habitat
The overnight air is hot, dark, and heavy in Springfield, Missouri. A haze of insects swirls around the lights of my hotel parking lot. I walk to the end of the driveway, cross the street, and turn right. I turn right because it looks like that’s where the city is - the commerce, the people, the life. I don’t expect much at 5:15 in the morning, but I’ll be in town for a week, so I might as well start exploring the neighborhood.
The frontage road skirts the perimeter of a self-storage place, a budget hotel, a weed dispensary, and a BBQ joint before leading me onto a major thoroughfare.
There’s a seediness - a griminess - on the north end of Glenstone Avenue that I didn’t notice when we drove in last night. In the gutters, in the corners, and in the under-the-bushes areas, I see syringes and pipes among the broken glass, Swisher Sweet tips, and crushed White Claw cans. Shopping carts sit battered and abandoned far from their stores of origin. Property borders are overgrown and unkempt, and there are a lot of chain-link fences. It looks and feels like a tough neighborhood.
There are more people on the street than I would have guessed for this time of day, and they appear to have spent the night out here. Two women in very tight tops and very short shorts appear in silhouette - backlit by the halogen of a gas station canopy. They share a cigarette and stand close to each other as if they’re cold.
A third woman, dressed like the other two and with smeared, exaggerated makeup, hurries along the sidewalk with her eyes downcast and her arms crossed tightly in front. She looks like she had a rough night. I step aside and she passes - I’m not sure she even saw me.
Defunct storefronts host huddles of humans, asleep with their backs against the walls or lying down on the bare pavement. A hunchbacked man with a cart full of trashbags is trying to pry open the side door of a shuttered auto repair place. Another slinks behind a motel building, and in a few quick moves is up and over a fence. He drops down on the other side and disappears into a shabby apartment bloc.
I’m not at ease in this environment. It doesn’t feel safe, but is the threat real or just my imagination? Clearly, it is a neighborhood where prosperity is a struggle, but is that the same thing as being dangerous? Later on, I’ll check the numbers and find that Springfield’s crime statistics are far higher than my home city, but I don’t know that yet, and I’m curious, so I keep walking.
Two skinny guys on BMX bikes come out of a side street, turn and circle behind me. I give them enough of a look that they know that I know they’re there. They come around on my other side and slowly pass closer than they need to. It feels a little menacing. They say nothing to me and I say nothing to them - I just keep walking steadily forward. They circle me a second time, and I prepare to react to whatever might happen. But, then they move away, south along Glenstone – taking their time, checking things out.
I look at the street people with their dirty clothes and empty eyes and jump to conclusions about who and what they are, and then stop myself because I don’t want to be unfair. I’m intrigued by the questions of why some of us succeed and others don’t - and what is success, anyway? Does success have to include a stable housing situation? I can’t imagine aspiring to live on the street, yet so many seem to end up here. When living on the street is the best that someone can do, what, if anything, is the proper thing for us to do for them?
Some of the street people have gathered in groups and others are loners. Either way, this is their habitat, not mine. I don’t know the rules of the street, so I’m cautious about looking too long at any one person. I don’t want to upset anyone or linger too long on turf where I’m not welcome.
Looking at the street people, my thoughts turn to the concept of home, and I’m thankful to have one. It’s in a safe neighborhood in an Iowa college town - a small, modest house on a street of other small, modest houses. It’s a neighborhood where people know each other and talk to each other and trust each other enough to share keys to our houses, and feed each others’ cats when we’re gone.
The house I share with MSL isn’t perfect. The kitchen is outdated, it needs new siding, and I’m baffled by a water leak around the bathroom shower. On the other hand, the furnace is new, the roof is solid, the basement is dry, and the one positive feature that trumps all others is that it is paid for. Nobody else has an ownership claim on the property. That means I’ll always have a roof over my head. I’ll always have a place I can go - a place where I belong - a place where I don’t have to justify my presence to anyone. I can eat there and sleep there and poop there with the home-stool advantage. I can lock the doors and have a safe, private space around me. I don’t think of it in these terms very often, but if I did, I would realize what a blessing it is.
What do you see when you see street people? Ne’er-do-wells who support their filthy lifestyle with petty crime? I do. I see that. Do you see freeloaders living on the handouts of expensive public programs, or taking advantage of the generosity of well-meaning people of faith? I do. I see that, too. Do you see people who have made so many bad decisions in their lives that they no longer know how to make a good one? Do you see them as dangerous and feral? I do. It may not be fair, but I see that.
And do you also see the mentally ill, and the addicted, and those whose ability to live in a conventional way has collapsed, and they’ve slipped through the holes in our social safety nets? This is probably closer to the truth, and I have to remind myself to think of them this way - as people - rather than as a blot on our civic landscape. They are humans, like you and me, and each one of them has lived a profoundly unfortunate story to end up this way. I don’t wring my hands over people whose lives are wrecked by continued bad decisions, but it certainly is a tragedy when this is the best they can do. I wonder what a compassionate, effective response could be.
I watch the street people wake up around me - the neighborhood is coming to life - and I decide that laziness is not among their shortcomings. It’s still early - most employed people are still in bed. It may seem counterintuitive, but I suspect it is hard work being homeless. Maybe it’s not legitimate work, maybe not honest work, certainly not “work” that conforms to societal norms, but the next meal has to come from somewhere and the next night has to be spent somewhere, and it takes effort to arrange those things.
When I saw the two young men on the bikes, my first thought was, “what are a couple of guys who aren’t headed to work doing on the street at this hour of the day?” But in reality, they probably were at “work”: scavenging for discarded leftovers or hunting easy prey. What if I had been wearing a backpack or carrying something other than a paper coffee cup . . . would I still have it, or would they?
I’ve been walking for an hour and it’s time to head back to my hotel. Despite the sketchy feel, and the close call with the guys on the bikes, no one has actually threatened me. It is depressing to see so many people looking lost and purposeless in 21st century America, and it is sobering to realize that I might be just one bump on the head away from being there, myself. I trust my family and my insurance companies to look after me, but what if those systems fail? What if I can’t pay the premiums, and what if it all falls apart? It happened to all these people around me, and it happens to someone new every day. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
I unlock the hotel room door, step in, and see myself in the mirror. I realize I look just like them. I’m wearing the same T-shirt I slept in and a pair of cargo pants that I cut off just below the knee. They’re worn and ragged, with loose threads hanging down my legs. My hat got crushed in my duffle so it sits kind of crumpled on my head and I haven’t shaved. I may have felt out of my element on the street, but by appearances, I fit right in. Maybe that’s why nobody bothered me.
Uncomfortable as my morning walk was, I’m thankful for the opportunity to have seen the street life of Glenstone Avenue. We have a homeless population in my community, too, but we’re better at hiding it. I’m always interested in the living situations of others. It’s been good for me to travel and get a first-person view of political oppression in Palestine, subsistence-level poverty in Africa, and homelessness on the streets of American cities. It’s good for me to wander outside my middle-class bubble and be uncomfortable from time to time because it leaves me with a more accurate view of the human condition, and more grateful for mine.
But I don’t know that I have any solutions, and tomorrow when I get up for my early morning walk, I’m probably going to turn left at the end of the hotel driveway.
