlaw begging from the streets. But, a judge struck it down as unconstitutional. It seems that a sidewalk is a public forum and the laws were too broad and would have prevented free speech. The article also quoted Susan Morris who was and is the ARCH’s spokesperson and Community Relations Director. Here is an excerpt from the interview with her:

“I don’t see any of the people out soliciting on the streets in our facilities at [ARCH],” Morris said. Many of the people seen asking for help on the city’s roads aren’t homeless but might actually be in the latter stages of alcohol or substance abuse, she said.

“We encourage people to give their money wisely to agencies that help with food, shelter and medical care,” Morris said.

Morris blamed a lack of treatment facilities for indigent people with substance abuse issues in Austin for the amount of panhandlers that don’t use the money given to them wisely.

“We would like to see these people come in to get services, because the money people are giving them is probably not going to do anything helpful like provide shelter for the night or medical care,” Morris said.

This year, in March 2008, an Austin judge upheld the 2005 Municipal Court ruling that a city ordinance banning the solicitation of drivers is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. You can read more about it in a TRLA blog entry I ran across.

I ran across another post on a military spouse support blog that appears to contain a copy of a Houston Chronicle story about Austin panhandling and includes an actual interview with one of the panhandlers. Here is an excerpt:

John Henry Smith insists he makes an honest living begging for money at intersections in the state’s capital. In a few hours, with his swollen left leg exposed, he can make $70 or $80.

“It helps to be sick,” said the 49-year-old Lubbock native, who was shot in the leg 30 years ago.

Some people argue that we should all stop giving anything to people on the street corners so they will stop standing on the corners and begging. Well, if Susan Morris is right, if they are in the latter stages of substance abuse, then I wonder if taking away their street corners would force them to resort to crime to get money to support their addictions. Or, to hear John Henry Smith talk about it, he just sees it as a way to make $70 to $80 an hour. I gotta hand it to him. He makes more than me, but at least I’m not having to stand on a street corner and annoy people.

My current thoughts on all of this are that these folks on the street corners are my “neighbors” and that I should “love” them in some appropriate way. For me, for now, this means I’m going to respect them, offer them a smile, and maybe say, “Hi”, or maybe even ask them their name – but that’s it. They seem to be making a choice to be on the corner begging instead of getting help from local organizations. At some point, maybe we should all have little fliers made that have the address and bus route info for the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH) on it along with other agencies so we can give that to them instead of cash. But for me, if I’m giving my money or time, I want it to go toward something that will eliminate poverty or homelessness and not something that will help sustain the thriving industry of street corner begging.

Many of these people have continued to improve their “businesses” too. Some around Riverside and I-35 are regularly offering iced down water bottles in return for a minimum donation. I’ve seen others in the area selling flowers. Over near Lamar and 5th St. they sometimes offer you a little newspaper in return for a donation. These things seem to support the claim that these are all just business people trying to make a buck. I suppose it is just a matter of time until the State Comptroller catches up with them and demands the appropriate permits and back sales taxes.

Enough about street corners. I’m done with this for now. On to learning more about other populations who are actually homeless and need help overcoming it.

I have bounced around for years wondering what I should personally do about homelessness.  I’ve gone from serving on a board of directors of a local homeless organization for families to giving gum to the people on the street corners instead of money to doing interviews of people at shelters to learn their stories to trying to figure out how to get to at least know the names of homeless people whose paths I cross on a regular basis.

I’ve never been happy with the results.  I’ve never been happy with what I’ve attempted.  I’ve always felt I could do more.  I’ve never felt right just giving money.  I don’t feel “called” to solve the problem for humanity or even for my neighborhood, but I know I’m supposed to be doing something about it – somehow.  I think we all are – in our own way – using our own gifts.

So this blog entry marks the beginning of my journey to figure it out at least for myself.  I plan to log each step I take on the journey – no matter how large or how small.  Some steps will be research and learning and others will be action.  I felt that by putting it in writing and having all of you read along with me, will maybe help encourage me to keep taking steps.  Maybe some of you will even comment on the steps and help either speed up the journey or else expand its scope and effectiveness.  And, there is also that dark likelihood that I quit.  If you keep following these blog entries, you’ll soon see that the journey will be a mess.  It isn’t me trying to feel good about myself or trying to get recognition.  It is seriously just documentation of a journey – no matter how right or wrong or good or bad or effective or total failure.

For starters, I want to learn more.  What is homelessness?  Who are they?  How do they become that way?  What do they need?  How are they already being served and by whom?

People talk about “The Homeless” like they are all the same – same situation, same needs.  It seems like a lot of people like to “Feed The Homeless” – as if that is their only problem.  I feel like one step might be to strike the word “homeless” from our vocabulary and use “poverty” instead.  I know for a fact that people considered homeless come in all shapes and sizes with many different needs – sometimes I feel like food is the least of their needs.  One homeless person at The Arch downtown told me that “…any idiot can get food whenever he wants it in Austin.  We need jobs…”

My first step is going to be brainstorming about all of the possible categories of homelessness with the thought being that breaking things down into smaller pieces can reveal new ways to look at or help that particular piece or category whereas looking at the larger group can be overwhelming or misleading.

(A) First Dimension: Desire to Change

This seems important. Can you help someone who doesn’t want to change? I’m guessing the answer is an absolute yes, but I also bet the ways in which you help those who want to change are much different from the ways you help those who don’t or can’t.

1. Those who want to no longer be homeless
2. Those who want to remain homeless
3. Those who don’t have the mental capacity to know what they want or need
4. Those too young to understand their situation or what they want or need

(B) Second Dimension: Type of Homelessness

When we talk about “serving the homeless”, it seems like we need to be either more specific about or more aware of who they are. Maybe our gifts are such that we can only help one of these types of homeless, but let’s not confuse that with thinking that we are helping all of the homeless – and more importantly, let’s join together to make sure that all of these types of homelessness are being served by someone.

1. Families in between jobs or hit with sudden financial/medical difficulty
2. Mentally ill people with no capacity to be self-sustaining or productive
3. Youth who have been abused or abandoned and left to survive on their own
4. People with substance abuse problems that prevent keeping or getting a job
5. Street Corner People who need or want help getting off the street

(C) Third Dimension: Homeless Needs

This list should probably be many pages long. If you ask the downtown shelter what they need, it would likely be socks, towels, and toiletry items. If you talk to a family in between jobs who just lost their home to foreclosure, they might need help with interviewing skills or their resume, a place to stay, and childcare for their baby while the parents are out interviewing. If you ask a person on the street corner with a sign that says “Hungry”, they will likely not want something to eat and would prefer cash. But I think my point is that we should figure what the most effective needs and services are before we just start feeding or emptying our wallets.

1. Temporary help until they can secure another job or be self-sustaining
2. Counseling/Therapy to control whatever is preventing holding down a job
3. Foster care until they are old enough and know how to be self-sustaining

(D) Fourth Dimension: Age

I’m sure there is overlap, but I’m also sure that each age group has unique needs and approaches to get out of homelessness and into a productive meaningful life. These age ranges are just off the top of my head for now.

1. Children who can’t help themselves (~under 15)
2. Youth who need help helping themselves (~15 to ~20)
3. Young adults (~21 to ~29)
4. Adults (~30 to ~65)
5. Seniors (~over 65)

These categories are just off the top of my head.  I plan to do more research on them and even come up with new dimensions that might be more helpful.

I get the feeling that most help for the homeless comes under the category of “Temporary Help”.  This includes providing food and shelter.  It might also include providing training, a mailing address, a phone number to receive voice mail, help writing resumes, childcare so parents can interview for jobs, etc.  This stuff is great and greatly needed.  But somehow I think it only touches the surface of the problem – and sometimes even prolongs the problem.

In each post I hope to also share a story about an experience I’ve had or heard of related to homelessness.  This one is about a 19 year-old I met over dinner at Mission Possible one Tuesday night.  It was my first and only time to serve there so far.  We were instructed to help prepare dinner, then serve it, then serve ourselves and sit with people and get to know them.  My passion is helping youth, so I looked for the youngest one in the room and sat with him.  We’ll call him Ricky.  It didn’t take long to get Ricky talking about his situation.  I felt awkward at first because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but it became easy to ask questions about where he stayed at night, where he grew up, what he would like to see in the future, etc.  

He talked about how he preferred to hang out and “live” in the Guadalupe area as opposed to the East Side because it was easier to avoid drugs at one more so than the other.  He knew he needed to avoid drugs in order to move forward.  He talked about how his dad gave him his first marijuana joint to smoke at age 11.  His dad still lives in Austin, but he rarely sees or talks to him.  I forget where his mom was, but she was completely out of the picture.  He was on his own.  He was sharp.  He knew more about life and was likely sharper than lots of 19 year-olds I know.  He got odd jobs now and then.  He tried to save money from them.  His hopes were to eventually get a good enough job to be able to have an apartment, car, etc.  I wish I had a great ending to the story.  I wish I had have encouraged him in some way – or found out how to stay in touch and help him in some way.  But I didn’t.  

I felt paralyzed.  I didn’t know what to say or do.  All sorts of fear came to me.  I regret it, but this one of many reasons I’m taking this journey, no matter how fast or slow, to try and figure out what to do next time – not only for a situation like this – but for all of the other situations – many of which I’ll write about soon. And I hope over time, some of you will write about in comments too – where you agree or disagree or have additional info. Stay tuned…