Who will help them? As far as I can tell – no one . . . except a couple volunteers from a community group not funded by the city or a staff member from a church.
Ok – this is the second time I’ve heard of this issue. The first time, last July, someone asked me what could be done and I tried calling the public health department who told me they couldn’t do anything. That they didn’t have any outreach workers to help and that it wasn’t a communicable disease so they didn’t make it a priority. They were, however, willing to explain in way more detail than I wanted to hear about what I could do. Eventually someone from the Stone Soup Squad worked with 1st United Methodist Church to get medicated shampoo and have Meriter allow them to shower there. Sounds like it was only once tho. (And actually, never was resolved as I learned this morning – because you know, there is no place to take a shower. They still have the shampoo, but no realistic way to use it.)
This second time, I learned about this issue when a police officer showed me the “wanted” type poster of 6 people I know . . . I was really concerned at first, wondered what they did, but then I realized it said “officer safety” on it. It was a poster saying these 6 people might have lice. The police knew one of them does. The police found out when they tried to take them to the person to detox and detox wouldn’t take them, so the police took the person to the hospital, who treated the person, but detox still wouldn’t take them. Don’t know what happened after that. But bottom line is the police shouldn’t be running all over town because a homeless person has lice – I think they have better things to do.
Last night, after talking to the police officer, I also got a copy of this email . . .
From: Voegeli, Doug
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 12:14 PM
To: AS GROUP; AT GROUP; CCB MPD; CCB Parks; CCB-PH Staff; CL GROUP; DCR Group; EN GROUP; EOC GROUP; Fields, Debbie; FN GROUP; HR GROUP; IT GROUP; MC GROUP; MY GROUP; TR GROUP; Veldran, Lisa
Subject: A Message from Public Health Madison & Dane CountyRecently, we have become aware that a frequent visitor to the CCB was determined to have a head lice infestation. Lice are small wingless parasitic insects than can be found on the head and/or body of a person infested with the insect. Human lice are flat, have a dirty white to grayish black color, and move by crawling; these insects do not jump or fly. Lice are spread most commonly by close contact with an infested individual or direct contact with their personal belongings including, but not limited to, towels, bedding, hats, scarves, combs/brushes, or jackets. Because transmission of lice requires this direct contact between individuals, transmission in the workplace is very unlikely.
To prevent an infestation with lice avoid direct contact with individuals that may carry lice and avoid all contact with personal belongings that may harbor lice. Additional information is available at the following link (http://www.publichealthmdc.com/documents/headlice.pdf) or by contacting Public Health Madison & Dane County at (608) 266-4821.
Ok, but what is public health doing to, you know, help people get rid of the lice?
Warning people to stay away from the homeless on the lobby, cuz we all know that is who they are talking about. And then doing nothing to solve the problem? Brilliant.
I went over to the city-county building this morning and talked to three of the people on the poster to let them know that first the police have this poster and also about the email that went out. I found out that the person the police think has lice doesn’t know it. Or at least hasn’t said anything about it. Another person did say they have lice and have for months (see above). They have the shampoo, but no place to shower on a regular basis. They thought they had gotten rid of it, but they didn’t. They thought another one of the people likely has it, but won’t admit it (tough guy!). Anyways, one of the people is going to go talk to the person the police think have lice and let me know if they need anything to help with the situation unless 1st Methodist does it first.
But, beyond all that – Is this the only way the community can deal with these kind of issues? Is there no one officially with the government that is paid to help solve these problems? Is it just left to the community and a nice police officer who talks to someone who knows someone who might help.
Can’t we just have some FREAKING SHOWERS for homeless people so this isn’t such a HUGE issue – the shampoo is much easier to solve, even tho it costs $20 at Walgreens. This whole thing is just embarrassing, dehumanizing, degrading and now everyone coming in and out of the city-county building that might have been previously nice to the homeless people who hang out there are probably looking at them cross-eyed.
And, yesterday around 2:00 an agenda for the City-County Liaison Committee came out and it has one item on the agenda, trespassing in the city-county building . . . and attached to the agenda is 2,000 police calls to the building since the beginning of the year, but if you look at the list . . . very, very, very precious little has anything to do with the people who are hanging out in the lobby. (There are a bunch of explanations needed for that list, but sometimes the issues are generated with those addresses because people come to the police station to report something – and the police station is in that building.)
This whole situation, how do I usually put it, this sucks!
