Our Experience Among the Homeless — Ep. 154

This is Anabaptist Perspectives, and this team of individuals learned about homelessness by experiencing homelessness themselves, intentionally, for several days.

So to begin, why don't you guys introduce yourselves to us? So we are four classmates from Faith Builders. My name is Keith Lapp. I am from Latrobe, Pennsylvania. My name is Brenda Bollinger, and I'm from Lebanon, Pennsylvania. My name is Wendy Shank, and I am from York, Pennsylvania. And my name is Yuzuru Warren, and I'm from Culpeper, Virginia. So homelessness is a really big deal in America. In January of 2020, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which is a website, 580,000 people were experiencing homelessness in America. Most of these were individuals, but also some people are living homeless as families with children. So homelessness affects the lives of many people around us, but you guys decided to learn about it in a much more closer and personal way than most of us do when we're just looking at statistics.

And so you joined us to talk about your experience when you lived on the streets of Dallas for a few days to learn about homelessness. So give us a brief outline of your project, what you did, and what you hope to accomplish. So as you said, homelessness is a big problem in America today, and it was something that we all cared about in some ways, but wanted a better way to experience it or to understand it. We often, as Anabaptists, and we've seen it in ourselves as well, have these certain ways we react to homelessness. So we'll just be like, "Oh, get a job. You're just there. Just get a job."

Or, "If I give them money, they're just going to use it for drugs," or something like that. We wanted a broader perspective of what this was like. So we spent some time researching homelessness, looking into statistics and some of those things, and then we also spent several days on the streets of Dallas living homeless. One of our main objectives in this was to gain that perspective, to understand what it's like to live homeless, and to just hear people's stories as well. We wanted to talk with homeless people and hear what their lives were like and why they were where they were and what they wanted and how they were trying to put their lives on a better track.

What was it like living without a home for a few days, and how did it feel? I would say that very quickly we got into a feeling of just things being unknown. I remember us getting off of the plane and preparing for the next day and realizing that we had pretty much no idea of how the day was going to turn out. Then we get into the next day and we're just constantly having to think through things where it might be COVID tests or we see people that we're walking past. Should we interact with them? Should we not?

Are they safe people to interact with? Where are we going to be sleeping during the night? And so there was just a constant barrage of information and thoughts about what are we going to do. And so there's a lot of stress that came with that. And I think for the most part, I think we dealt with that fairly well.

But as time went on and we got into Sunday night and things were a little bit more stressful, I think a lot of the ways that we dealt with, we as a group anyways, dealt with the stress was a lot of laughing and joking about circumstances that you wouldn't typically, obviously, find yourself in. That's how we interacted with a lot of the stress and the emotions and things. And we never really had a mode that we snapped into.

There was no autopilot that came into play with just being out there on the streets because we're constantly figuring out where are we going to stay. Is this place a safe place to stay at? I need to use the restroom, so now we need to go find a restroom. Just different things like that that just kind of kept us on our toes. We spent a lot of energy just watching out for each other as well and seeing how each other were dealing with different things because some of us were running on less sleep than others, and some of us were colder than others, and that starts to wear on the group after a while. And so just trying to keep a good tab on how everybody is feeling is also something that is in our minds.

And we also acknowledge, too, that something that we had that a lot of other people didn't have is we had a group of us that were there looking out for each other. We trusted each other, and a lot of people are out there on the streets by themselves. And so there, that's another dynamic that they're having to deal with when it comes to how they're feeling about the situations that they're in. You mentioned coldness a bit. I think maybe we should point out that this was happening in October of 2021. And so I looked at the weather when you guys were out there, and it was in the 40s at night. So coldness was a factor for you guys.

It was cold. It was very, very cold. We all just pretty much had one layer plus a hoodie as the weather went from 55 to 50 to 49 in the middle of the night. Plus we're very tired, and the only thing we wanted to do is crawl in a bed or a sleeping bag, which we didn't even have to sleep. But we were on the concrete, and concrete is cold at 49 degrees. And so everything is cold at 49 degrees. Yes. So we were very quite chilly.

So we were advised early on to try to get into a homeless shelter because we were warned that the streets are dangerous. And so we made it to a shelter that they recommended, and we got there, and they said that we need to have a negative COVID test proof written in a paper that we have a negative COVID test in order to get into the shelter. Normally, I think at the shelter, they offered COVID tests Monday through Friday. We were there on the weekend, and so then we had to figure out where are we going to go to get COVID tests. And we eventually found a CVS that was an hour walk away, and so we walked there.

We used one of our phones to make a reservation for our tests. And so we were sitting outside CVS. We were very tired because the night before we had not gotten much sleep. And so we were sitting outside. I think two of them were sitting by the entrance, and two of us were laying down. And an employee came and parked his truck right close to where we were sitting, and he walked into the store. When he walked past us, the look on his face was just, I don't know, disdain or just, I don't know, it was a very dirty look. There was nothing welcoming about it. And on our side, we're just like, we're here with a purpose.

And shortly he came back out of the CVS with another employee, I think to chase us off. He's like, what's going on here? And we're like, well, we're waiting for our COVID tests. And then they're like, oh, okay. And then they let us go, or they let us stay there. And so it was just really, I don't know, it was just very interesting to experience that from our side because I guess we fooled them in the way that we looked. We looked like homeless people. And just to recognize, am I doing the same thing to people when I pass them on the streets? Am I ignoring them or looking at them distastefully? And I think overall, just the way that people looked at us differently.

I noticed if people were staring at us or different things like that, that I noticed partially because I was playing that role of homeless. But there was also a lot of really nice people, and there were several people who offered us food. The one time it was in the middle of the night, we were sitting on a bridge, and this guy came and was like, here, did you guys eat yet today?

And he offered us his wings. We had already eaten, and so sadly we did not get the wings. But there was another time that we were sitting on the side of the road, and someone came and asked if we had eaten. And just having someone caring like that was meaningful. And especially when there were those other experiences where people would kind of stare at you and then look away quickly, or I don't know, just different things like that, it was even more meaningful when someone was willing to stop and say, hey, have you eaten? And just that care, even though we may have looked dirty and whatever, they cared still to ask if we had eaten.

And it was significant to us because we've been in their shoes and just walking down the street, going about our daily lives, and we see homeless people that are just sitting on the side of the street. And a lot of us, part of the reason we wanted to do this is because we realized that our way of interacting with homeless people before was not the way that we wanted to or that we thought Jesus would if he was walking on the streets. Being on the flip side of that helped us to feel a little bit more of what they're feeling when people look at you or don't even acknowledge you at all. Talk about the people you met and what were the stories you learned from them.

The first day when we got to the bridge, which is a homeless shelter, we were sitting outside trying to figure out what to do next, where to go for our COVID tests and everything. And there was a man standing there trying to get rid of food because they weren't allowed to take food into the shelters with them. I just struck up a conversation with him and asked him if the bridge has been a good experience for him. And he went into explaining to me that he's been homeless since he was nine, and he's currently 34. And I was just like, wow, how do you live on the street as a nine-year-old? And for me to think with prejudice that people are choosing to be homeless or they're just irresponsible, this nine-year-old child was on the street.

He's been on the street since then. Because of domestic violence, he was kicked out of his house. And so it just put a new compassion in my heart to recognize that people out there haven't necessarily chosen this lifestyle. And so for the past 20-some years, he's been living out on the street. And he said that he does have a job, but he's not making enough money to have a house. It was just interesting and very just insightful for me to see that this wasn't something that he chose for himself as a child. We were at a homeless discipleship center. It wasn't exactly a homeless shelter. You couldn't just come in and stay.

But if you actually wanted to get out of homelessness, then they would give you the means to do that. We are in line for lunch, and I believe Keith was at the front of the line. Brenda and Wendy were in the middle, and I was in the back. And we had one backpack with us with Brenda's ukulele that we could pray if things got play, if things got really bad.

And I remember distinctly there was a guy that was behind me that was kind of like giggling to himself. There was a few people that were there that were not there mentally. I'm standing there and I felt a little tug on my backpack, and I hear him giggle again. And so I'm like, okay, this is a little bit weird, but watch him. I don't really want to lose anything out of our pack, particularly not the ukulele. We definitely need that. And so I turned just a little bit so I could keep an eye on him out of my peripheral. And during that slight turn, there was another guy that came up and stood behind me.

And as the line kept moving, the thing I was struggling to do was to stay in between him and the rest of the group. I felt like I was getting pushed back. And so finally he says something. I'm like, thank God for this. And start actually dialoguing with him and having a conversation and find out that he's been on the street for a very long time since he was young.

He said he learned a bunch of instruments that he was able to play since he was five. A little bit of discrepancy on that, but that's probably maybe because I was not able to do that when I was five.

But in communicating with him, he had just found the shelter probably about two days before we had. And he had no friends there. Found that out fairly quickly. And just he had nobody that he could trust. And part of the reason that that was, I asked him, why haven't you been able to make any friends here yet? And he's like, well, I can't trust any of these people. The mental issues that a lot of homeless people have, not everybody, but some have, makes it so that you can't always tell if they're in a safe place. If you're going to interact with them, are they going to be in a place that's going to be harmful for you?

And you're always thinking about that. And so that's a whole nother dynamic that he's having to deal with, that other homeless people are having to deal with. He just didn't have anybody as friends. And so I think we encouraged him to really get in touch with some of the staff there because the staff really wanted to connect with him.

And so that's what we're one of the things that we're praying that happens. Our first night when we were out, we were jumping around from place to place. We never stayed in one place for much more than an hour or two. And so one night we were sleeping on an outdoor patio of a restaurant under some tables, and we had just settled in. We're like, yes, this is the place. We're going to be here all night and get the last three hours of the morning. We're going to sleep solid.

And we were so tired. We laid down. We were out, but like 15 minutes later, Yiz wakes up with a light in his eyes, and we hear someone say, y'all going to have to get up. I was like, oh, okay.

I was still half asleep. And so I was like, just like, okay, all right. We'll do that. Anyway, so we met this lady security guard who was walking around patrolling the area. It was really just fascinating to talk to her. She asked us who we are and what we're about. And I guess she was used to the area and kind of knew that we were newcomers and didn't really belong. And she's like, you guys are crazy being out here doing this, and it's dangerous out here. You know, with her southern drawl, she's just like telling us this. And anyway, we stood and chatted with her for a while. She was such a blessing to me and just really life-giving.

And even though she told us we're crazy and this is dangerous, she just really had a caring heart for the homeless. She says how she has to make her rounds every night. And it was a pretty upscale part of town. And so she had to make sure that these businesses were secure and no one was doing anything they weren't supposed to. But she talked about how she sees the homeless on this street and how they are just human beings. And yes, she has to keep the business secure, but she cares about what they're experiencing and the fact that they need to sleep and they need somewhere to be warm and they need somewhere to be able to rest.

I don't know. She just kept saying, they're human beings too, just like us. And I don't know, it was really insightful. It just really impacted me because I think as human beings, how can we turn our head away from anyone? They're all human beings. For some reason, we think because we're responsible and we have a job and we are clean. And I don't know, somehow we have the right to look away from people. I don't know. So I was just really, yeah, just really impacted with the thing like, yes, how can we turn our face away from any other human being just like us? Something that I'm curious about is that this is fall of 2021 when the pandemic is still happening.

I suppose some will listen to this in the future, probably. Hopefully, the pandemic is gone by then, but the pandemic is still alive and well. So I'm curious from your observation how the pandemic affects the experience of homeless people. Yeah, well, there's not really a whole lot of data on how the pandemic has affected homelessness. A lot of the data on homelessness in general is old data from 2020 before the pandemic. And so people are speculating about how this affects homelessness, and especially with the way the economy has been affected and some of that. So there's not really any data on it, but the experience of homelessness itself has changed, at least from what we experienced.

For us, like we mentioned before, to get into a homeless shelter, which we wanted to do in order to talk with people and hear their stories, we needed negative COVID tests, which for us meant walking several hours round trip to a CVS to get those tests, which is another problem with homelessness. It takes longer to get places when you have to walk everywhere. So we had to get those COVID tests. And just before we had gone to Dallas, I had had COVID myself. And I had done the whole isolation period and all that, and I was good to go.

But in getting the tests, I still tested positive. And so it's kind of that's another issue for people is that if they do get a positive test, and even if it's a false positive, they can't get into a shelter for that long. And they need to have a new test every three days, which means you have to get tested all the time. And if you get a positive, then you don't have anywhere to sleep for three days. For us, that was something that we had to deal with in just knowing where are we going to sleep. We can't get into a shelter now because we got a positive test. And it just adds another layer of that stress of constantly not knowing what's coming next and not having a place to sleep even.

And I think also to some dynamics that also feed into this is if a homeless person is to get sick, their ability to access resources, whether they need to be in a hospital or they need funds or things, they don't have those. And so they probably take it a lot more seriously than some of us do that if we get lethally sick, then we have somewhere we can go. We have people that are caring for us. They don't necessarily have that. A lot of homeless people wear masks. And that was something that I saw as a shift in just watching homeless people before the pandemic happened. I'd never saw people really wearing masks. But now almost every homeless person that we ran into or interacted with was wearing a mask or had a mask on them.

And so that was one of the ways that they are trying to be proactive about this whole pandemic and everything and how it impacts them. Because if they get sick, their ability to care for themselves or to have other people care for them is just not as available to them. And in the middle of the night when the security guard sent us off, she cared about us. And she's like, well, you could go sleep in the bus transit terminal, whatever, down the street. And so just down the street.

It was not down the street. It was quite the walk. Anyway, we got there and the building was well lit. We're like, yes. It's like nearing 50 degrees. We're like really chilly. So warm and so warm and inviting. And we walk up to the door and pull and it's locked. And it said permanently closed because of COVID. And they didn't want to spread any COVID, which makes sense. But it's like if people can't get into shelters because of COVID and they can't even stay in these bus terminals that would normally be open and people could stay in there and be warm for a few hours, where are they supposed to go? And it was just that's when we spent our next two hours trying not to freeze to death on the cement in just a bus stop is where we spent the next two hours.

And yeah, it was just COVID has made things really difficult. Those makeshift buildings that they could take advantage of are now closed as well. I appreciate y'all talking about that. And before we end, I want to talk about your takeaways from this experience. And I think you've already gotten into some of this with talking about the need for compassion being reemphasized for you.

But I'm curious, what were your takeaways? I would say one of the takeaways that we've had is just more empathy for what homeless people have to experience. We went out and we froze and we were hungry or we didn't eat that great food. We had soggy tacos for dinner and breakfast and lunch. And we had, yeah, even the dogs that we ran into, some of them didn't want our tacos either. So that shows you how bad the tacos were.

So yeah, just the quality of food that you have is not the greatest if you have food. And so between that and also just the safety, we had the four of us and we still were uncertain about what situations were safe. And there's a dark area. We weren't quite sure if we wanted to go there, things like that. And homeless people have to experience that on a daily basis. And so now every time that I look at a homeless person that I'm driving past or walking past on the street, I can't look at them the same anymore because I've seen, I've had to experience an aspect of their lives that I didn't before. And I also realized that they experienced that on a much higher and more intense level than we experienced it.

And so my ability to just be like, oh, there's another homeless person and drive past and just ignore them is very much hampered. And I'm very much thankful for that. That was what we wanted to come out of the trip was an inability to just act like they're nobodies, which I've definitely done before. They're people. They're people that God loves that he's created in his image. And even if they've had circumstances that have put them out there, if they have done things themselves to put them out there or mental issues or whatever, they're still people. And we can't just ignore them. God loves them just as much as he does us. And as believers, how can we overlook people that he's created, the people that are in need, at least acknowledge them or something?

And I like what you said about empathy and even something that we realized in our experience, we had a lot of things we had to figure out. You had mentioned earlier, Yizro, you had mentioned about just not having an autopilot or not having a normal.

You're constantly trying to figure out where you're going to go to sleep and things like that. So there was this lady we talked to. She was our emergency contact that we had made before going there. And when we got down there, we went to their church, which they have an outdoor church specifically for homeless people. We talked to her and she had experienced homelessness before and now she really cares about loving homeless people and helping them. Anyway, so we got to hear some of her story, which was really encouraging. But we asked her that question of, does she ever experience a normal or a routine that she can know what she's going to do that day?

And she said, no, there's always constantly something on your mind. And she spent only one night actually on the street. She was in the shelter the whole time. But she still said that she experienced that constant trying to figure out all these things. There's all these things in the back of your mind that you have to keep tabs on. We have to realize that their life is very stressful. Even if they chose this or if it's other circumstances that made this happen for them, it still is a stressful life that they have constant things that they have to worry about. I don't want to forget that and just try to go back to my comfortable life.

I mean, I am back in my comfortable life. And I only experienced that for several days, but realizing that people have to experience that all the time. I want to remember that. And I think in general, a lot of our preconceptions, we realize that they're not that simple.

We look at a homeless person and just say, oh, get a job. But for some of them, they have jobs. For some of them, they can't get jobs. If they have a family, where are they going to send their children during the day while they work? Where are they going to store their stuff in the day while they go work? Then there's the issue of mental health. And a lot of homeless people have criminal records. And so for them, it's harder to get jobs. Yes, there are some people that don't want jobs or just want to live homeless. And we met some people like that. But it's not like everybody out there on the street wants to be homeless, for sure not.

For us, it's easy to just lump everyone together and say they all just want to be homeless. They're lazy. But it's not that simple. And some of them want jobs. Some of them have jobs and are trying to get out of this. We're scared to give people money because, oh, they're just going to spend it on drugs because all homeless people are druggies. That's not necessarily true. Yes, drug addiction is a big problem on the streets. And there are a lot of people that are addicted to drugs. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't help them in some way. Like we mentioned earlier, for us, uplifting moments were when people offered to help us and said, hey, have you eaten today?

And so even if we're not giving people money or just throwing our money at them, but actually hearing their stories and interacting with them and showing compassion and asking, hey, do you want food? Hey, can I buy you food? Something like that can go a long way. Just in general, I think a lot of our preconceptions were shifted and we realized that they weren't. They were very, very stereotypical of what we expected homeless people to be. So before we end this conversation, I want to give you all a chance to recommend any resources that have been helpful to you or something that you would like to point our audience toward. We made a website that kind of tells some of the stories that we've interacted with and a little bit of some of our takeaways.

It's called the Homeless Awareness Project. Weebly.com. Also, if you want to look up Soul Church, it's the homeless church that we were in contact with there. Debbie was our contact there who was very generous in helping us and telling us her story. She has a very powerful testimony. And I think you can find that on YouTube. Well, thank you. And I will put links in the show notes to make sure that our audience is able to find both your website and Debbie's story also. Thank you all so much for coming today to share your story and your experiences. I think it will be helpful to our audience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

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