On homelessness and how I chose my job

I always knew that it was more important to me to feel good about the work I did than it was to get paid a lot of money for the work I did. I took some career assessments which confirmed this, when I was 35 years old. It said I was motivated by purpose, motivated by helping others, and that money was my least important concern. This is a position of extreme privilege and I am aware of it. I am very lucky to have a husband as a partner who supports me working a job that is extremely fulfilling. I had a good job with a government contracting firm that paid me incredibly well to do work that was incredibly draining. It wasn't difficult - it was the opposite. Not challenging. Over-thought and under-stimulating. But the pay was hard to walk away from. I took a job making 1/3 of the salary after working there only 7 months. There were a number of contributing factors to this - primarily being the hours kept me out of the house doing mind-numbing work for 11 hours a day and my body did not like being vertical that long, due to fibromyalgia. I was working part time and that didn't work for my company, so I decided to find part time work that would make my heart sing.

I took a job at a family homelessness shelter. My job is to coach people and help them find jobs. Many homeless people are already employed, especially here in the DC metro area. The cost of living is so high that under-employment is a massive contributing factor to homelessness. This job can be difficult and I encounter so many kinds of people. I work with people who are refugees, with women who are victims of domestic violence, with single mothers who have children and are having trouble maintaining work because when their children get sick, they lose their jobs. I work with people with disabilities, with mental illness, and every person has a different story.

I'm a storyteller. I want to tell people's stories and I want to help them see how their stories impact their lives, and how they can turn a tragic story into a story of triumph. I like working with people who want to tell their stories and who want to change. But there are times when I encounter clients who have grown complacent, who are happy with their status quo, and that's the hardest thing for me. It's really hard for me to see people who have stopped struggling and started passively being cared for. In my state, the social services provided do not provide a posh living. Many members of the Republican Party would have me believe people do extremely well on government assistance but it's just not the case. What they can do is subsist - maybe. Sometimes. With the help of charity groups and with the help of community organizations and faith-based initiatives that will help them stand, they may be able to subsist.

That's not the vast majority of people I work with - in fact, I've met only two people like that in almost a year of working in this job. The vast majority of people I work with try and try hard. They focus, but they just don't know where to go for help and they just don't know how to talk about their stories in a way that lets an employer know that yes, you can take a chance on me. Yes, I will come to work and yes, I want to work and do well. The vast majority do not want to live in a shelter, and they don't want long-term government assistance. The vast majority would love to be self-sufficient, but it's hard.

And then I look at the fact that I was able to make a choice to take this job. I was able to choose to drop out of college after 2 years, the first time I went, because I thought it was bullshit. I was able to go back to college several years later when my oldest daughter was an infant. I was able to finish my degree, and almost finish my masters, and then able to stop that because it did not align with my long term goals (not because it was bullshit!  I did grow up, some.) And I realize why a lot of people think that the homeless must be choosing to be homeless, must be pissing away their money and making bad decisions.

It's because they were lucky. They, like me, were able to make choices.

Let me tell you, when you are without a place to live and you don't speak English well and you have to take odd jobs which don't let you attend ESOL classes, which are expensive, and if they're free, they're not at a time of day which lets you work - you take a job.You take any job. You put up with abuse, you put up with hatred, you put up with being ridiculed and being called leeches and suckers and you put up with people looking down on you because you're an hourly worker, you're uneducated, you're not white... and none of this is your fault. But you begin to believe it. You begin to believe you're a leech. You begin to believe you suck and that you're worthless because others have assigned your worth based on the money you make, the car you drive - and you know, chances are you don't even have a car because that in itself is a huge luxury.

You become invisible.

Invisible people don't feel.

Invisible people don't have options. They don't have rights. Sure, we say they have rights - but they can't "just get a better job." To do that, they have to have time off to interview. They have to have connections which enable them to find jobs. They have to be able to understand that they have rights. When someone's been beaten down by poverty, they do not always understand that they have rights. The idea that a full time job might come with benefits is crazy talk to them. Many of my clients say, "What are benefits?" and we need to talk about things I hope for when they get a job.

I ask, "What do you want out of a job?"

They say, "The ability to buy my child a birthday present."

I don't believe that anyone who says that the poor do not deserve social services have ever had to want to work to be able to buy their children birthday presents. Social services provide the absolute bare minimum. An FDA food box for a family of 3 contains a few cans of soup, some rice, some beans, some tinned meat. Possibly some ramen noodles and a jar of spaghetti sauce. They are allowed one box a month. Food stamps for the same family are just under $200 a month, in a location where my monthly grocery bill is over $800. Granted, I eat primarily produce. If I ate boxed foods, I could bring that down to $600. I have a family of 4. 

I don't believe that anyone who says they're in it for a free ride has ever had someone ask them if they know a place where they can help their child buy allergy medicine, because she hasn't been able to get more than a few hours of sleep for three months because the mold in the apartment is making her unable to lay down. And it does not occur to them, no, to ask the landlord to clean up the mold. They wouldn't want to put their housing in jeopardy.

Nobody wants to be on a waitlist for a spot at a shelter. It's not like everyone who is homeless can be at a shelter. There's just not room.

I am writing this because things I have heard people say hurt me, but my hurt is nothing. The people I work with, my clients, hurt too - but their hurt is sometimes of a kind that they don't even realize they are hurting until they catch a glimpse of things getting better. They hold your hand and cry when you bring a box fan, because the temperature in their house is over 100 degrees. They wish to buy their child a birthday present.

So I am writing this to process some of the things I've heard people say. I will do much in the way of processing, and do. Things I encounter at work often leave me sad for a while, wishing I could change the world. I can't change the world. But I can be an instrument of change on a small scale, for several families at a time, and that's reward enough for me.

That's how I chose my job.