Midwestern Homelessness

It does happen here. It's just harder to see

In rural Iowa, poverty can be hard to see. It’s almost always White, like most everyone out here, and has the advantage of miles between homes. The only tell from the road might be the condition of the house or the age of the truck. At school, it’s kids on free lunch in hand-me-down clothes. Anti-bullying efforts are a sign that our kids are challenged by living with this gap between haves and have-nots while their civics teacher tells them everyone is created equal.  

Recently, we rode on Amtrak and saw a modern version of the Grapes of Wrath, one that has replaced cardboard and lath shacks with plastic tents. Everyone and everything was so very tired. The urban version of rural poverty is more concentrated, more visible and easier to label.

An unusual sight - a solitary tent in Sacramento.

“A lot of them want to be homeless,” some people say. I tell them to try it for themselves.

“They don’t want to follow the rules to get into housing.” Why should they? Do the rest of us?

How many more people have to sleep outside or in their cars or bunk with extended family before we put an end to this? What’s the line between “they deserved it” vs. “bad luck”? The runaway who had to end the secret visits by her mother’s boyfriend? The janitor who mouthed off to a boss who treats him like he’s 5? The service vet who didn’t have 6 months to wait for mental health care at the VA?

Who deserves shelter? Who does not? Who decides? Are those even the right questions?

In the 1990’s, I participated in an annual “snapshot” conducted by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless under the leadership of John Donahue, a handsome, square-jawed ex-priest. John knew every homeless person in Chicago by name and always introduced them with a “my friend” so-and-so and a handshake. For the snapshot, I was assigned the famous Pacific Garden Mission and told to interview everyone I could, then give them $5 for their time. We asked folks if they worked, how many hours and for how much.

Everyone I interviewed had a job. Most homeless people in Chicago had jobs. And they still had to stay in shelters that made them pray for their supper, sleep on the floor and get out by 6 am.

So, when do we start judging employers who’ve part-timed the entire workforce while slashing wages and benefits? In rural Iowa, Dollar stores and Wal-Marts make poverty acceptable, the price to pay for low-cost goods the working poor can afford, after all.

In the early 1980’s, Iowans could buy homes and send their kids to college on a meatpacker’s union wages. Then IBP bullied its way through the state. The radical meatpacker union was absorbed by the United Food and Commercial Workers, run by conservative retail clerks who sold out everyone west of the Mississippi for a nickel and checkoff. (That’s union parlance for letting employers raise wages by a nickel an hour in exchange for deducting union dues from paychecks.)  

Before the last blow landed, union organizer Louie Anderson made “carpal tunnel syndrome” household words. Workers watching their numbed hands get sliced off made national news. Under pressure, Reagan’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined IBP a record $6.2 million. In response, the clerks gutted Louie’s organizing budget and sent him packing.

These days, meatpackers make just enough to feed their families, according to Art Cullen at the Storm Lake Times. Some folks living on Iowa’s streets are former meatpackers. They work 10 hours a week now when they can get it because employers need the “flexibility” of a part-time workforce.

On my occasional visit to downtown Iowa City, I stop and chat with an unhoused person, hear his story of broken hope, give him $5 for his time. To me, these guys are local residents, unlike the panhandlers at the stop lights at commercial intersections like the woman with a bored little boy swinging his legs under a lawn chair or the young bearded guy asking for a prayer and loose change. Years ago, a newspaper reported that they’re transported from other cities to work those corners due to Iowa City’s reputation as well-off liberals. More recent reports confirm it’s become an industry.

I don’t want to know how accurate their cardboard signs are or where their money goes at the end of the day. I don’t even look anymore. I don’t tell myself they want this or that they’re drug addicts. I do tell myself how screwed up this system is. I’ve organized janitors into unions, exposed powerful institutions through investigative reporting and spent years building a system that transfers land wealth to the poor yet panhandling is now a full-time job.

John Donohue and I were sitting on a bench drinking coffee in the South Loop one day when he turned toward me and launched into his biggest pet peeve. He had just brought on that year’s batch of young interns. Every year, he dispatched them to the shelters to see what they were up against. As always, they came back complaining.

“John, they need to be serving better food at these places!” they said. “The women need safe places to sleep and cleaner bathrooms!”

And every year, he said as he sighed, he tells them the same thing. “We’re not here to make the homeless shelters more comfortable. We’re here to eliminate the need for homeless shelters.”

John died suddenly of advanced lung cancer. A few weeks later, I was walking by Pacific Garden Mission when I got hit up by a tall, lanky Black man. I stopped and asked him if he knew John. He thought for a minute and said, “Oh yeah. He’d take us to Springfield every year to raise hell down there! Always gave us a good lunch too.”

I told him the news.

“Oh no!” he said. “He was a nice man!”

In honor of our friend, I shook his hand and introduced myself. He did the same and smiled. Then I introduced Larry to the people with me, gave him $10 and wished him good luck.

It was supper time at PGM. The doors opened and I watched Larry head in, swinging his arms and humming like he owned the world.

---

State of Homelessness 2023

USDA Report on Poverty in America