Humanitarian organizations believe that the government is not doing enough to solve the problem. According to their representatives, American laws do not help the homeless, but quite the opposite – they prevent them from escaping the status of the homeless. Things are worst in the country's capital – Washington.
...Six in the morning. In the center of Washington, pre-dawn darkness, very cold. About 200 homeless people came to a warm, brightly lit church to eat a breakfast consisting of porridge, buns, scrambled eggs and hot coffee. The charity organization Miriam's Kitchen has been handing out free breakfasts here for 21 years.
According to director Scott Shinglberg, several factors influence the problem of homelessness in Washington at once. “In Washington, all the troubles are at once: there is almost no affordable housing, social services are lacking, the level of poverty is very high,” says Shinglberg. “That is why Washington leads among the country's cities in the number of homeless per capita. It seems to me that until society understands that this problem cannot be solved with volunteers and individual donations, that the system needs to be changed – nothing will change,” Shinglberg is convinced.
Over the past few years, the demand for breakfasts for the homeless has grown by about 30%. Many of the visitors lost their housing a long time ago, some suffer from mental or physical illnesses. Although in fact such people are a minority here. Most homeless people end up in the position of the homeless due to economic difficulties. These are people either who have lost their jobs, or have been evicted from the housing they occupied, or their income is simply not enough for rent.
“It is very difficult to get lost housing back – you need a deposit, prepayment of rent for two months. And if you do not have recommendation letters from previous landlords, the chances of renting a new apartment sharply decrease,” explains the chairman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Nan Roman. “So it is better to help people keep the housing they have.”
American authorities are criticized for the fact that the homeless are often equated with criminals. In many states there are laws prohibiting sleeping in public places. Homeless people easily become victims of police arbitrariness and often end up behind bars.
Terry Snee now lives in a homeless shelter, but until recently he slept at Washington's Union Station. “I was a person who lived on the street, and people seemed to want me to just not be there,” he says. According to Snee, the police constantly hounded him and would not let him stay in one place.
...Evening has already come, it is dark outside, it is drizzling and terribly cold. Now I am in Georgetown, one of the most fashionable districts of Washington, where there are many restaurants and expensive shops. But literally a five-minute walk from Georgetown is a completely different atmosphere.
I enter a small kitchen in the basement of St. Luke's Church north of Georgetown. This is part of another shelter where only six people live for about half a year. Every evening they gather here to eat. And the food is prepared by volunteers.
The shelter is headed by Susan Keenan. According to her, the demand for shelter services is much higher than the number of places it can provide. Public amenities are inaccessible to the homeless. For example, they are denied access to restrooms. “Most shelters in Washington are locked during the day and people simply have nowhere to go to the toilet,” says Susan. “You and I don't even think about such things, but what would you do if everywhere you went there was a sign saying that restrooms are only for customers? And this is one of the basic human needs.”
There is no shortage of problems of this kind. But when I asked the homeless what was hardest for them, most spoke about society's attitude towards them. “People are usually so immersed in their daily concerns that when they see that you are homeless, you become sort of invisible to them,” says Chester, who has been living on the street for two years.
In winter, when the temperature drops below zero, the homeless person's battle for survival becomes even harder. In Washington charities you can get free food, and in shelters find a place to spend the night. But many of their employees are sure that without active financial assistance from the government, the problem is unlikely to be solved.