"It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."-- Irish proverb

Homeless.
What does the word conjure for you? I have been in the Catholic Worker so long that I do not trust that the visions that spring into my mind are anything like those of people who do not share their daily lives with homeless men and women.

For some, “homeless” means “shiftless” or “lazy” or “addict” or “crazy” and some of those terms can be applied to some of the people I know from the street. But not all.

There are as many reasons a person becomes homeless as there are homeless people on the streets, but there are common themes. Some type of trauma in their background is practically a given, and some part of their circumstances or their psyche processed that trauma in a manner that caused them to end up on the streets.

Sometimes it was the trauma of war, sometimes the trauma of an abusive home. Sometimes it was the trauma of losing a beloved caregiver, or the trauma of being treated badly by people who did not understand what it is like to be mentally ill. It could even be the trauma of losing the job that allowed one to live in dignity, paycheck to paycheck. But trauma weakened the resolve and eliminated the resources, until housing was no longer an option.

I know a lot of mentally ill street folks, including many who use alcohol or drugs to escape from their reality for a while. I also know a lot of folks who are on the streets because they lost a job, or made a string of bad choices about money or relationships, or who started out on uneven ground and never got to that level playing field that America is supposed to be all about. But the saddest homeless folks I know are the ones who do not seek out the companionship of others, who live the life of the truly lonely. Because being homeless does not necessarily mean friendless.

I see the community of the street more frequently than some people do. I see it at the soup kitchen and at St. Francis House, and even downtown on 9th Street where the panhandlers ply their trade from time to time. I have known people who choose to live in homeless camps because that is one of the only choices left available to them and they prefer the freedom of nature to the rules of the shelters.

I know people who came to our house of hospitality for shelter, and found a home there. Some have stayed; others return to visit, to help out, to enjoy community. They can do that with us because we don’t treat them like clients in an agency. We are not an agency, we are a community, and we are open to the possibility that each new person who walks through the door has something to share with us that will make our lives richer or more meaningful, or just give us another story to share. We provide the building, but it is in the community that gathers, from the house or the kitchen and the street, that creates the shelter where we live among one another.