Permanent Solution... NOT!

On July 10, Christopher Bowman was stabbed to death, allegedly by Matthew Jacobsen. He was thirty five years old. It happened at the Julian Street Inn in San Jose, a permanent homeless shelter that offers a variety of services to single men.

Conflict between Homeless Men is inevitable. Boys will be Boys and all that... just the way it is. When you add methamphetamine and alcohol into the mix, it gets worse.

The circumstances between Bowman and Jacobsen I am completely unfamiliar with, save that a man is dead, another man is accused, and it happened at a permanent homeless shelter.

There are those of you reading this who would truly like to see a permanent homeless shelter in Livermore. There are also a whole lot of you who are horrified at the idea, but cannot articulate why. I fall into the category of those opposed to it. The difference between me and most is that I can articulate why.

The Livermore Homeless Refuge (we call it the “Warming Centre”) is closed for the season, and has been since April 30^th. On that night, it was a relatively warm night, and it would have been closed save that it has become a newer tradition for it to be open for that last day so those of us who endured the time together can... bond, for lack of a better term.

Bob and Donna McKenzie put up all the gear, and give away a lot of it. Everyone gets a new sleeping bag. We all get sanitary wipes (which I love, by the way, it makes being clean easier), and whatever else we might need. Bob and Donna, I've mentioned before, do a lot. Sandra Chesterman was, of course, there, and she cooked for us, as she did last year. It's her second year as the director of the program.

Sandra, Bob and Donna are the tripod that keeps the program going. Nobody else does nearly as much as those three. I like to give people Nicknames... I call Bob “The Quiet Man,” Donna is “The Taxidermist” and Sandra is “the Babe” (yeah, Gary, that's just for you!)

I should not forget to mention that it was Pastor Doug Quedara who founded the operation. He's the Pastor at Vineyard Christian Fellowship at 460 North Livermore Avenue. Go say hello to him any Sunday. If you're a Christian, you won't regret experiencing one of his services. Good guy who raised a lot of girls... he might remind you a bit of Mr. Bennett from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice... he has that type of wit about him.

A lot of things happened over the course of last season at the Warming Centre.

At Christmas Eve Sandra used some available funds to rent rooms for a bunch of the homeless at a local motel. Boston Bill smoked up the room he was in, left a mess of beer cans all over the place, and wouldn't leave till four hours after check out time. The room was unusable for three days.

Anthony called one of the Volunteers a “racist” after he was told to leave for a variety of problems. The police asked later “does that guy ever shut up?”

And Typhoid Mary, who claimed to have had both forms of Meningitis got the Warming Centre shut down on a very cold night while Sandra, Bob and Donna disinfected every surface at the mission and had the carpets sanitized twice. A bunch of people slept out in weather that was, if I remember correctly, below 30 degrees. Typhoid Mary earned her nickname that night, we've called her that ever since. It turns out, according to her doctors, she's never had either form of meningitis.

We had no violence that I can remember this season (with the exception of Adam Parris slashing my bicycle tires, but that's another story). We've had threats of it before. Sandra was threatened. Both Bob and Donna have been threatened. Sandra has the luxury of a husband that could probably knock anyone I know down without breaking a sweat. Bob and Donna, however, are both pushing 80... And as amazing a presence as both of them have, it's up to the rest of us to back them up when they need backing up. It's happened more than once. All three of them have been severely punished for their good deeds.

What is more, the Warming Centre struggles to find volunteers. I remember last November, Jim Schitter interviewed me for St. Charles Catholic Church. The point of that interview was to get volunteers for the Warming Centre. I keep forgetting to ask him if seeing an ugly man flap his lips for forty minutes had any impact... I kinda doubt it...

There is a homeless woman in Livermore who wants to take over Dania Hall on 2^nd and South N Street and turn that into a permanent refuge. Interesting thought, surely. Also, many would like to see the old library on South Livermore Avenue and Pacific turned into a permanent refuge.

For reasons that have nothing at all to do with anything I'm telling you, both ideas seem, to me at least, completely unrealistic and unlikely to happen. I'm thankful for this.

Notwithstanding is the fact that, between May 1^st and Holloween, living on the streets of Livermore, so long as one decides to do it right, is not so horrible a circumstance to have to live with. Yeah, you'll hear whining and complaining, but it's survivable. I've done it for three and a half years and I have to laugh at some of the folks who complain bitterly about it.

As much as I have articulated bad behaviour on the part of certain homeless, the majority are pretty well behaved.

Now, I have not been around too many people these last couple of weeks. But I am told, through the grape vine, that a lot of those I've written about over the course of the last few weeks are behaving rather well. I wouldn't have any drama, pathos or events to report anyway! The humanity! What's a blogger with a hunger for drama to do?

Conflict in a Homeless Shelter is unavoidable. Having workers there, even paid ones, equipped to deal with potential problems is difficult even for our seasonal operation. Imagine the can of worms we'd be opening if a permanent shelter existed. Livermore is simply too small a community to invite these kinds of big city problems into its midst. And I, for one, would like to someday see children playing on the wide streets of old Livermore the way they did when I was a child...

In San Jose they have a whole lot of homeless problems we do not have. It appears that San Jose is about as well equipped to deal with the issue as Livermore might be now, but they have allowed the problem to fester and become established. We don't have to. The homeless here, by and large, are more “gentile” than the homeless elsewhere. They must be just to survive.

A homeless shelter is a stop gap. It keeps people from dying of exposure on the streets. It is not a solution to homelessness. That, my friends, is a discussion for another time... maybe when I figure it out myself...