Homeless Voice; Technically Hate, Officially Forgotten

V I S I T U S AT H O M E L E S S V O I C E . O R G

Florida declined to report hate crimes against the homeless for eight years. Advocates say what has been reported since is still inaccurate.

Publisher

Vendor and client Michael White | Photo by Miranda Schumes

The Homeless Voice is owned by the COSAC Foundation, a multi-faceted non-profit agency that feeds, shelters, and arranges access to social and medical services to every homeless person that enters its shelters. We aim to enable them to return to a self-reliant lifestyle, but for the small percentage of people incapable, we provide a caring and supportive environment for long-term residency.

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Originally made by a team tasked to raise money from the streets for the shelter, the Homeless Voice was born from the knowledge that freedom of press was a way to raise awareness. We started as a flyer, then a 4-page newsprint, then finally becoming the voice of the homeless with the Homeless Voice newspaper and website in 1999.

In this newspaper we hope to present the problems that the homeless population faces day-to-day, the problems these people personally face, and the ways that laws can help and hinder them.

Visit us at to read past issues, see online-only content, and a full map of where you can find this paper.

Many of our vendors are clients of our shelters, brought to different major cities to vend this paper in return for a donation. Based out of Lake City — where our Veterans Inn shelter and Motel 8 is located — or Davie, they are always brought out in groups of four to help each other stay motivated and keep each other company. They’re given plenty of food and water for the day and don bright shirts to distinguish them as our vendors.

Depending on their specific job in vending this newspaper, all vendors take in about 75% of donations that day, with the remaining 25% put back into the paper.

We distribute in all major cities throughout Florida, including Tallahassee, Lake City, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, Daytona, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and now Gainesville.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

Sean Cononie

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Fraieli

Executive Editor Mark Targett

Contributers Mary Stewart Katy Regan

COSAC Foundation PO Box 292-577 Davie, FL 33329 954-924-3571 Cover photo and design by Andrew Fraieli

Check out our previous issues and other stories at Homelessvoice.org

Looking for fun and friendly newspaper vendors interested in becoming their own boss.

Contact Ginny: 386-758-8080

Have a journalistic or photography background, and looking for freelancing?

Email us at

andrew@homelessvoice.org The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 3

• Are you a public university student with your tuition waived due to homelessness?

We want to hear your story.

• Are you experiencing homelessness and want to go to a public university?

We want to help you go to university without having to pay tuition

• Are you experiencing homelessness, enrolled now at a public university, and didn’t know you could get your tuition waived?

We want to try to help you through the process of getting your tuition waived.

Email us at andrew@homelessvoice.org

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The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

COSAC Foundation Shelter Statistics

The COSAC Foundation keeps track of all requests for shelter it receives. Here is a sampling of that information ranging from 2018 to 2021.

By Andrew Fraieli

500

People who have asked the COSAC Foundation for a place to stay.

460

450

400 350

300

310

305

250

200 100 50

0

256

311

77

89

26

27

2%

Jail

8%

64 15

125

Friend or Family

37%

15%

24

2018 2019 2020 2021 First time being homeless

0.06%

None of the above

Vehicle 177

150

2%

Facility or Hospital

Shelter

189

207

Where did these people, in 2021, sleep the night before?

Have lost track of how many times they’ve been homeless

17% On the street

18%

Have been homeless before Hotel or motel

Of those who asked COSAC for shelter...

2020

81% 17% 5.5% 7.4% 1.2%

2021

said they could work said they were disabled said they were receiving benefits because of a disability said had applied for benefits because of a disability said they were a U.S. Veteran

78% 14% 11% 12% 2.4%

said they could work said they were disabled said they were receiving benefits because of a disability said had applied for benefits because of a disability said they were a U.S. Veteran

Editor’s note: The percentages will not add up to 100% because multiple respondents were under more than one category.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 5

Homeless Activist Stacy Layer to Receive Michael Stoops Award from COSAC Foundation

By Andrew Fraieli

6

he COSAC Foundation will soon be awarding homeless activist Stacy Layer the Michael Stoops award for her work helping those experiencing homelessness.

Layer is Director of Facilities at the Anne Storck Center in Fort Lauderdale, a nonprofit assisted-living and program center for adults and children with developmental disabilities.

Her work helping the homeless began two years ago through her dog-rescue work, of which she’d been doing for 7 years. It led her to a man, Billy, on the street with a dog whom she wanted to check on, where she realized this man, who was blind, had been given plenty of supplies for the dog, but none for himself.

By the end of the day she brought him dinner and clothing, kept checking on him, and “it just catapulted from there,” she says. It’s now been two years of meeting other people experiencing homelessness in the area, cooking meals, and even bringing Billy to doctor’s visits where his vision has improved and he’s found a job.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

T

Stacy Layer organizing donated food to bring to the people she helps in Fort Lauderdale| Photos by Sean Cononie

She is the first to receive the award as it was made with her in mind, says Sean Cononie, Director of the COSAC Foundation and publisher of the Homeless Voice. The award is named after Michael Stoops, one of the leading homeless advocates in D.C. in the last 30 years describes Cononie. Stoops died in 2017 at 67.

Cononie met Layer by accident, when they happened to be in the same area for outreach one cold night where she was giving people coffee and blankets. Cononie tells how he was impressed by her working on her own, without an organization, saying, “she’s just doing this

out of the kindness of her heart, and now she’s taking people to the doctors and getting them healthcare, which I thought was absolutely amazing.”

Part of the award will be the COSAC Foundation helping Layer create her own agency where she can accept donations, paying for all the processes involved.

Layer hopes that being more official will allow her to expand and have more legitimacy, encouraging more people to donate and help, and possibly bringing in grants which can come with housing. She sees having better transport and therefore more access to care,

and being able to hand out more home-made meals and clothing.

When asked about the recognition in getting the award, Layer said, “It’s always nice to know people notice, and with advertising it maybe it will inspire more people to start helping.”

She gives an example of Billy and his dog being hit by a car once, but no one stopped to help. “They don’t feel like people see them. But they are there,” she says. “Just a warm smile and asking how they are doing can make someone’s day.”

“

They don’t feel like people see them. But they are there. Just a warm smile and asking how they are doing can make someone’s day.”

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 7

Homeless status was added to Florida hate crime laws in 2010, but for eight years they were unreported by the state.

By one non-profits estimate, homeless hate crimes have outnumbered all others since 1999, but by the state’s estimate there’s only been three since 2018.

8Priscilla, The36,Homeless Voiceexperiencing | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 a woman currently homelessness in Jacksonville, Florida | Photo by J-P Pesare for the Homeless Voice

eep down, I still seethe with resentment over never having obtained justice for what has happened to me,” says Mary Stewart, a woman experiencing homelessness in Palm Beach. She’s referring to the multiple batteries, attempted robberies, and sexual assaults she has endured. “It burns me up inside to see law enforcement harass the homeless for panhandling, open containers, trespassing, and public urination — which are petty crimes — but doing nothing when a homeless person is raped, beaten, or robbed.”

In 2010, Florida passed legislation adding “homeless status” to the list of those protected by the state’s hate crime law. Up until then, Florida was second only to California for most crimes against the homeless since 1999.

But whether making those sleeping on the streets a protected class has hindered crimes against them is unclear, as is whether the current count of homeless hate crimes is even accurate. According to advocates, hate crimes against the homeless are severely undercounted, partly because crimes are being reported that fit the criteria for hate crimes, but are not being reclassified as such.

When asked to define a hate crime against the homeless, Donald Whitehead, the Executive Director of The National Coalition of Homelessness (NCH) — a non-profit organization based in D.C. that advocates for the homeless, and one group that claims the official numbers are severely underreported — told the Homeless Voice it isn’t very different than any other hate crime.

One difference may be in the NCH’s own reporting, as their annual reports don’t even include opportunistic crimes, Whitehead says, only what they deem to be purely hate-motivated, but they intend to in the future. “We have to capture those that would be considered opportunistic.

Whether opportunistic or intentional, it’s still an act of hate against a person in a vulnerable situation,” he says. “Most jurisdictions are not tracking those as hate crimes. Many times they aren’t even tracking homeless status.”

The discrepancy between what crimes towards the homeless are labeled hate-motivated and which aren’t is vast according to these hate crime reports the NCH has been publishing since 1999. They show, from their research, there being more fatal attacks on the homeless than any other prejudiced group kept track of by the Department of Justice from 1999 to 2016, with recent years showing non-homeless hate crimes rising above.

For context, in 2018 in Orlando alone, there were 392 cases of assault or battery to varying degrees against a homeless person according to Orlando Police Department public records, six homicides of homeless people in Orlando according to the Orlando Medical Examiner’s Office, and eight in Miami according to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office.

A significant part of the underreporting is also the state not technically being required to track homeless hate crimes at all.

Florida’s Attorney General is mandated by the Hate Crime Reporting Act to release an annual report of all hate crimes across the state. But, this reporting act only includes race, religion, ethnicity, color, ancestry, sexual orientation, or national origin as prejudices, it was not updated when Florida’s hate crime law added the additional prejudices of homeless status and advanced age.

The annual report addresses this saying that even though it was added to Florida’s hate crime law in 2010, “no data is available because homeless status is not part of the UCR and is not required to be collected by law enforcement agencies or FDLE as part of the Hate Crimes Reporting Act.” The FDLE, or Florida Department of Law Enforcement, congregates the data from law enforcement agencies

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 9

Michael White, a vendor of the Homeless Voice and resident at one of COSAC’s shelters | Photo by Miranda Schumes for the Homeless Voice

across the state through Florida’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) Program to give to the Florida Attorney General.

Functionally, even though homelessness was added as a prejudice to the state’s hate crime law, the state did not track it for eight years because it wasn’t legally obligated to — until suddenly in 2018, it did.

Even then, the FDLE could not produce any documents or information detailing the reason it suddenly required law enforcement to report homeless hate crimes in 2018 onwards. FDLE public information officer Dana Kelly cited that the entire staff had changed within the past year, only able to say that this discrepancy between laws was at least partially the reason for the lack of reporting, and that police departments could have voluntarily tracked it if they wanted to.

This change of one law and not the other does have precedent though.

In 1998, advanced age was added as a prejudice in Florida’s hate crime law, and the Hate Crime Reporting Act remained unchanged. But, the FDLE hate crime reporting guide was changed to include advanced age the following year, and the 1999 Attorney General report included it and continues to today. The FDLE hate crime reporting guide wasn’t further updated until

10 The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

2018, the year “homeless status” began to be included in the reports.

The Hate Crime Reporting Act hasn’t actually been updated — besides wordage on public record requirements a few times — since 1991 when it and the hate crime law were both amended to include sexual orientation in the same session.

The annual hate crime reports have now included “homeless status” since 2018, but according to that year’s Florida Attorney General Hate Crime report, there was only one hate crime against the homeless across the entire state that year — a simple assault in Orlando, the same city which had 392 assaults and batteries against the homeless of its own.

According to the report from the Orlando Police Department, on January 30 around 2 AM at a 7-Eleven, a man experiencing homelessness asked a man that just arrived if he had any money. That man became “irate and agitated,” “suddenly” and “aggressively” kicked a trash bin into the man experiencing homelessness, and then pushed his forearm into his chest and throat. The attacker eventually fled, but was positively identified after the fact and charged with battery.

According to the Orlando Police Department though, the report, which was marked as a potential hate crime,

was later amended as having no evidence of a hate crime in a supplemental report. Therefore, the one reported hate crime against a homeless person in 2018 was never actually reclassified as such.

One example of a crime in Florida labeled as hatemotivated by the NCH in 2018, but not officially considered a hate crime, was a case of “aggravated battery with deadly weapon.”

According to the police report from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, a car of five teens followed two separate homeless men around 2 AM in Holiday, Florida, continuously shooting each with metal BBs. They did donuts around one of them yelling, “Give me a dollar, “Fucking pussy,” and “Homeless Fucker” among other insults. All five teens were arrested for “aggravated battery with deadly weapon,” but the crime was not reclassified as a hate crime by the Sheriff’s Office.

The NCH found three others in 2018 as well, with Whitehead acknowledging they are limited by the media’s own underreporting on cases like this, as the media is a main source for them. He also mentions the underreporting by the homeless themselves of crimes against them, and the number of hate crimes this leaves unreported.

For 2019, the NCH labeled five crimes against the

homeless as hate-motivated, including one instance where a group of teens beat and harassed a homeless man in broad daylight. “There’s a higher level of resentment towards homeless people in Florida than I’ve seen in other communities,” commented Whitehead, who previously lived in Orlando, but currently lives in Washington D.C. Yet, according to Florida’s reports, in 2019 there were no hate crimes against the homeless.

The official reports from the Attorney General address this possible discrepancy of, within similar crimes, some being labeled as hate while others aren’t.

In the beginning of each report the following is stated: “As variations may exist among law enforcement agencies in how hate crime data is gathered and reported, it is important to note that this report does not include unreported crimes or crimes that may be hate-related but are not classified as such by the local reporting agencies.”

The FDLE’s Uniform Crime Reports guide manual — to be used by law enforcement agencies to properly report crimes to them — further describes how hate crimes should be determined, saying officers “must rely on their investigative judgment, as well as use probable cause standards,” as well as quoting the FBI’s Hate Crime Manual’s factors to be considered.

But not all Florida police departments see it as their responsibility to classify a crime as a hate crime. MiamiDade Police Department Public Information Officer Chris Thomas elaborated that they see it as the job of the State Attorney’s Office (SOA).

An SOA — of which there are 20 in Florida — represents a county or city in prosecuting crimes given to it by law enforcement agencies. When a police department says in a police report they believe a crime was motivated by prejudice, the SOA is who prosecutes for that.

“In the past we’ve had anti-semitic messages that have been spray-painted on the walls of a synagogue, but we don’t say ‘this is a hate crime,’ we would say this is an act of vandalism, that’s the actual charge. It would be vandalism, but, this is what we saw at that time.

Once that is submitted, if someone is charged, that is submitted to the State Attorney’s Office and they will make a determination as to whether they’ll be tried with a hate crime or not.”

When asked further about why the department chooses to not reclassify or determine something to be a hate crime, Thomas said, “I don’t think there’s anything that says we have to…”

“With us, everything is evidence based. We can’t give opinions on anything…what we see is what we record and that’s what we have,” continues Thomas. “We can’t speculate as to why this person did that unless you actually hear someone yell something anti-semitic, or, ‘Hey, I’m doing this because you’re homeless,’ or, ‘I can’t stand homeless people.’ You have to get those spontaneous utterances actually documented in order for it to be charged.”

In 2017, the Miami-Dade Police Department, according to the Miami New Times, was found to be severely undercounting their hate crimes, reporting only one to the FDLE across Miami-Dade — an area encompassing 2.7 million people, with their patrol area containing 1.2 million— for all of 2017. The department admitted after the inquiry they may have been reporting them incorrectly to the FDLE. Quoted as well was a report by ProPublica released the same year highlighting law enforcement agencies that either reported suspiciously few hate crimes for their population, or reported none at all. 21 Florida police departments were on that list including MiamiDade, City of Miami, and Orange County.

The Department of Justice itself, which collects hate crime data from every state for their own annual report, stated in 2020 in a report about “Improving the Identification, Investigation, and Reporting of Hate Crimes,” that there’s “potential for underreporting both by victims and by law enforcement.” They elaborate, as a specific example of this, that “87 percent of the agencies [nationwide] that participated [in UCR] reported zero hate crimes in all of 2017.”

The mentality of the Miami-Dade Police Department can add another layer contributing to underreporting though, a layer separate from prejudice against the homeless, or a problem of victimization.

According to Ed Griffith, a Public Information Officer

Basically, people don’t believe that poor people and homeless people deserve anything extra, whether it’s resources that are needed to track these crimes, or housing, or jobs, or anything, at the Miami-Dade SOA, as part of prosecuting any crime, they reach out to officers involved, witnesses, etc. to gather evidence and build a case. If they agree it was a hate crime, they reclassify it as such.

Sometimes though, Griffith says, the SOA will believe prejudice was involved in a crime even if the law enforcement agency has not said so in their report, and they will interview witnesses and police accordingly.

This would be the situation in PIO Thomas’ anti-semitic messages on a synagogue scenario.

This can lead to an incomplete picture for the law enforcement agencies who, on paper, do not have that crime recorded as involving prejudice, but it may very well, in the end, be prosecuted as such. “Now you might ask,” says Griffith. “‘May that not lead to an underreporting in hate crimes?’ And yes, it’s absolutely true.”

This is because police departments are the sole organizations that report hate crimes to the FDLE, and the SOAs aren’t necessarily obliged to send information back to police departments. Therefore, even though the SOA is “creating” more hate crimes compared to what information the law enforcement agencies have, they will go unreported to the FDLE. Realistically, the SOAs have the true accurate count of hate crimes, not police departments. And, as Griffith puts it, “we don’t do extra work. We try cases, we do that. We don’t create stats for agencies that we aren’t required by law to create stats for.”

Griffith clarifies that the SOA does communicate

extensively with police departments and officers involved with the crimes they are deeming hate crimes, so law enforcement is not completely unaware.

When the Homeless Voice submitted a public records request to the Miami-Dade SOA for any police reports of hate crimes against the homeless, they responded they’re not capable of querying reports specifically for hate crime charges, and therefore could not respond with any without a specific case number.

Whitehead, though, rather than pointing to the actions of a specific officer or police department, or those experiencing homelessness not reporting crimes, sees the underreporting as a “microcosm of a larger issue.”

“Basically, people don’t believe that poor people and homeless people deserve anything extra, whether it’s resources that are needed to track these crimes, or housing, or jobs, or anything,” he says. “I think that has more to do with it than the individual will of a local office.”

The NCH reports specify the exaggerated effect this can have on crimes against the homeless because of their particular vulnerable, and often victimized, position. “When you’re criminalized like this you are seen as less by society,” one report says. Whitehead elaborated as well that many people experiencing homelessness don’t report crimes against them because they don’t think they will be believed.

Stewart, the woman experiencing homelessness in Palm Beach, says she’s done exactly this, describing being sexual assaulted multiple times, but her reporting to police returning nothing. “Just last month, I was a victim of physical assault and attempted robbery,” she said in a recent article for the Homeless Voice. “But the police were more concerned about the fact that we were trespassing, so I let it go.”

After 2018’s one reported victim of a homeless hate crime in Orlando — which, in the end, wasn’t actually reclassified and charged as such — the next, and most recent, were in 2020 in Plantation, of which there were two.

According to the police report, a car with a flat tire pulled into an Auto Zone and two men appearing to be homeless asked if he needed help. The man said no, and soon after pulled out a loaded handgun, waving and pointing it at the two men who ran into the street. He, afterwards, walked into a gas station across the street, telling the clerk, “I’m gonna kill ‘em.”

According to the officer’s write-up, the assumptions that Stewart showed were true, as the man believed, with “his perceived elevated status in society, nobody would believe [the homeless men].”

The report concludes, according to the man’s actions and statements, that “it is evident that he acted out of prejudice against the homeless victims,” considering this incident of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon a hate crime. These were not just the only official homeless hate crimes across the entire state that year, but the only ones recorded by the state since the prejudice was added in 2010, and were actually reclassified as such.

“When you commit a crime against one member of that class it reverberates against the whole community.

If you go after me because I’m Jewish, and you say hateful things about me when you’re beating me down, the fear spreads through the whole community,” says Florida Representative Ari Porth, in 2009, defending the idea of adding “homeless status” to the list of those protected by the state’s hate crime law.

“So it’s not just a crime committed against the one person. If you commit a crime against a homeless person, then the whole homeless community is going to feel the same way.”

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 11

Homelessness and Victimization

Florida has one of the highest rates of assault and victimization of those experiencing homelessness. So much so, Florida made us a protected class, but it hasn’t helped.

By Mary Stewart

12 The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

I

t was like any other day. My husband and I had scraped up enough change to get laundry done at the local laundromat in Mangonia Park. At that time, we were camping out in West Palm Beach after having lived in an abandoned moving van behind a church for several months.

While the clothes were in the wash cycle, I walked behind the church to wash up using the water spigot.

I had previously lived behind the church, so I didn’t bother to check out my surroundings, but as I began to lay out my hygiene items, a man suddenly came up from behind me and snatched my purse.

I ran back to the laundromat and collapsed on the floor in front of my husband hyperventilating. Once I calmed down, we proceeded to look into nearby dumpsters hoping to locate my discarded purse, but didn’t have any luck.

But we did not call the police. It was certainly not the first time I was victimized while homeless, and I had realized long before that day that filing a police report was pointless.

In Kentucky, I had been sexually assaulted four times in a period of three months while homeless, which triggered the onset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

When I tried to report the last assault, I was so hysterical that the EMTs tied me to a bed for four hours and referred me to psychiatric care. I filed a formal report several months later, but nothing was ever done about it.

My most recent sexual assault occurred in Lake Worth in May 2020 when I accepted a ride back to my camp from a stranger, who yanked me into the back of the van and attacked me.

Of course, the first thought that comes to mind is that I must live a risky lifestyle to be victimized so many times, but as a homeless person, simply sleeping outdoors, stepping into a wooded area, or getting into a vehicle with the promise of a ride, a meal, or work can be risky and result in victimization.

My friends have had their back pockets sliced open and their backpacks stolen while asleep, but often theft has occurred in broad daylight when a friend has left their cell phone plugged into an outdoor outlet, or left their bicycle unattended for a mere five minutes.

The sad reality is that desperate people are often the most vulnerable. Once, I read about a homeless man who was stabbed over thirty times after he got into a truck with a stranger who offered him $50 to help move a washing machine. Simply accepting work from strangers can place a homeless person in a dangerous situation, but when your stomach is rumbling with hunger, you will accept any job that’s offered.

And sometimes, it will work out just fine. My husband was offered work from a local pressure cleaning contractor while panhandling and ended up with a long-term gig. It’s kind of like a game of Russian roulette where we gamble our lives hoping for an opportunity to earn a little bit of money.

Many people have told me that it was my fault I was victimized because I “placed myself in those situations”.

And I guess, in a sense, I did. Homeless people do tend to take chances that place them at higher risk, but we are just trying to survive, and predators take advantage.

While homeless victimization may occur anywhere, it is especially prevalent in Florida — the Sunshine State has been ranked as being one of the most dangerous places for homeless people to reside, only being overtaken by California. So much so, Florida lawmakers added homelessness as a protected class and changed crimes against the homeless as hate crimes in 2010, but I have never known that law to change anything.

Although both men and women have experienced victimization, women seem to be at greater risk.

According to a 2005 study including 737 homeless women in Florida, 78.3% of the homeless women were survivors of sexual assault or domestic violence.

While it may seem as though lawmakers are attempting to protect the homeless by adding homeless status as a protected class, many laws specifically target the homeless population — like camping bans and public urination, and others are unfairly levied against the homeless — such as the open container law.

It’s hard to say exactly why Florida appears to be so dangerous for the homeless, but due to the warmer climate and insufficient homeless resources, many homeless people, myself included, sleep outdoors which increases our vulnerability.

Once, my camp was set on fire by a man who had sent threatening text messages to my group of homeless friends, but since that man was sleeping on a relative’s back porch himself, the hate crime statute was never applied. As a matter of fact, charges weren’t filed until the same man burglarized a home a few months later.

Even then, the State Attorney only pursued the case as

criminal mischief.

Unfortunately, the police have never seemed interested when I’ve tried to report a crime. Just last month, I was a victim of physical assault and attempted robbery, but the police were more concerned about the fact that we were trespassing, so I let it go. Once in a while, I’ll encounter an officer that actually cares, such as the time when my cell phone was snatched and a detective went out of her way to retrieve it for me, which I greatly appreciate.

“Homeless people do tend to take chances that place them at higher risk, but we are just trying to survive, and predators take advantage.”

I still continue to sleep outdoors, even though I’m now more than well aware of the risk that’s involved.

Although a shelter may be safer, resources are limited in Palm Beach County, and belongings are even more likely to be stolen in a shelter environment.

However, I have become very particular about where I will sleep and which people I will hang out with. I have walked for miles to get back to my camp and even

requested rides from the police rather than get in a car with a stranger. If a good samaritan offers to buy me a meal, I insist on meeting them at the nearest fast-food restaurant and refuse to get in their car.

I carry my most important items in a backpack instead of a purse and never leave it unattended. As far as the rest of my belongings, I store those in a plastic tub placed deep within the bushes. I always keep my cell phone handy and look around hyper-vigilantly before heading into the woods. While I certainly recommend the concept of safety in numbers, it’s equally important to find a group of homeless people that can be trusted.

Deep down, I still seethe with resentment over never having obtained justice for what has happened to me. It burns me up inside to see law enforcement harass the homeless for panhandling, open containers, trespassing, and public urination — which are petty crimes — but doing nothing when a homeless person is raped, beaten, or robbed.

Actually, I think that’s part of the reason that the homeless are such easy targets — most of us don’t report victimization, and when we do, nobody seems to care. Something needs to change. No one deserves to be victimized regardless of whether they live in a mansion, or sleep in a cardboard box.

As the Preamble of the Constitution says, liberty and justice is supposed to be for all. That includes the homeless population. If violent criminals are allowed to get away with harming the homeless, they’ll continue to do so and eventually move on to higher-risk victims.

Instead of worrying about people sleeping outside and begging for change, law enforcement needs to get the violent criminals off the streets.

Homeless people deserve justice just like everybody else.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 13

Having volunteered at various shelters during her life, British author Katy Regan was inspired to write a novel about a homeless man. She tells us what she learned in the process.

THE STRUGGLE TO FIND

YOUR

WAY

HOME

By Katy Regan

“I

didn’t notice homelessness when I was younger — you didn’t see many homeless people and the ones you did were a big deal. ‘That tramp,’ they were called. But then it happens to you. You don’t believe it can or will, but it does.”

So said fifty-two-year-old Charlie when I spoke to him in 2019, at an organization that provides temporary accommodation for homeless people — commonly called hostels — in Hertfordshire, England where I live.

I’d been volunteering there for a couple of years, and Charlie was one of the people I met who inspired me to write a novel about someone experiencing homelessness — of the obstacles they faced, and the experiences they had, but also the things they could teach us about resilience.

I hope that Charlie is in a better situation now, and moved on from that place, but if not, he will be one of around 270,000 people classed as homeless in England, according to government statistics.

14 The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022

But, what does it mean to be homeless in the U.K.?

While it does encompass “rough sleepers” — people living, as Charlie was, and as my character Stephen is, on the streets or in a tent by an underpass — to be legally homeless expands much further.

For example, if the condition of your accommodation is affecting your health, or if you are at risk of violence there, you are legally homeless, and the State has an obligation to house you. You are also legally homeless if you are squatting, couch-surfing, or staying in temporary guesthouses and hostels — these people are called “hidden homeless” in the U.K. While this full definition may be broader, it’s worth noting that being legally eligible for housing does not mean you will get it. Far from it. Even if you meet the criteria above, there’s a whole host of other criteria — such as being pregnant, having children or having a physical disability — that assigns you your place on a long list that determines whether you are in “priority need.” This is through a baffling system where points are awarded for each criteria you match, and the more points accrued the higher up the priority list you go.

“As an able-bodied, single man with no kids, there’s no help out there. You’re on your own,” Charlie told me.

“My only hope is private renting, but nobody will take me because I claim benefits.”

Even still, housing has become a scarce resource to be rationed — there’s currently a seven-year waiting list for a council house in the U.K. from too few affordable homes built over too many decades. Ultimately, the housing system itself, although often a lifesaver, is rife with baffling systems and vicious circles affecting people like Charlie.

Just as there are myriad ways you can be classed as homeless, I learned that the causes of homelessness are numerous and complex, personal and political.

Among the people I talked to, the circumstances leading to their downward trajectory to the streets involved mental illness, addiction, and unemployment, but also prison time, childhood drama, and relationship breakdowns. Some of these circumstances were due to crippling welfare cuts and profit being put in front of human need, and others — arguably the core reason — from there simply not being enough affordable housing.

At first glance, these reasons seem like a diabolical list of rare social ills, doesn’t it? And yet, examined more closely, I realized that most people will experience one, if not several of these in a lifetime.

There is a saying in the U.K. that we are only two checks away from disaster, and from talking to those experiencing homelessness, this is painfully true. It was one of the reasons I felt compelled to write the novel.

Put simply, the only thing separating me/us and the person sleeping in a cardboard box is luck. When you boil it down, a few wrong turns, a relationship breakdown, and anyone can wind up living on the streets — There but for the grace of God, go I. In fact, just a few years before starting my novel, I was contracted to write another that was taking far longer than the advance I’d been paid for it would stretch to.

“ULTIMATELY, THE HOUSING SYSTEM ITSELF, ALTHOUGH OFTEN A LIFESAVER, IS RIFE WITH BAFFLING SYSTEMS AND VICIOUS CIRCLES...”

Other freelance writing work had dried up and, being a single parent household, I was unable to afford my rent.

If not for the safety net of family and friends who were able to put a roof over my head until I got back on my feet, I would have had to go to the state for help.

And “safety net” is the operative phrase, the lack of which was a factor shared among the people I met. As Janet, a housing officer — someone who looks after subsidized properties for local authorities and housing associations — told me: “Trouble is, when you don’t have a good enough net to catch you, you fall through the holes.”

Some in the U.K. think of the safety net as a hand from the state — health professionals, local government, local housing agencies, police and so on — that will hold us up when we’re in need. While this is partly true — albeit state welfare in the U.K. is undeniably, undoubtedly overwhelmed — what I discovered is that a safety net is really a whole social network, family and friends comprising a large part, and the health of which can make the difference between destitution or not.

In short, a “safety net” is — or should be — a whole community. We would all do well to be part of each other’s safety nets.

Weaknesses or inconsistencies in the net cause big holes with big consequences. One woman told me how she got a place at a YMCA, but couldn’t take it up because she’d been sectioned — hospitalized under mental health legislation, similar to being Baker Acted — less than three months earlier. This meant she was out on the streets, her mental health of course deteriorating further. It seems the more vulnerable your position, the more vicious the circles you find yourself at the center of.

From my experience, I became aware of the many hoops the most vulnerable in our society have to jump through to achieve some security, and the obstacles to even being able to jump. Anyone who’s had to find new employment or accommodation — which is everyone — will know the energy that takes. Consider trying to do that after several sleepless nights or days without proper food, and it’s not hard to see how one might give up.

People told me of their frustrations in not being able to bid for council homes because they had no credit on their phone, or no phone in the first place. They had no clean shirt for a job interview, or no way of getting to an appointment with their housing advisor.

But then, there were the stories of incredible resilience, the impressive resourcefulness and sense of pride. “It doesn’t matter that I was living on the streets,” Darren told me. “I still looked presentable every day; it was vital to me to feel human.” He washed and shaved daily in his local coffee shop toilets and found a microwave in a hospital staff kitchen, where he could heat up soup.

“The worst thing is being ignored,” they all told me.

“Feeling invisible.”

Hearing these people and respecting their stories — that at least, is something we can all do.

How to Find Your Way Home by Katy Regan is published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on February 15th.

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022 15

16 The Homeless Voice | Vol. 23 Issue 2, April 2022