Who Are The Homeless?

Who Are the Homeless?

From the outside looking in the homeless seem light years away, and I think we as humans want to keep our distance, because we don’t want to think we could ever at any time be in that situation. I’ve decided to shine a little light on who they are, and some of their stories as they have been relayed to me. I cannot vouch for what they say, but I think their voices need to be heard. They are for the most part voiceless, as they don’t have access to the internet, our new bright and shining sword to cut through some of the injustice, but they speak and I have been listening.

My first story is about a young woman, in her late 20’s, I met on the subway platform. She wanted to know how to get to a particular location and she seemed a little confused and distraught. We ended up talking with one another, and she told me that she left her husband, because he had hit her for the last time, and she was now on her way see her children, that were being cared for in a safe place. (I don’t want to give too many details) I told her to seek a battered woman’s shelter, and she replied that if she went there, and told them that she had children, they would take her children away. She said she done that before, and that is exactly what had happened. So here she was faced with the prospect of losing her children again, or having to continue to allow the abuse. Her children were no longer in the situation, but she could not stay where they were, and she had been sleeping in the subway for the past few nights. I asked her if she had a church that she could connect to, that could give her some help. She said that a church had been generous to her. I told her to go to them, and tell them that she didn’t want to go back, and to see what they could do. She cried and told me, “I don’t drink, I don’t take drugs, I don’t run around with men, but I have no one!” I told her to have faith, and that she was never alone, because God is always with her. We hugged and parted ways at her stop. Her story is just one of many.

Below, I am posting a poem that was written by Maria Maldonado (she is not the woman in the above story), while she had been homeless. She and her husband are now in a safe place, and on their way to reclaiming their lives and getting a home again.

I am posting it exactly as she wrote it, without edits, because no one could write it more eloquently than she can, what it feels like to be homeless. What she lacks in punctuation, she makes up in the meaning of what she has to say.

Homeless

What does Homeless Mean

Homeless Mean Not having four wall front door and windows

Homeless mean sleeping in parks streets trains homemade boxes

What does Homeless mean

Waiting for the next meal to come day by day

Beening harass by cops every night and day

Dreaming of having a home which might not come true or not

What does Homeless mean

When a small child ask her parents when can they go home or why they don’t have a place to put there head down to sleep

What does Homeless Mean

Homeless has no meaning it come in many colors shapes, races, rich or poor and also ages

Can one day we change the meaning of Homeless and call it our own home a place that is safe for all of us to live in

What does Homeless Mean

Sadiness depression loneliness miss understood

Hopeless

Homeless can be anybody Doctors Lawyer Judges Cops Nurses teacher principal Housekeeping, Taxi driver, truck driver, firefighter bus drivers and so on They all could be come Homeless in a heart beat. They all could wait up one day and find out that they lost their jobs and their homes whether they lost it in a fire or couldn’t pay the rent on time or even in a storm.

The Poem “Homeless” By Maria Maldonado