Homeless in San Diego

I had a pizzeria on the corner of Hudson and Charles in New York’s Greenwich Village. This is a long way from San Diego and maybe this man I knew should have moved out here. His name was Mike, a big burly African American man, who I talked to him every day for two years. Mike was very intelligent and remarkably happy for a homeless man. I always saw him in one of two places. In the summer he would be down in the village on Bleecker Street and the winter in the subway right by Madison Square Garden. These were where he worked the people so he could make a living.

This was nothing new to me seeing homeless people in New York. However, this man was different, he had so much life in him and I became his friend. This was truly my first experience with the homeless. I remember one conversation I had with him. I asked him why do you stay on the streets when you make so much more money than I do. I had a house on the Jersey shore and he lived on the streets of New York. He said to me “ I have been on these streets for forty years; this is my home.” I still don’t understand. Oh, by the way this man was also blind.

I moved to San Diego in the winter of 1999, and by January 2000 I became homeless. This was not what I wanted, but this happened anyway. If you are going to be homeless this is the place to be. I am going to look at the questions why is the homeless population in San Diego is growing and who are these people?

Well the first thing we have to look at is why we have a growing population of homeless people in San Diego. There are many reasons for this. I will look at this in two ways, the first being that the population in this city is growing. The second is, the people of this great city offer first class assistance for the homeless people.

“San Diego is the second largest city in California and the seventh largest in the United States”(Columbia Encyclopedia). We can look at this and see that just being the second largest city in the state means we would have more homeless, but there is more to this. We have to look at why are people homeless here? Let us forget for a moment that many homeless people like great weather, and let us say they are not moving here for that reason. I am going to look at two things that make people fall into homelessness. One reason is that most people in San Diego work for insufficient wages. In New Jersey I worked for a grocery store back in the eighties making sixteen dollars an hour. I went to work out here for the same union, in a grocery store and made seven dollars and forty cents. Same Job! One cause of homelessness reported by cities that were cited in a report was “low paying jobs”. This was the Mayors' 16th Annual Survey on "Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities” and San Diego was part of this. If people here cannot afford a place to live they will have to live on the street. Rent control might solve this problem, but we all should make enough money so we can have a place to live. Now this reason really bothers me, mental health problems. I keep thinking about Mike, was he ill? I do not think he was crazy. He told me he made about four hundred dollars a day and I believe he did. I gave him a dollar every day. This man made more money than I did and lived on the street. Does this make him not all there? Well I say yes, he had some kind of mental health problem. I saw this one-day, when he urinated in his pants and did nothing about it. I am not a doctor so I may be wrong, but this is my opinion. He may have needed some help.

What is mental health? “Mental health is how people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives; evaluate their challenges and problems; and explore choices. This includes handling stress, relating to other people, and making decisions”(SAMHSA's). Many homeless have difficulty dealing with these problems and some turn to alcohol and drugs. Mental health problems can be anything from addictions to alcohol and drugs to schizophrenia. Unfortunately these people “make up one-third of the homeless population”(The Treatment Advocacy Center). If people on the street are sick this cannot be good. We need to get help for these people. I have done a lot of research on this and if these people can not handle their mental health we need to get them off the streets.

Being on the streets in San Diego for three months I saw many people with these problems and know that there are many organizations to help the homeless. I did not want to live on the streets and wanted to have a home for myself. Being a veteran I went to the homeless veterans shelter and got a list of all the available assistance they had. This is available to everyone and the Vietnam Veterans of San Diego will show anyone how and where to get help. This organization has been here for almost thirty years and gets a lot of financial help from the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars).

In addition to Vietnam Veterans of San Diego, St. Vincent de Paul Village among others in San Diego is willing to help all people who ask for help. St. Vincent De Paul offers meals and bed services, but it also offers much more like services for runaway children and people with Aids. Each night, an average of eight hundred people comes to the village for a meal (St. Vincent). They can spend the night, but have to leave by seven the next morning. If you do not make it there by six in the evening they give your mat to someone else. I spent three weeks there and because I had a job they worked with me when I needed a place to sleep after their cut off time. All I had to do is show them my work schedule and help make breakfast for everyone. St. Vincent De Paul tries not to be called a shelter and chooses to be called a village as you can see by its title. They want people to better themselves and by showing them to believe in themselves.

I think there are three types of homeless people. One type is people who if not happy with their situation are content with being homeless. Here in San Diego I found that not the case. I found no one like Mike here. The second type wants to get off the streets and into a place they can call there own. This was all around me and I personally know a few people in that situation. A lot of them could not afford the rent and got kick out of where they were living. Others were recovering addicts and want to start a new life. This brings me to the third type of homeless people; the mentally ill or the addicts. I have to say I stayed away from people I felt were mentally ill, but I did see many of them.

All these types of people are escaping from something, be it society it self or the life they once had and want to make it better. Homelessness has never been a top component on the national political agenda, but here in San Diego there are many public and private organizations that offer help.