Yesterday, there was a police incident report that was recycled into a “news” story that really kinda pissed me off. (I’ve worked almost 80 hours since last Monday and have lost my patience, please excuse my language.) But where was the rest of the story on this . . .
I’m on a little bit shaky ground here . . . but I don’t want to see another person die. As a bit of background, last August a woman who (very reluctantly on my part) became a friend after she stayed on my porch for weeks and refused to leave – was killed when a car hit her. I talked to her just an hour before. She never got the shower she had desperately wanted for weeks – plans were made, but there wasn’t enough time. I believe that her death could have been prevented. Police had or should have had a court order to pick her up to get services she needed, but the paperwork was just a little too slow coming from the county. (Yes, involuntary commitment.) Unfortunately for the rest of the world, its a life lesson for me that more advocacy sooner could have made a difference. And that we shouldn’t have waited for clean clothes for the shower. Services for people struggling that hard are extremely difficult to obtain, because its hard to know what the right thing to do is, but I don’t believe the price people should pay for our indecision/inaction should be death. I don’t have time to advocate for everyone, but when I see people struggling who have been discarded and banned from everywhere, when they are at their most vulnerable I can’t really look the other way. I’m still guarded, but definitely less reluctant to at least listen, and get involved if its reasonable.
I’m on shaky ground because drawing attention to an individual is always dicey. It’s dicey for the following reasons:
– The individual involved. People want real life examples and stories, but why should the individual involved be dragged through the media and the unkind comments that follow. The looks. The judgement. etc. Why should their lives be opened up to public scrutiny to get the services they need?
– Being critical gets me into trouble with my funders. Lynn Green from Dane County Human Services cut Tenant Resource Center’s Funding in its entirety ($95,000) during the last budget season. Sue Wallinger from the City of Madison CDBG office worked to recruit someone against me and publicly spoke against my candidacy for a board because I was critical of other agencies. This happened when the Homeless Services Consortium were electing a board – chilling the chance that anyone else would speak up and be critical of services lest they be penalized in the future as well. Bonus, she is also the grant administrator on my city contracts. I believe that it has prevented Tenant Resource Center from getting other funding from the city. There are unexplained and I believe unjustified bad staff scores on grants we have submitted.
– I still have to work with the agencies involved and some staffers can’t see that railing against an under-funded and under-supported system drowning in unmet need – i.e. advocating for more funding for good programs and better staff support – is not the same as saying that they are bad people. And they hold grudges that make it hard to get people services.
– Which brings me back to the beginning, the individual. If I say anything, the person instantly gets attacked (or I do) and you get the litany of everything that the person has ever done wrong and they are inevitably called liars and cheats and everything else. This finger pointing happens instead of focusing and asking, “what can we do to solve the problem?” It’s especially galling in that people fail to recognize that some of these worst case scenario people have diseases, and some self-medicate as a result. Others have developed “skills” to survive. Do you blame the person with juvenile diabetes (Type 1) or heart defects or downs syndrome for their diseases? (Cancer, heart disease or adult on-set (Type 2) diabetes, maybe.) Don’t we treat sick people, regardless? Or do we leave them in the woods to freeze?
The rest of the story
Well, here it is anyways . . . lets see how this turns out.
THE PERSON IS BANNED FORM SHELTER- PERMANENTLY. I haven’t been closely involved, so my details might be shaky, but taken in its totality, regardless of the details, something is wrong here.
Sometime in the last 2 months the person has a disability and had asked for it to be accommodated and it was denied by staff and the person tried to commit suicide when turned away from/felt they had to leave shelter. Ended up in the hospital. Was assigned a case manager, appealed and got back into shelter, got some services. Got into a program, a family member died and the person left, person went back to shelter, was permanently banned based on a situation where they feel they were the victim. We can argue over details, but the person believes they are permanently banned from shelter. Got turned away last Wednesday night. Ends up in the woods in a tent – why? Is this the best we can do?
Details to me don’t matter at this point. Personally, I’ve not had issues with the multiple “dangerous” permanently banned people I have had stay in my house or ride in my car. I don’t see it. Maybe I”m just “lucky” or maybe I treat people with respect and am respected. Maybe I don’t see people at their worst. Regardless, the person had no alternatives – his fault or not – there are no alternatives except sleeping in a tent in the woods or in front of the City County Building or under a bridge somewhere. Is it acceptable to have no alternatives for this person? No. No its not. It’s just not, no matter what people say about the person or what they did or how evil they are deemed to be. This is not acceptable. Unfortunately, the story probably perpetuates the “drunk refusing services” narrative that has been created, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Can’t some reporter just ask – why was he in the woods? And get an answer from someone in the woods, not the people who put him there.
