Making the Invisible Homeless a Little More Visible

I spent last week in St. Petersburg, Florida, labeled by homeless groups as the second meanest city in the country when it comes to how its homeless population is treated. I asked a cabbie about the homeless and he knew right where to find them — on Third Street just down from the Hampton Inn.

Like zombies or vampires, they come out when the sun goes down and it's easier to hide in the shadows or doorways of shops closed for the day. They were the 15 or so percent of the homeless who are chronically homeless — the mentally ill, the addicts and those who have been on the streets for years and will most likely die there. The experience confirmed what I already knew and spurred me to develop my new business plan — a plan that targets the invisible homeless, those homeless because of the loss of a house or a job or piled up medical bills or life experience.

The journalism seminar I was in St. Petersburg to participate in was called "The Entrepreneurial Journalist," and, thanks to the Ford Foundation's generous grant to The Poynter Institute, it was an all-expense paid trip for 19 displaced journalists with vague ideas about business plans to replace the careers they lost in journalism.

My plan is to develop a business model to "help the working homeless," those individuals and families who — like me — aren't eligible for many programs, or who are laughed at by shelter workers because even though they lost their homes or jobs they still look, act and sound like someone who could bounce back quickly without any help. Except they can't. Seventy percent of these "mortgaged, jobless and working homeless" don't know where to go for food, food stamps, shelter or other services they are entitled to.

They are not internet savvy when it comes to finding services nor are they even aware of many of them. It is just as difficult for them to find showers, food and money as anyone else on the street, if not more so, since they don't yet have street smarts. They are reluctant to identify with the chronically homeless. They have discovered, as I did, that calling yourself "homeless" elicits images of addiction, criminal acts and filth. It's not a state they want to be identified with. And what was so strange was that even after explaining that, journalists still had a hard time wrapping their minds around an image of someone well dressed, intelligent, talented and quite possibly a fellow journalist, who was "homeless." Even well-meaning people fall back on the stereotype of the chronic homeless person.

So when I went in search of the "working homeless" I found what every census taker and outreach worker does; they're invisible. They're not standing in a soup line or on a street corner begging for change. They're not sitting on a curb with a brown-bagged bottle between their feet. Chances are they're in the library, or a coffee shop with their laptop, or at a McDonald's counting pennies to afford the dollar menu. They're trying quietly and desperately to blend in, to forget that the only place they have to go back to when the doors close for the night is their car, or a friend's couch, or a storage unit, or a group home. They are the forgotten homeless, the ones who with a little bit of help, resources, education and support, will be off of the streets quickly. Yet so many organizations ignore them and that help can be hard to find. Why?

The face of homelessness is changing. This is the perfect time to create an alternate system that helps those who can be quickly helped and leaves mentally ill persons, the chronically homeless and addicts to be tended to by the existing system. It's a radical idea. We are so accustomed to punishing people for being homeless that there will be a backlash, I'm sure. But I'm here to tell those readers who are homeless and struggling to get off the streets that you CAN do it.

My business plan was selected by The Poynter Institute as one of the three most promising entrepreneurial ventures from the group. So now I'm plowing ahead. And I hope you'll help. If you are one of the mortgaged, jobless or working homeless, email me at becky.blanton@gmail.com with your questions, concerns and issues. I want to work with you to change the face of homelessness. Hang in there. Hope always finds a way.

Photo credit: Easternblot