Blog: Why I Support Truly Affordable Housing in Davis

As a community, we must take responsibility for tragic endings to the lives of our members, even if the member who dies is homeless. 

I explored this idea in a blog I wrote last week, called . In this piece, I'll continue. 

I’d like to see more affordable housing for the mentally or emotionally challenged, for the alcoholics and for the disenfranchised, whether they have benefits, or are still in the "pending" phase.

This process can be lengthy indeed, so a safety net while the applications are pending is needed as well. It should be easy to get into, supportive and with on-site tenet/client support.

But sadly, it’s too late for Jesse, a local homeless man whose life came to an early end at the face of an Amtrak train about five years ago. 

I'm not one for funerals, and I skipped the 10 am service for him on May 6, 2006. But I did attend the memorial service that was also attended by his many friends and family.

I think of Jesse, throwing up his arms in front of that train as if to say "Take me!"

He was survived by a mother and father, grand-parents, a brother, and several sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. This talented, but troubled, young man was missed by them all.

As soon as I walked into the Ranch Yolo Club House, I was greeted with the warm smile and pleasant handshake of a mother who had been flown from Tennessee to burry her son.

I say "had been flown" with a sense of Davis community pride and compassion because Grace-in-Action, a local non-profit that provides services for the un-sheltered poor, and where Jesse was an occasional guest, collected donations for the needed air fare.

At the last minute, University Honda here in town provided two tickets, and the donations collected by GIA's Director, Cindy Berger, were used to pay for the memorial cost, including food and refreshments, candles, helium for balloons and multi-media equipment. (Jesse was an inspired free-style rapper and a good one).

Anyway, Jesse's mom "Bunny" introduced herself to me and sat down for a few minutes to talk.

She looked a bit surprised to see me there. I told her we were both clients of the DCM Resource Center and GIA, that we were buddies if not close, and that Jesse distributed issues of The Spare Changer for us once or twice.

She seemed to be in organization mode, pressed for time as everyone was; to get in and to out, with the Club House cleaned and refreshed for later use, by 1 pm that same day.

She began to tell me of Jesse's beginnings, how he was born into a home of contention between father and mother, how he had come from a broken home.

She explained the resentment and bitterness as well as the difficulties she herself faced as a single mom:

“Jesse was hit by a car when he was four years old and I don't know how much of his schizophrenia was caused by that or genetics. He seemed OK after the accident, but as he grew into adolescence, he suffered. He went to live with his father as a teenager; he went back and forth between us until he was about 17."

"After that, he was kind of on his own. He enlisted to the Air Force, but was discharged for medical reasons. And then he found himself on the streets. He went up to Oregon and began getting ‘hassled’ by the police. He was always eloquent in his poetic rapping, but usually misunderstood otherwise. This happened quite a bit in Oregon and in Washington. He spent 60 days in jail up there, instead of being in a hospital. He was mentally ill, and misunderstood. It’s tragic. He slipped through the cracks. Police, professionals, I dunno.”

Friends on the street like Kevin, Patrick, Eric and me too, speak of him from time to time, and always when we lose another member of Our Little City’s homeless community, to tragedy such as Jesse's.

And such as Santa Dan’s, about a month ago.

It seems to me that Jesse is just one of our un-sheltered poor lost. He’s another reason I personally support sustainable and “truly affordable housing" for all, particularly those with mental or emotional impairments, as well as those with personality dysfunctions that preclude them from working with others, like alcoholism.

What do you think?