Not Your Typical How-To

Unlike a traditional how-to article, this one will not give you step-by-step instructions. It will not simplify things for you or give you all the answers. It will look quite different from other how-tos because this is a “how to get over your stereotypes about homeless people” article. It is based on personal experiences, which are never clean and straightforward. But this is what worked for me.

My first extended encounter with homeless people was very uncomfortable. Up until that point I had assumed that all homeless people were mentally unstable men between the ages of 30 and 60-years-old. And in the 1970s and 80s that was mostly true. Or rather, adult men made up the majority of the population. But this particular night in 2005 I found quite a different demographic.

A roommate and I had volunteered to stay overnight at the overflow shelter, which was hosted by my church that month. As we walked into the large, rectangular room lined with army-style cots, I found that there were whole families in the program. Mother, father and children sleeping side by side with 40 other strangers. Now if I had gone to the main shelter, I would have found single men, but the overflow shelter is only for single women and families. And in actuality, about 40 percent of the homeless nationally are families, according to the Equal Opportunity Commission Web site. An alarming 39 percent are children and 2 percent are senior citizens.

What broke my heart was driving away from the church and watching a family walk together down the street, carrying all their possessions. I had no idea where they would go that day or what they would eat. I could not imagine what it would feel like as a parent who could not provide the essentials for their children.

Another stereotype I had had about the homeless was that they did not work or if they did that they managed their money poorly and that was how they wound up without shelter. But again my assumptions were challenged. One year after my first overnight stay at the shelter I was interning with a homeless ministry in Tampa, Florida for the summer. As I assisted the counselors I heard many people’s stories. One frustrated young man was trying to get out of the YMCA’s shelter, but the only work he could find paid a middleman more than it paid him. Another man had come from New York looking for work but without making arrangements ahead of time.

The most sobering encounter I had was with a woman who must have been about 50-years-old. Every day she came in dressed very neatly with her hair combed. She looked like she could have been one of my mother’s friends from a quilting group. I wondered why she she was there. It turns out her house had burned down and she did not have insurance. As simple and as terrifying as that. In California it’s even easier to lose a home with the high cost of housing. A woman at the overflow shelter had lost her job one day and could not pay rent anymore.

So where is the how to in getting over your stereotypes about homeless people? Confront your fears. Interact with people. Listen to their stories. Not only will you be serving them, but you will see that, as cliché as it is, people really are just people.