Homeless in My Hometown
(excerpt of thesis written at Temple University 1985-86)
What follows is not an ethnography though it started out that way. I
was going to write about the Homeless of Philadelphia but the tribe kept
vanishing either into the trials, triumphs and tragedies of remarkably
unique persons I had come to know or into the customs and ways so much
my own that I could see no difference or distinctions to be made.
I could not initially identify an object for anthropological analysis,
but I have changed my mind about anthropology - and objects
of appropriate analysis sufficiently to allow this presentation. (Rigby
1985, Eames and Goode 1980)
The first assumption that I had to give up was the one that the Homeless
can be looked upon in the same sort of way we look upon the Masai, the
Amish and the Kwakiutl. Whatever our notions about a people,
a nation, a group, a social formation, a tribe, a band, or a culture that
make us think of them as something whole, unified or common to one another,
then the homeless are opposite; the idea's shadow - bereft of human link
and kinship, solidarity, common work or purpose, shared meaning or social
organization. Homeless, the name speaks of what isn't there,
a particular kind of nothing, a bereavement, the shape of loss, the quality
of empty.
There had been an inclination on my part to begin, 22% of the homeless
requesting shelter in Philadelphia have had significant mental illness
or, 32% of the people living on the streets of center city admit substance
abuse problems, or, since 1960 Philadelphia has lost 8,000 living units
that could be afforded by families living on public assistance, or, the
number of people homeless in Philadelphia has increased by 400% (those
who have sought shelter through the city) since 1980. All statements
true and worth assertion, but I'll leave their development to someone else.
Homeless seems to me as plain as the nose on your face concept.
A person without a home is homeless - enough said. But my work
tells me it isn't so. What is a home? Where do
they come from? What becomes of it when my mother dies, my
sister goes away to college? Is it the bricks, a house?
Shelter? A condominium? Who owns home?
Does it stay with you when you emigrate from Ireland to Philadelphia? Is
home a notion so personal that to use it in reference to someone who has
spent the last 35 years in Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry is
a cruel hoax on them and ourselves?
In 1983 at a conference at Temple University focused on other matters,
Dr. Christine Gayley, recently back from the South Pacific, remarked in
an aside that "it's impossible to be homeless in Tonga." She
was not saying that it's impossible to be without shelter in Tonga - although
initially that's how I understood her remark, i.e. houses are easily made
of a few palm fronds and tree branches, so anyone could quickly make one. What
she was saying was that it is not conceivable that a Tongan could be without
a social status including him as a member of a family, gens,
village or clan which necessarily meant the existence of obligations and
rights, privileges and responsibilities in a matrix of relationships with
others.
This remark set me to thinking about the homeless in a different sort
of way than I had previously. I stopped trying to understand
the Homeless, homelessness, the "Problem of the Homeless", by carefully
listening to or researching the accounts of the lives or life histories
of the people whom I encountered who were homeless. I began
to look less at the decisions and actions of homeless persons and more
at the context in which these decisions and actions were taken, less at
the results of their acts and more at the field of possible or probable
consequences. I made the assumption that in every society there
are sickly, frail, broken, dispirited, mad, dissipated and disorderly.
In our community many of these, and now many others without these marks,
become homeless. In Tonga, Masailand and in Cloghaneely they
do not. I have no need to romanticize other societies.
In communities other than our own people who behave poorly can be exiled,
tortured or put to death. One might choose homelessness.
I began to see homelessness as a new and emerging social category. I
became curious about homelessness, not as a sad fate that had befallen a
person, but as a social status and institution that is only possible
here and now in our particular social and historical circumstances.
What I had taken to be the self-evident, ordinary and obvious name for
a tragic misfortune began to take shape as a category and condition whose
truth had a history, not a forgotten history but an overlooked one, full
of false starts, blind alleys, unusual associations and unusual estrangements.
Michel Foucault has written extensively about the history of the relationship
between knowledge and power. As examples of the manifestation
of this dyad he has developed histories of madness (Madness and Civilization),
Imprisonment (Discipline and Punish), health (Birth of the Clinic) and
sexualities (History of Sexuality). Foucault does not accept
that madness, deviance, health, sickness, death and sex are unchanging
constants in human life; maybe constants but never unchanging. His histories
relate the changing dimensions of these taxons in European history, most
especially as they relate to forces changing, shifting powers in the
communities of his interest.
In following Foucault's framework I have had to venture our of
the safe world of recorded events and incontrovertible facts, and have
tried to follow a border between common sense and common nonsense through
a period of time in a particular place.
My claim, my thesis, is that homelessness is new and related very much
to our way of community life in Philadelphia in 1986. Though
new, homelessness is not without a history and its period of development. How
we've come to speak about homelessness as well as how we've come to recruit
people to occupy its reality are issues here.
I am aware that the condition of being without shelter is not a new
phenomenon. I have reports of that going back to 1682 when
the first Quaker colonists disembarked here. Neither the aboriginal
residents nor the Swedes who preceded the Quakers offered shelter.
The newcomers dug caves in the Delaware riverbank at Penn's Landing and
sheltered therein for the first winter. There is something
markedly different about Homelessness today than the condition of being
without shelter. Homelessness marks an estrangement, a break,
an abandonment by the community and a withdrawal by the person that is
marked most glaringly by the bag lady and the vent man but is part of us
all, a piece of the fabric of our social lives.
The issue here is not one that I can illuminate with accurate
statistics (Patterson 1984). I make no discussion of therapeutics
(Segal and Baumohl 1984): i.e. "How can alcoholics be helped?", "Protecting
the rights of the mentally ill", Redressing the lack of low income housing",
these will not be chapter headings. What I am trying to make
a stab at is this: How can there be Homeless in my hometown?
How is it that we have become a community of folks so separated from each
other that we think a homeless person is only someone without a house?
Why is it that we talk about this social condition, event, problem, status
or category as "Homeless" and not, say "The great abandonment of the mentally
ill"; "The rebuilding of skid row"; " The deviant: confinement or abandonment,
a cost effective analysis of the choice before us?"; "The relocation of
the poor from housing to boarding housing".
These essays track in two dimensions. One dimension is historical
in format (Chapter 2). I look at the past of my hometown and
attempt to make out from the common response of the community (manifest
in its laws and their amendments, its institutional creations and their
modifications) the coming together of those elements, both discursive and
economic, architectural and social that we now understand to be Homelessness. I
am probing the question of how in my particular society we have gotten homelessness
to come into being.
The other dimension is the opposite of historical (Chapters 3, 4, 5
and 6). I have selected for inclusion here reflections on four
brief encounters, really no more than instants in time; but moments which
have insisted on being remembered, have demanded I give them thought: a
bag lady whose bags were full of nothing but bags; snowfall on an abandoned
woman; a vent man's and a mayor's exchange; and the silent remorse of a
dying drunk.
In Greek there is a word "kerygma". It has the meaning of
a transforming instant, a magic time, a moment of grace. These
four moments have had that effect on me - they bear the weight of reflection
on them out of proportion to the time it took them to transpire. I
have attempted to articulate their historical and social pretext and preparation.
Naming, building our understanding around and shaping our city's response
to homelessness as if it meant houselessness has obscured that we are talking
about a condition in which folks are alienated, separated from that singular
element of our existence beyond our bodies that constitutes our humanness
- belonging, belonging someplace, belonging to someone - Home.
When we speak of homeless, are we talking about housing or the lack of
it? Or are we talking about isolation, a space where there
is no mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, friend; a space of disengagement;
and then the management of this Outcast. When we speak of a
chronically demented person without family, with no friends, no money,
pharmacologically strait-jacketed with psychotropic tranquilizers living
in a boarding house in a slum area and we say that this person is not homeless,
what do we mean, or else, what do we intend?
The traditional areas of anthropological interest have been communities
strongly marked and often productively organized around relations among
its members called kin relations. This study is about the consequences
of social life in a city whose members live within a nexus of cash exchanges
rather than a kin network.
MAKING A PLACE FOR THE HOMELESS - A HISTORICAL PROJECT
In 1732, the City Council of Philadelphia built an almshouse for the purpose
of "affording shelter, support and employment for the poor and indigent,
a hospital for the sick, and an asylum for the idiotic, the insane and the
orphan". (Lawrence, 1905, Riverview Report 1975). This was fifty years
after the founding of the city by the cave dwelling first colonizers. They
had done well. Philadelphia had grown quickly to become a city of about 10,000
people (Fretz 1913). Gary Nash writes "The 1730's and 1740's were decades
of prosperity for most Philadelphians; immigrants who disembarked during
these years found an expanding economy and a good deal of opportunity" (Nash
1977, page 70). This almshouse located at 4th St. and Spruce St. for its'
initial years had very few residents. It was not the first almshouse in Philadelphia.
That came in 1709, built by the Quaker Meeting and reserved for their exclusive
use; it was called The Convent as most of its residents were older women,
widows and women with no children to provide for their care. The almshouse
made in 1732 is the establishment from which all sheltering institutions
of Philadelphia's Municipal government (hospitals, prisons, nursing and old
age homes, public orphanages) mark their historical beginning. This was not
the initial or preferred or only way the city government responded to the
poor. There was also what later got called outdoor relief and there was exclusion,
banishment or "warning off".
Outdoor relief was formally established in the Colony law of 1705, An
Act for the Relief of the Poor (Guardians, 1796): overseers of the poor
were given the right to tax a citizen's estate at a rate of a pence on
a pound (approximately 1/240 or .4%) in their townships for the relief
of the poor, indigent and impotent. The law describes the responsibilities
and powers of the overseer and specifies punishment if the overseer appointed
by council refuses to take on this civic duty or discharges it poorly (Fines,
confinement). It doesn't specify, beyond "indigent" and "impotent",
who it was that was poor. Poor meant weak, unable to work.
Recognizing who was poor required no special knowledge or insight when
the city was small enough that all knew one another (Rothman, 1971). This
act also specified:
"And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that the father
and grandfather, mother and grandmother or the children of every poor,
old, blind or lame or impotent or other poor person not able to work, being
of sufficient ability shall at their own charge, relieve and maintain every
such poor person as the justices of the peace at their general quarter
sessions shall order and direct on pain of forfeiting forty shillings for
every month they shall fail therein".
Additionally if the family did not take up the responsibility or pay
the fine, the overseers had power to confiscate the children of this neglecting
family and contract the children out into apprenticeships.
The sense of this law is that local townships have the responsibility and
the power to respond to their poor citizens. This law reflects
an attitude that the smaller social formations are to be empowered
(and compelled) to take care of their members, rather than being replaced
by larger social formations (church, state). The relief, a
cord of wood, food, a nurse or caretaker was arranged and paid for by the
overseer and given to the poor in their home.
These two forms of municipal response to people that are not part of
the productive forces of the community continue today. There
is an interesting history of how a small sheltering almshouse for a few
widows grew and has become Holmesburg Prison with its 23 foot stone walls
and gunning towers, and an armful of potatoes has become a USDA Food Stamp
certification voucher. But I leave that aside and look at the
third way our community has had of responding to the poor.
In the 1718 amendment to the poor law An Act for Supplying Some Defects
in the Law for the Relief of the Poor (Guardians 1796), the question of
belonging is directly addressed. Who belonged, who did not,
what were the conditions of belonging, of settlement, that made a person
one of the community, allowed the community to profit by his labor, and
committed it to provide for his infirmities. ". . . but it
is not ascertained what settlements shall render one an inhabitant."
". . . Servants, indentured, people holding leases worth 5 Lbs. per year,
people who have paid taxes or people who have done work for the town are
settled". Furthermore, citizens importing ". . . old persons,
infants, maimed, lunatic or any vagabond or vagrant persons must provide
security to the township that these will not become a public charge".
In section six of this amendment to the colony poor law, ". . . and to
the end that monies raised only for the relief of such as are impotent
and poor may not be misapplied and consumed by the idle, sturdy and disorderly
beggars, . . . the poor must wear badges". Under pain of flogging
the relieved poor must wear a Roman P on their right shoulder.
The poor had become stranger. I do not know to what extent
this law was enforced or even enforceable in colonial Philadelphia.
I haven't any idea how the relieved poor with his badge would staunch the
flow of relief to the sturdy beggars. But clearly the poor
had become strangers in their own community, not readily distinguishable
from outlanders. The unsettled, the poor ones we refused to
accept as our citizen and our responsibility were "warned off" - they were
taken to the edge of the township and banished from it. They
were not us, we did not want them, we would not care for them.
But this is only partly true. The laws reflect that Philadelphia
did not want nor would we tolerate the outsider, the unsettled, who would
become our charge. But the stranger was welcome
who could contribute to the production of the City. In a 1734
Amendment to the poor law, language was developed to try to tighten up
the definition of the alien and develop a more orderly process of accountability
for the banished and unsettled so that one township could not simply dump
somebody into another township's charge. In the definition
of the unsettled, "mariners and other healthy persons coming from Europe,
only, excepted . . ." In 1734 we decreed that those kind of
strangers we wanted. This ambivalence about the conditions
of settlement, or citizenship, has been an arena of conflict, compromise
and confusion since before 1601 and carries on today.
1601 was the year of the promulgation of the Elizabethan Poor Laws.
These Colony of Pennsylvania Laws I've mentioned are drawn up and derived
from the Elizabethan Poor Laws (Himmelfarb 1984, page 24, 25).
They are not substantially at variance with the Poor Laws of the other
English colonies of North America (Rothman, 1971, page 28-29).
The Elizabethan Poor Laws (hereinafter EPL) were a response to the breakup
of the orderliness of European feudal society in which there was much less
mobility of persons, most were connected to landed elite, landlords, who
were required to relieve the poor through a method of wealth extraction
the church called tithing, some of which got back to the poorer of the
people from whom it was taken in the first place. There were
no aliens or they were few. As this obligation of the nobles
became less obligatory, the peasants less settled, the ways of producing
and distributing wealth other than feudal more widespread, then newly impoverished
peoples were being generated just as quickly as new fortunes were being
accumulated. The EPL attempted to address this unprotected
poverty (i.e. poor people not protected by noblesse oblige) by empowering
local units to tax themselves and distribute these monies to their poor.
In the feudal order the controller of the productive wealth of the community
(the lord of the land) was also responsible for the relief of the non-productive.
With the EPL, the responsibility for the relief of the poor fell not on
the class beginning to organize and accumulate the wealth (merchants) but
on local units of governance. Karl Marx overstates the case
but articulates this idea in The Communist Manifesto, "The bourgeoisie,
wherever it got the upper hand, put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations, and pitilessly tore asunder the motley feudal ties that
bound man to his 'natural superiors', and left remaining no other bond
between man and man than naked self-interest and callous cash payment"
(page ). The "motley feudal ties" bound a man to a particular place
on this earth and bound him in a set of social relations. He
might be slave, he might be serf of servant, bound, oppressed, exploited
and maybe even poor, but he definitely wasn't two things: (1) free, (2)
homeless. These may be two sides of the same coin.
Philadelphia in the 18th Century became the second largest city in the
British Empire, behind only London. It had in less than a century
reached its peak as the largest trading port and mercantile center of North
America (Nash, 1977).
"Warning off", banishment of the unsettled poor, welcoming the productive
stranger, clear identification and relief of "our" poor by local government
through overseers of the poor providing outdoor relief and indoor shelter
continued. Rothman writes (1971, page 46):
"The enforcement of settlement laws which stood midway between poor
relief and crime prevention measures was one basic technique by which colonial
communities guarded their good order and tax money. Towns everywhere
used their legal prerogatives to exclude the harmless poor who might someday
need support, and suspicious characters who could disturb their safety
and security."
The dependent and the deviant become one, indistinguishable, refractory
to the social instrument, local government, charged with the responsibility
of maintaining order and relieving the poor.
In 1771 there was another amendment to the poor law of the colony of
Pennsylvania: "Section V, the Overseers of each county are to contract
for and establish a house or lodging for maintaining and employing the
poor...and if any poor shall refuse to be lodged, kept, maintained and
employed in such house or houses, he or she shall be put out of the book,
and shall not be entitled to receive relief from the overseers during such
refusal". These strangers, the poor were to receive no relief outside the
poorhouse. What had been the act of relief had become the space
of its confinement. In Philadelphia it was called The Bettering
House.
Though banishment continued, the social environment and physical environment
in which it was practical began to diminish. Philadelphia was
growing rapidly and more and more of its citizens had no
with each other. Secondly banishment required wilderness
to be effective. By 1750 there was no nearby wilderness (a
place under no one's jurisdiction). The wilderness had moved much further
west. The constables could not run someone out of town without
running them into Bucks County, Delaware County, New Jersey.
Exclusion and separation--excommunication, banishment, exile came to
be unacceptable methods of ridding the city of undesirable people.
Those in control of the economic activity of the city needed to attract
productive strangers to the city to become its citizens, and their laborers. This
new order of business could not work by the exclusion of strangers from its
space.
Throughout the 17th and 18th century Philadelphian's productivity was
based on or dominated by mercantile trade. At the end of the
18th century industrially organized businesses, especially textiles, began
to come to prominence here. The merchant and artisan businesses
were organized, and could be, as household arrangements. There
need be no distinctions between home and work or household and productive
relationships. A person was either part of a household with
a specific social/economic position (apprentice, child, master, retainer)
or he was out. Industrially, businesses were not organized
as coherent households--although one family might own the industrial tools
and space. In an industrial town it was possible for a person
to physically live within its space without having a social place within
it. The name for this kind of excommunication is imprisonment.
Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization and also in Discipline and
Punish, The Birth of the Prison, puts forth the idea that each age has
its "episteme", sort of a kernel of what every one accepts as truth, a
common sense, a symbol or set of commonly held signs around which precipitate
many assumptions and understandings. He asserts as thematic
of middle ages, and earlier, the leper and the leper's exclusion from the
space of community. The leper was discharged from social life,
put outside the bounds of its interest. As an episteme that
related and generated common senses, wisdoms, and policies, it says "that
which is bad for us put it away from us". But this theme of exclusion,
excommunication, gives way during the Enlightenment to a new theme.
Foucault traces in the history of the idea of madness this new theme, the
confinement of the mad. This new common sense tells us, "confine
what is dangerous, incomprehensible, unknown, put boundaries around it,
trap it, don't let it out". Foucault studying responses to the plague then
expands this episteme to include, after confinement, the segmentation,
analysis and study of the incomprehensible.
"The leper and his separation; the plague and its segmentations.
The first is marked; the second is analyzed and distributed.
The exile of the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring with them
the same political dream. The first is that of pure community,
the second that of disciplined society." (Foucault 1979, page 198)
This, the project of discipline, was to be the project of the Bettering
House. It would improve, not the conditions of the poor, but
their characters, thereby alleviating the cause of their poverty and unproductiveness. With
differential effects this would be the project of the variety of Philadelphia
institutions that grew out of the Bettering House; House of Refuge, House
of Reform, House of Correction, Philadelphia Insane Asylum, Philadelphia
General Hospital, Home for the Indigent, Detention Center, Philadelphia
Nursing Home, etc.
Foucault again writes:
"Underlying disciplinary projects the image of the plague stands for
all forms of confusion and disorder; just as the image of the leper, cut
off from all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.
They are different projects but not incompatible ones. We see
them coming together slowly, and it is the peculiarity of the nineteenth
century that it applied to the space of exclusion of which the leper was
the symbolic inhabitant (beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly
formed the real population) the techniques of power proper to disciplinary
partitioning."
In Philadelphia, and elsewhere, these poor mendacious strangers living
in our town became the source and cause of their own problem. They
were confined to the Bettering House until they were better.
This Bettering House was a large building, four stories, L-shaped, built
along Tenth and Spruce Streets. Initially its project was to
better the condition of the poor and toward that end it was divided into
two spaces: the workhouse and the almshouse. The workhouse
at first allowed, did not impose labor on its residents. The
almshouse division began to take on marks of a hospital. Rothman
(1974, page 45) writes:
"In many places the almshouse itself became an infirmary, an unintended
result of its admissions policy. Since the most difficult cases
and the ones that the community had the least desire to accommodate were
often the diseased, the sick made up a sizable proportion of the almshouse
population. As the institution became a collection point for
illness, doctors became regular and salaried attendants, and soon they
were training students there. The structure remained, of course,
the least preferred setting for medical treatment, and people with sufficient
funds received care at home. But by the end of the colonial
period, the almshouse had become a hospital for the poor."
The design of the Bettering House had not yet come to mark clearly what
Foucault calls the "project of the nineteenth century" wherein "bettering
the condition of the poor" would become "bettering the poor" and would
require intense analysis, diagnosis and correction of the stranger who
was poor. Again Rothman (1971, page 45) writes:
"The hospital would help train medical personnel and attempt to effect
cures. But its designers conceiving of institutions as substitute
households, gave their attention to the sick stranger, the ill-kept resident,
the wandering insane. The value of the place rested not only
on its recoveries--which undoubtedly were as welcome as they were rare--but
on gathering in the homeless."
I have asserted that the poor widow of early colonial Philadelphia,
known to her neighbors, received material assistance or shelter and care
as her needs required. But soon this thematic of the poor person
was challenged and the common notion of who made up the poor became the
outlander, the sturdy rogue, the wandering madman. The institutions
developed to respond at first provided care and then confinement.
In the nineteenth century, our sheltering institutions become specialized
and distinct. As the theme of cure enters the space of confinement,
we record an elaboration of special institutions each to respond in its
special way to the particular pathology of its inmate. The
category of homeless remains the condition of shelterlessness, but the
character of the poor shatters into a score of pathologies, as many as
there are therapies offered for their cure. What had been dependence
and deviance calling for care and confinement or exclusion, now became
a host of disorders. Along with the disorders came a strong
belief that they were amenable to intervention; that the people possessed
of such qualities of disorder could be reformed, reshaped, healed and returned
to citizenship.
Foucault (1965, ex Rothman) writes:
"Through the asylum the society would conquer madness by undermining
it into conformity. The problem is to impose, in a universal
form, a morality that will prevail from within upon those who are strangers
to it."
In 1828, the city purchased a lot of ground in Blockley Township on
the west bank of the Schuylkill River, 187 acres in extent, covering what
is now Spruce Street from the river west to 38th Street, then south again
to the river. On this was built what was popularly called "Old
Blockley" but was the Philadelphia General Hospital, the Hospital for the
Insane, The Philadelphia Almshouse, The Philadelphia Workhouse, The Philadelphia
Refuge. The Philadelphia Prison, Eastern State Penitentiary,
was built on another site in 1829 on what was then the outskirts of the
city. This prison was the institutional wonder of the world
at that time. De Toqueville (ex Rothman 1971, page 997) wrote of it, "It
is incontestable that this perfect isolation at Philadelphia secures the
prisoner from all fatal contamination".
The stranger that sheltered in these places would have his sickness
cured (at the hospital), his madness reshaped into sanity or he would be
protected from the vile society that created it (at the asylum), the delinquent's
malformed character would be reformed (at the reformatory), the disorderly
would be corrected (at the House of Correction), and at the refuge, children
would be safe from harm and temptation, and the proper traits of good citizenship
instilled in them.
Rothman reports that not only Philadelphia but the whole country in
the middle decades of the early nineteenth century were swept with a belief
that large well designed institutions could redress and cure the social
problems that afflicted society. All the symptoms of the problems
were collected, confined and operated upon. And then (Rothman
ibid XIX) "In the end the institutions did not fulfill either the modest
or grandiose hopes of their founders. And yet, the penitentiary,
the insane asylum and the almshouse continued to enjoy impressive longevity..."
(ibid page 290) "No matter that the almshouse had not promoted reform or
terrorized the poor into hard work...the taxpaying public still defined
institutionalization as proper and useful...convinced that all the groups
at the bottom were more or less bothersome, culpable and unfit for extended
relief at home, they continued to rely on the almshouse solution".
None of these various tracks of discourse ever go away but at different
times some opinions and policies resonate louder in particular social conditions
and times.
The stage is now set for the emergence of the Homeless.
We have the poor. We needed to recruit strangers to work for
us, with us, or make us work for them. That's done.
We work efficiently now in a world of people we don't know.
The poor became strangers but our strangers. We made larger
places to confine them and reform them. In general the reformation
didn't work but the confinement continued and the multiplicity of diagnoses
remained. They were homeless now all except for one element.
Homeless in the sense of alone, belonging to no one, having no place in
society except the place of their confinement, if cared about by someone
it was their keeper. Homeless now except for their shelter;
the confining institution, asylum, poorhouse, penitentiary or sanitarium. The
practical problem, their disorderliness continued to be seen as a threat
to the city, the financial problem was the cost to the taxpayers of their
confinement.
The emergence of the drug as both practical intervention and symbol
of closure allows the penetration of the Homeless as a category of thought,
a class of people and a tolerable feature of our "community" life.
Hugh Hunter, friend and co-worker, gave the impulse for this idea some
years ago then he mentioned that the use of psychotropic tranquilizers,
the chlorpromazines, obviated the need for straitjackets for crazy people.
This class of drugs has a tremendous ameliorative effect on the hallucinations
and secondary behavior of many psychotics. Their discovery
and use forms the practical basis for the relocation of the mentally ill
out of the asylums that has been taking place for 20 years.
These medicines have reduced great amounts of suffering and have allowed
many people to hold onto or recapture a productive place in our community.
These drugs have also relocated the space of confinement. The
walls of the asylum, the straps of the straitjacket have been relocated
by these drugs to the interior of the person. Confined within
himself, posing no serious threat to the orderly execution of the business
of our city, the walls of the institution come down and there emerges
the Homeless. Do not misconstrue me, I am not asserting that
drugs, alcohol, dope or medicine are the cause or necessarily even contribute
to the condition of shelterlessness. I do say that the thematic
of the drug and its effect is a recent development that has allowed to
re-emerge in public spaces the broken widow of 1732, the disorderly beggar
of 1767, the rogues and vagabonds of 1830. All the elements
that comprise for me the notion of Homeless and are necessary to it--poverty,
neglect, abandonment, loneliness, confinement, isolation, indignity--manifest
themselves on our streets, on vents rummaging in garbage, living off our
small change, when we confined them within their own person and then took
away their place to live.
APPENDIX
The following are mostly raw notes written by myself. Most
are in the nature of brief reports to Richard Melaragni or Joseph Kuna
who are administrators of social services and supervisors of social workers
at the Adult and Aging Services Division of the City of Philadelphia's
Department of Human Services. I have been a social worker at
this agency since 1974. The agency is designated to provide
protective social services to the citizens of Philadelphia.
There are two characteristics about this kind of social work that sets
it apart from other social services. One is the distinctiveness of
the client: he or she is a person whose life, safety or well-being
is in jeopardy, and whose personal capacities (emotional, intellectual,
physical) preclude their making an effective response to the risk, and
who have no one (family, friend, neighbor, minister, social agency, physician,
etc.) willing or able to help them. These characters define
a very special person: broken, damaged, isolated, abandoned, neglected
and preyed upon, people whose social life has come to death before their
physical existence. Our work is directed at alleviating or
ameliorating the conditions of abuse, exploitation and neglect but too
often we have to settle for relocation of our client out of the situation
and into one of the terminal institutions that have been made available:
hospitals, nursing and old age homes, psychiatric boarding houses.
Much of what I think and have written in this paper has been shaped,
tempered, maybe skewed, in my encounters with these folk over the past
decade. My work brings me to meet the casualties of industry
not its captains. I don't know much about how the great wealth
of our country is produced but I have met many people in my city who have
paid its price.
The other special characteristic about the kind of social work
that I do has not to do with the qualities of the client and their situation
but with the nature of the provision of my services: my work proceeds oftentimes,
and characteristically, without the consent of the client.
In all the helping or healing professions and especially so in social work
a fundamental and guiding ethic is that the client, patient, customer determines
and has the right to determine whether or not to accept the ministrations
of the doctor, lawyer, therapist, counselor or social worker.
The source of authority for the application of treatment, an act of representation,
an intervention, is the client. This is the way it's supposed
to be, the ideal, and the ideology of help. But the circumstances
of our particular clientele make this ethic unworkable, the ideal compromised,
and the ideology of "right to self-determination" suspect.
The mental and physical condition of the people to whom we go interferes
with or precludes their consent to our intervention. Babies
and young children, comatose or unconscious people can't make decisions.
But what about adolescents whose capacities are maturing, or alzheimers
patients whose capacities are diminishing? People who lose
their minds don't lose all of it. Alcohol and drugs cloud,
temporarily and sometimes permanently, mental powers. In our
agency we constantly and repeatedly ask each other and ourselves, "By whose
authority am I making this decision?" But it is not simply
the client's personal capacities or lack of them that muddy these waters.
The capacity to make decisions and the content of choices are yarns of
one fabric. I've asked myself the question "If I had to decide
in the context of the following three options, what would my decision be?"
Option one - return to the state hospital; Option two - accept this social
worker's offer to go live in a boarding house, Option three - stay here
on the streets. Decision? Or maybe the "free" choice
comes from this smorgasbord of options: die alone in a hospital, die alone
in a nursing home, die alone in this apartment with my cat.
In this city, without regard to race, creed, sex or sexual preference,
rich and poor alike are free to choose to live on a steam grate. The
richer though have other options.
In doing protective social work we can and do marshal state power and
insert it into the lives and social situations of our clients.
We have people declared incompetent and are appointed their guardians.
We receive and spend funds of people we have decided cannot manage their
own. We seek court orders to remove sickly but unwilling citizens
from their homes. We remove people who don't want to go from
the streets. We break up families. We get arrest
warrants for people that have not committed a crime; to have them put under
temporary psychiatric confinement and evaluation. We never
take such interventions lightly. We impose on ourselves or
have imposed on us so much review and red tape that these actions cannot
be taken frivolously or idiosyncratically. But the point is
we do take these actions and are daily reminded that the distinctions between
assistance and imposition, between help and oppression, between sheltering
and confining, between protection and disenfranchisement are distinctions
that are never entirely clear, nor are thy unchanging or unchangeable.
Some of these "raw data" are reports to Rich Melaragni written by me
at 3:00 a.m. after a night walking or riding on the streets engaging homeless
people. Melaragni needed these notes to prepare a daily report
for the commissioner of welfare and the Mayor regarding the homeless. Some
of the notes refer to experiences reflected on more fully in the body of
this paper.
In the preparation of these reports for inclusion in this paper I have
avoided editorial improvement with the exception of the replacement of
abbreviations and acronyms to make it more intelligible. In
places where peoples names are mentioned earlier in this paper, I use the
same phony names to refer to the same real people.
I have included street notes from the period of December 1984 thru February
1985. This includes the period during which Mayor Goode decided
to forcibly bring publicly homeless people indoors and also the time when
advocacy groups were prodding the municipal government to declare that
homeless people had rights to shelter, vote and showers. Readers
of this paper who were following these issues in the newspapers and media
may have developed opinions and perspectives against which they can test
these notes.
When I call these notes "raw" I do not mean to imply they are objective,
or that they speak to reality or about it prior to my ideas about it.
It is obvious that when I go out on the street I am in full possession
of my prejudices, opinions, perspectives; I take note of some matters and
I ignore others; my curiosity takes me one way and not another.
These notes do reveal my immediate relationship to people and events more
clearly than subsequent reflections wherein I draw on the ideas and insights
and criticism of scholars, writers and teachers to develop my understanding
and buttress my conclusions. And these notes show something
of the work I do and the position from which I speak.
Philadelphia General Hospital had been a major institution for the care
of Philadelphia's sickly poor. Its cost to the government was
great. As federal sources for the funding of health care, especially
medicare, allowed private hospitals to expand, and expand health care to
the poor, PGH was allowed to deteriorate. Mayor Rizzo closed
it in 1977 after a series of articles exposing poor sanitation and understaffing
appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News.
------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Melaragni
FROM: Ferry
RE: PGH Closing (June 77)
The only hospital in Philadelphia is closing down. Come
July, there will be no more hospitals in our city. Its' passing
will be noted only by the old, crippled, the mentally disabled, emotionally
disturbed, the outcasts, the drunks and bums, the unwashed and the unwanted.
It used to be that the word "hospital" meant what it said.
It was a place that extended hospitality - food and shelter - to societies'
unfortunate, the old, the crippled, the abandoned and the dying. These
people were visited by the more fortunate and charitable; religious, physicians,
good citizens, people to whom it was important that the sick
and dying and crippled be visited and fed and ministered to.
During the nineteenth century, hospitals became more and more the province
of physicians. In the twentieth century, physicians increased
their hegemony until now the use of hospitals are almost completely expropriated
by the medical profession. And now, the old, the crippled,
the disabled, the unwashed are not allowed into a hospital unless they
have a condition that physicians and insurance companies deem worthy of
the medical profession's efforts.
Philadelphia General Hospital continued to be a hospital when all the
others began their philosophical and real switch from being hospitals to
being "Acute Care Medical Centers'. There is no money, never
was in being a hospital. The Acute Care Centers are handsomely
reimbursed by Blue Cross, Medicare, Medicaid, various and sundry insurance
carriers, Health and Welfare union funds, trusts, endowments, inheritances,
horse shows and balls.
While paint flaked and radiators broke in PGH, Children's Hospital arose
beside it, the Veteran's Hospital and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
grew wings, staff, expensive medico machines and procedures.
But PGH never got into that business; the people who came to PGH by and
large did not need open heart surgery or resection of their intestines;
they needed supper and a place to get out of the rain; they needed someone
or someplace that would allow their old age to come to its natural conclusion
in dignity. Medicare doesn't pay and hunger isn't of Blue Cross's
list of reimbursable conditions. The other hospitals in the
City got quite used to transferring these unreimbursable cases to PGH,
then castigating PGH because it did not have the same standards, staff,
technologies, specialties, sterility of their own acute care centers.
There came a reporter from the Philadelphia "Daily News" who, in preparation
for an expose of poor medical treatment available at PGH, neglected to
shave or bathe for a few days. He did not neglect to eat or
sleep in comfortable surroundings. He was admitted to the hospital
and found what he was looking for: poor medical treatment, unsterile surroundings.
The men and women who really are down and out and not just playing a shabby
and shallow role also find what they are looking for when they come to
PGH. It's not always medical care. It is relief
from the bitter cold and life in abandoned buildings, sleep snatched on
the sidewalk's hot air exhaust grates, alcoholic hallucinations, alcoholic
poisoned bodies, relief from real hunger, threadbare ill-fitting clothes,
shoes that let the frost nick their feet; some, respite from the crises
of their tragic and sad lives. For us, for whom home is the
place we can go when there is no other place to go, our good fortune should
not blind us. For many, there is no home, there is no place
to go.
So PGH will close. For those who were served by it, they
will get along or not get along. Misfortune is the context
of their lives; more of it they have come to expect. For us
others who have brought its close, well I suspect that our Tax bill will
diminish not one mil. From time to time, welfare frauds will
be exposed in the media, an ineffective way of trying to lay the blame
on "them" who have had the temerity to be poor in our affluent country.
The buildings will stand for a while. A monument, a testament
of what I don't know. Then it will be razed and we will forget
it was ever there.
------------------------------------------
The winter of 1983-1984 saw the eruption of a tremendous amount of public
interest and private activity of citizens focusing on the homeless.
In retrospect, if we have any of that yet, one can see the attention formulating
and developing and condensing from about 1979 onward. This
memo was written just after a new shelter was opened by the Sisters
of Mercy (Kate, in Kate's Place, refers to Kate McAuley the foundress of
the Sisters of Mercy). Our agency and our effectiveness had
come under severe criticism from the sisters and other groups advocating
for homeless people. This winter was also the first winter
in which thousands of employable citizens, without work, were also denied
cash assistance from the Commonwealth's Department of Public Assistance.
-------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: J. Kuna
FROM; Ferry
RE: Street People's Outreach Project (January
10, 1984)
13th and Market - Thirty or more men were waiting outside the 1234 Market
Subway access stairwell. They all rushed the van, as myself
and Edna Gray pulled up, pushing and jockeying for position near the door
of the van. The nuns had not yet arrived, but there were some
Philadelphia Committee for Homeless (PCH) volunteers present but waiting
for Sr. Clare for instructions. After she arrived and
began selecting the men for the shelter, the pushing and jockeying continued
in earnest. As she made her choices the selection criteria
seemed to be threefold: (1) those in the front of the crowd, (2) those
familiar to her and (3) oldest/feeblest men. There was some
serious grumbling coming from men who were not getting chosen - not so
serious yet to generate violence. The desperation of homeless
men coming up against limited resources is a problem that we saw behind
the Drop-In and that St. John's must cope with daily.
Among the men brought in last night were two: Clem Cantwell and Chestnut
Street Joe.
Clem has been a client of our agency off an on since 1980.
He is 60 years old with a long history of heavy drinking and secondary
physical problems. On December 20th I found him on a vent at
5th and Sansom and provided Purchase of Service (rental of room) at Parker
Hotel until December 27th. He refused the Drop-In Center.
He is on DPA and the check was due December 27th. While I was
on vacation he was extended until January 4. I saw him in the
office and he told me he hadn't got his check. By way of verification
he had an inebriated friend call me posing as a DPA supervisor.
"Mr. Williams of Snyder District" - when the operator asked Mr. Williams
to deposit the money for three more minutes, I figured this Mr. Williams
was not calling from his office. Last night Clem was a bit
shamefaced for trying to run this scam by me. He'd been on
the streets since January 4th, his Purchase of Service at the Parker expired.
Chestnut Street Joe is a 35 year old white man. I had approached
plus six times on Chestnut Street over the past year. Although
on occasion he had accepted my card he had never responded to my outreach
offers. Last night he quite willingly accepted Sr. Clare's,
and I transported him to Kate's Place. The mission manager,
Rich, told me his name is Bill James and his bedding needs to be fumigated
when he leaves the shelter in the mornings.
Present inebriation of apparent substance abuse does not interfere with
the selection process for Kate's Place but misbehavior is not tolerated.
Physically Kate's Place offers warmth and bedding. In the
mid-seventies the City and our agency presented cease and desist orders
and then shut down and relocated the residents of boarding houses which
offered physical conditions better than this. Having said this
I am not advocating that we ask PCH to comply with 1973 Life Safety Code
or any other code; the needs are too great; too immediate for that quibbling
- any shelter is better than 12th and Sansom steam grate. The
care and great concern of the people of PCH should be allowed to be made
manifest. Their generous and full-hearted response to the personal
human tragedies they see on the streets is heartening. My own
similar feelings have quieted more than I like admitting over these years
since I started my work. I used to know, with a certainty like
theirs,what justice and concern demanded. I'm not as sure anymore.
I want to distinguish between a human sized tragedy which requires a
human scaled/personal response and social problems of our community.
The nuns at Mercy Hospice, the folks of the People's Emergency Center,
thee volunteers of PCH, the pastor of the Whosoever Gospel Mission are
making, and in some way are uniquely capable of making that person to person
response. As agents of a concerned community, Philadelphia
and its government, we also are called to respond. But our
response (our responsibility) is of a different order, a different scale
than these folks. I think that is as it should be - we have
a different job than their mission. We are called to make a
different response.
In the sixties and early seventies the City razed the tenderloin without
replacing it or even knowing what we were destroying (confer Joe Moore's
research in those years for DRC). Destroying that neighborhood
we destroyed a social environment that sometimes well, sometimes poorly
supported many folks living on the fringes of our society.
Bounded by Vine and Girard, 3rd Street - 10th Street was Skid Row. I
energetically assisted with the project fully satisfied that I was making
Philadelphia a better place.
The community and media don't notice that our casework/POS/BH is a very
effective helping process for the great majority of homeless people and
families who come to our office or who come to our attention.
But our usefulness to these folks is predicated upon an agreement with
them about the nature of their problem, some degree of honesty about their
resources and our resources, and agreement about possible solutions to
be worked towards. Thornfare has made the context of this work
much more difficult for our clients affected by it and the resource that
can can be brought to help, but it hasn't changed the casework process
or its efficacy.
There are two general groups of folks that my experience tells me that
I, as social worker, have not been of much use to, helping solve their
problem. The two men mentioned above stand as examples.
They are people who are social isolates or nearly isolates that are (1)
significantly disordered mentally or (2) sociopathic substance abusers. Only
infrequently have I found our assistance useful to them as a process facilitating
their return to a position of personal/ social stability.
Although my experience in the Tenderloin in the late 1960's would rank
me as no expert, I'd like us to consider that it was a neighborhood that
did provide to its people some assurance of basic life necessities.
The elements and institutions of Skid Row were remarkably responsive to
folks like Chestnut Street Joe and Clem Cantwell. No one pretended
that it was a therapeutic environment but the possibilities and processes
of change were there and ready when the individuals were ready to make
changes.
Some of the social elements, institutions and agencies that characterized
the Tenderloin and allowed it to be a functioning social environment for
people who could not/did not function well in their natal communities were:
(1) Housing: The lowest level was the streets then as now.
The missions were much more abundant and concentrated than at present.
Most cost nothing except relative sobriety. After the missions
were the flophouses which in the late sixties, cost $.50 - $1.00.
The last flophouse was the Darien Street Hotel which was closed down in
1974 by the City with the help from this agency; at that time a cot in
a foul smelling enclosure cost $1.00/night. There were 3 all
night movie houses, cost $1.00/night. North of Callowhill and
up to Girard were many rooming and boarding houses affordable to people
on DPA and people with intermittent day labor jobs.
(2) Employment: Mendicants had to go from Skid Row to Center
City to find pedestrians rich enough to beg from. There were
blood banks who paid between $7.00 - $27.00 for a pint of blood (AB+ fetching
in the highest price). Throughout the year day labor could
be secured "muzzlin" for four advertising companies operating there: Parks,
A-1, Donnelly and Metro. Men were taken to various parts of
the city, delivered circulars all day. At the end of the day
the workers were paid in cash. There was no expectation that
the same men would be back the next day, or would be given work the next
day. There were temporary employment agencies, Reubens, Arrow,
Manpower, etc. These had expectations that the men picked for
work would b able to show up punctually, sober each day the particular
assignment lasted (usually no more than a couple weeks). Men
sober only one or two days a week were not successful at this level of
employment. Farm labor in the warm months; demands on the worker
were similar to the muzzling companys' but some regularity of employ was
possible if farm contractor was satisfied with worker. Public
assistance was available to those able to meet DPA requirements for documentation,
residence rules were different and stricter then. The Philadelphia
Tenderloin was scattered and destroyed between 1963 - 1973 though all the
elements persist in some form or another without the geographical compactness
they once had.
The institution of the Drop - In Center, the recreation of the missions
by PCH make me think that we are about the process of rebuilding the Tenderloin.
Recently I would have been against the notion. It's not the
kind of "social change" we usually see ourselves as working towards.
But maybe it is inevitable and maybe even in some ways a good thing; living
in the basement of an old schoolhouse is better than the steam vent.
I'd like to suggest that the City may have some useful role in allowing
the development of a neighborhood, responsive to the particular needs of
folks whose habit, ambitions and personal resource are not congruent with
middle american norms. If such group of citizens are among
us maybe we should allow such a space in our community where basic necessities
are available on terms affordable to these folks. Possibly
the City can allow this kind of development and plan for it in a way that
minimizes some of the inhuman conditions that were part of skid row, and
are still present in our community, and support these elements that provided
basic necessities to marginally functioning folk.
------------------------------------------------
The characters and actions in the following inclusion are as follows:
1. Citizens who made complaint to
2. Ms. Sobel, Director of the Mayor's Office for Information and Complaints
who made the request of
3. Irene Pernsely, Commissioner of Welfare who routed it to
4. Dan Stone, Director of Adult Services, thence
5. Melaragni who asked that I check it out along with
6. Ron Ulmer, social worker.
7. Our report, suitably exaggerated and toned down
8. Reclimbed the bureaucratic ladder.
--------------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Commissioner Irene F. Pernsely
FROM: Helen Sobel
RE: Subway Entrance at 13th and Market Streets (1/27/83)
Numerous complaints have been received in this office about a congregation
of street people at the subway entrance/exit at the southeast corner of
13th and Market Streets.
According to the complaints, these people almost completely block pedestrian
passage at this location. Apparently the site is also used
as a restroom facility and the stench is horrid.
Can action be taken to remove these people and provide some relief for
workers, especially during the morning rush hours before 9:00 a.m.?
Thank you and kindest regards.
MEMO
TO: Mr. Stone
FROM: Ferry
RE: Sobel, MOIC Referral on People in 1234 Market
Subway Exit (2/3/83)
Ron Ulmer and I have been there four times since receiving memo, There
has been only one person there. He was not interested in talking
to me.
I spoke with maintenance man on February 2, 7:30 a.m. He
said that since last week SEPTA Security and Philadelphia Police have been
very active keeping place clear of street folk. Each morning
on my way to work I pass through this space, generally, the more vicious
the weather is, the more crowded this space is. For people
on the streets it is a safe haven; warm, well-lit, busy well patrolled
by police. The people who use it for shelter know of our agency,
our services and we know we have cases on most of them. When
passing thru I generally greet the old familiars if they're awake, if I
see someone new I do a brief outreach. Will continue with this.
In answer to Sobel's question: No, we won't remove these
people. For a number of good reasons not the least of which is that we
have trouble relating to these people as trash that is getting in the way
of a pleasant, stench free commute for us workers.
MEMO
TO: Mrs. Helen Sobel, Director MOIC
FROM: Daniel M. Stone, Director
RE: "Stress People" at 1234 Market Subway Entrance (2/11/83)
The subway entrance at 1234 Market is well known to our workers as a
place where homeless street people hang out. Mr. Ferry, one
of our Intake Emergency Workers, comes out of the exit every weekday morning
at about 7:30 a.m. Many of the persons are known to our office
and to Mr. Ferry, they know about our Agency and our services. From
time to time, some take advantage of our services and help; but the pull
of the streets proves irresistible for them and they return to their
old habits.
Since your memo of 1/27/83, our workers have made at least a half dozen
visits to the site. They generally have found only one man
there who knows about our Agency and services but refuses our help.
On 2/2/83 our worker spoke with a SEPTA maintenance man at the site. He
was advised that the SEPTA Security men and the Philadelphia Police have
been very active in scattering the people who congregate there.
Unfortunately, the stench still lingers there but SEPTA maintenance
attempts to minimize this. Very little can be done to stop
the spot being used as a rest room unless the SEPTA Security or the Philadelphia
Police catch the offenders in the act. In the meantime, our
workers will continue to give special attention to the corner in the hope
of helping these people avail themselves of our service.
-----------------------------------------------------
At our agency we had been going out on the streets to contact people
since at least 1874 when reports reached our agency of someone on the streets.
In 1980 we began to visit the streets without waiting for reports as the
numbers of people living in public spaces increased. In 1983
and 1984 private groups assumed much of this work. This proposal
added to it a research component (purposes 4-5). It was turned
down. Purpose 4 was being done elsewhere and purpose 5 seemed
pointless to administrative levels above Melaragni.
------------------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Mr. Richard Melaragni
FROM: Ferry
RE: Outreach Proposal (12/17/84)
Purpose
1. To contact people who are living on the streets of Center
City
Philadelphia to notify them that there are services available
for them.
2. To encourage acceptance of shelter and other services.
3. To be a provider and facilitator of those services necessary to
the chronically homeless, indigent citizens.
4. To document the number, characteristics and condition of the people
living in public places in Center City.
5. To develop knowledge about the lifeways, survival strategies, sources
of support, social relations and productive work of the people living in
public places in Center City.
Means and Method
1. Outreach to be accomplished by social worker who will go out on the streets
of Center City to make personal contact with the people
living thereon. Center City will be understood to
be the area bound by the rivers East and West, and by South Street
and Spring Garden North and South. Also University
of Penn Campus, Temple Campus, Fairmount Park will be included on
occasion. These areas are to be seen as areas of
emphasis, not boundaries - Outreach will be made to
anyone anywhere in the City as directed by the administration.
2. Manpower - City social worker(s) will provide between a and
16 hours per week touring streets at those times of day or night
when the subject people are reachable. This will ordinarily
be between 9:00
` p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
-Volunteers: two men who have lived intermittently
on the streets have volunteered to
direct us to those places and
people that they are acquainted
with.
-Clerical Support: access to typist will be necessary
to make up
reports.
3. Material Support - access to van for use touring streets.
-purchase of shelter service power.
-petty cash expenses.
4. Time of Project: December, 1984 - April, 1985
5. Reports:
1. Daily log including route covered, sightings,
contacts.
2. Individual contact data sheet.
3. Development of A&FS Protective cases-since
these targeted folks
will all be at risk, isolated and often impaired our
Protective Services units
would be most appropriate for ongoing
casework. Our
Center City emphasis on outreach will generate
Protective Services that
could fall into Ferry's caseload without re-alignment
of agency's normal manpower deployment.
4. Maps indicating (1) nightly routes, (2) nightly contacts and sightings.
5. Summary report in April including -
a) collation of info. on contact data sheets.
b) estimate of number - characters, conditions,
changes of people
living on Center City streets.
6. Report on survival techniques and strategies of people living on streets.
----------------------------------------------
These are notes to Rich Melaragni reporting overnight street outreach
work. He would use these notes to work up a brief formal report
for the administration. Melaragni is the intended audience
for these notes. We have known one another for quite a long
time. At the same time that these notes convey to him objective
information that he wanted, they also carry on in a shorthand, informal
way discussions and arguments he and I have been having with one another
for over a decade. These notes cover two periods, December
84 - February 85 and October - November 86.
-------------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Richard A. Melaragni
FROM: Joe Ferry/ Cheryl Kramer
RE: Night Outreach,
December 19, 1984 (12/21/84)
10:00 - Out in van in S.W. quadrant of Center City.
Contacted:
Carl Madden - 25 year old black male on vent poorly covered with cardboard,
inebriated - near 16th and Sansom.
Louis Groll - 40 year old black male, full beard, matted
hair, outfitted in
woman's skirt and warm jacket, constructing shelter out of cardboard
- much vegetables and bread stuffs. Approachable, genial, some
speech not understandable - says he's been on streets 2 years; doesn't
like it inside. No personally felt distress.
Marion Fletcher - on vent, warmly covered near 17th and JFK Blvd. Responsive,
reports sandwich people just came by and said if she gets cold, she'll go to
30th St. Station.
Ruby Boyd - in Centre Hotel doorway - nicely dressed as ever: no distress. Saddened
when I told her of the death of old street companion of hers, Connie Ferguson.
Al Smith - 16th and Ranstead on vent with sleeping bag.
Said he was just advised to leave 30th Street Station; doesn't want to
accept shelter just now. Friendly, but put off our offers.
Ray Bomere - in subway entrance at Broad Street south of City Hall,
heavily dressed reading science fiction; responded to name of Tom Washington
(social worker).
In subway stop near Bomere there were two middle aged black men, on
inebriated, one asleep.
We traveled 13th and Market Street. There was no one in
1234 Market Subway entrance at 11:15 p.m.
At 7th and Sansom "Box Colony" there were more than 10 homeless people:
Charles "Stickman" Haley, Dennis James, Eddie Short, Chris Jones, Clem
Cantwell, Margie Ranser and Donny Liberty and three others occupied boxes
on portico whose tenants were not responsive to us.
This was a larger group of people than I had previously seen at this
location. Its advantages are plenty of cardboard boxes from
Curtis Publishing for shelter constructions, parches and loading docks
which protect from rain and snow and the location is generally well-lit. The
people all know one another and there are fairly regular supports in the
area.
Weather tonight, clear, 45 degrees, windless.
MEMO
TO: Richard A. Melaragni
FROM: Joe Ferry/Joe Golden
RE: Street Outreach/December 22, 1984 (1/4/85)
Walter Gilbert - at 18th and Vine on vent. Comfortable,
warmly dressed, not interested in any immediate service.
Albert Harris and Diane, his wife - with blankets and sleeping bag on
vent at 18th and Apple. Knew of shelter on Spring Garden Street
and 18th and Brown. Indicated they may go to shelter
later in the evening.
Clen Cantwell - was on vent at 12th and Commerce. We rousted
him and brought him to Cherry Street Center, where his companion Margie
Ranser had been brought by Committee on Homeless after she and Clem had
had a violent disagreement. They decided to re-unite after
talking for a while at Cherry Street and requested a ride to Ferry's Bar
at 12th and Market. Mr. Cantwell had recently gotten a job
there.
At the Curtis Building loading dock, we spoke with John Grimes.
Mr. Grimes is a 40 year old white male very withdrawn during all contacts
previously made by these writers. He communicates mostly by
signs and gestures though he can speak.
Also att Curtis area, Charles Haley and two companions who didn't share
their names, all sharing a bottle of Thunderbird.
On 13th Street, two white males on Sansom Street vent, four people in
1234 Market, 1 fifty year old white male, across from City Hall Annex -
no contact made with these folks.
Volunteers from Committee on Homeless were about the streets tonight
and were able to bring two people to Cherry Center, Margie Ranser and Horace
Brown.
---------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Richard A. Melaragni
FROM: Joseph Ferry
RE: Center City Outreach Report/January 3,
1985 (1/8/84)
9:30 p.m. - Broad Street corridor to Temple University and return -
no one.
10:30 p.m. - 30th Street Station. Sighted fifteen people
sheltering. There may be five more that may or may not be -
Couldn't tell from their appearance or behavior. The group
here is more female, more aged, more chronic MH than the froup I saw here
in 1983 that were induced by the sandwich operation. Tonight
the folks I saw were more like the folks that used the station in 1982
and early 1983. No contacts attempted.
10:45 p.m. - University of Pennsylvania area, no one sighted.
20th and Chestnut, 50 year old male, white in doorway, blanketed.
15th and Moravian, Joe Walsh, Joe Painter, Dirty Bobby. Engaged
all, Painter accepted shelter. South Broad St. subway, Ray
Bomere contacted. One 45 year old black male inebriated declaiming
to the wind - no contact.
11:15 p.m. - 11th and Sansom, on vent Andrew Richard, Tom Dunphy.
They were excited about recent fame. Richard's had a picture
in the paper with Trevor Farrell and a film maker has been making a movie
about him and his friends for Temple University.
13th Street - 5 people on or near Sansom Street vent sharing drinks. The
rest of 13th Street full of the usual assortment of debutantes, bar freaks
and lechers.
-----------------------------------------------------
MEMO
TO: Richard Melaragni
FROM: Ferry/Kramer
RE: Outreach Report (January
9, 1985)
It was 15 - 20 degrees, clear and cold. I picked up Mayor
Goode and his aides. Went to the corner of 13th and Race, two
young black males on vent, one named Tim Bryan. The Mayor was
able to convince the men to come into Cherry Center with him.
After bringing these men in, we rode on to Box Colony at 6th and Sansom.
We contacted Charles Haley, Mr. Prince, Little Eddie, Julio Cruz, James
Ellis, Tom Spicer and one other man whose name we didn't get.
After extensive discussion with the Mayor, Mr. Haley, Mr. Prince and Little
Eddie accepted our offer and got in the van. Mr Ellis suggested
that he might be enticed to come in if the Mayor asked him tomorrow night.
Leaving the Box Colony, we proceeded west on Walnut Street, meeting
Tom Dunphy on vent, eating shrimp cocktail. Mayor Goode offered
him a shelter but Tom said they wouldn't let him in that shelter with a
bottle, Mayor Goode took the wine, helped Mr. Dunphy get into the van.
At 10th and Walnut we contacted Andy Richards "Hammerman", Joe Walsh
and another 50 year old male sharing a vent, drinking. Two
came, Hammerman did not, telling the Mayor that he had voted for him and
thought the Mayor was doing a generally good job.
At 11th and Walnut we met Betty Ralston and Ms. Weinberg outside "Wendy's".
Neither showed much interest in the Mayor's offers. Ms. Weinberg
informed the Mayor that all the boarding houses that we have available
all have colored people either living in them or owning them.
The Mayor asked if I could arrange a white boarding house for Ms. Weinberg.
I couldn't. Could offer a private room in the Parker Hotel.
She stayed. Ms. Ralston ran off while we were talking to Ms.
Weinberg. Joe Walsh got sick in the van so we took him across
to Jefferson Hospital's Emergency Room. Then went on.
John Friel was at 20th and Walnut Street, disconnected, fearful, didn't
recognize Mayor Goode or myself. After asking to be left alone,
he jumped up and ran off.
We took all who agreed over to the Drop-In Center and got them settled
in.
Contacted 19 people tonight, 9 accepted shelter.
______________________________________________________
MEMO
TO: Richard Melaragni
FROM: Joe Ferry/Hugh Hunter
RE: Street Outreach (January
22, 1985 -9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.)
No vehicle available, we used Ferry's car.
To 20th and Cherry St. (as per concerned citizen caller), on vent was
Joe Karamanski, long time veteran of Philadelphia streets.
He related events of past weekend when he was picked up by police under
Mayor's orders. He spent a night at Red Cross Shelter, got
a nice shower and free bar of soap, otherwise he didn't much care for the
accommodations. Spoke with him about possibility of helping
him apply for SSI (he recently turned 65), he was much more interested
in this than shelter.
Spoke with Police Lt. Salvatore who knows Joe Karamanski well. She
confirms his report that on the coldest nights Joe comes to shelter in police
station house.
To Logan Library - there are signs of occupancy in tunnel under front
steps - a mattress, food wrappers, empty bottles, foot prints in snow. But
no one there when we were.
To 30th Street Station. Judge Richette there passing out
coffee and sandwiches to a small gathering about 12 - 15 people.
We spoke only with Ruby Boyd who usually stays near Centre Hotel but this
evening was brought to 30th Street from there by Richette. Most
non-travelers were with the sandwich jurist, only two others in station otherwise.
To 6th and Sansom Box Colony, no one there at all. On 7th
Street, Donny Liberty addressed Ferry by name, "Joe don't bother me tonight,
I'm okay". He was blanketed and cardboarded above vent. At
Thomas Jefferson Museum a middle aged white woman on vent, many blankets
cursing us away.
To Jungle at Front & Spring Garden. No one there but
signs of recent occupancy. No one at campsite on Delaware Avenue
South of Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
At 11th and Walnut, Reds Lewitz, former street person, now resident
of Adelphia Boarding Home, just out for a night on the town.
At 17th and Stock Exchange only the remains of Mr Groll's encampment
- no Levi.
On 18th Street, Alfred Smith (we transported to 1340). Eighteenth
and JFK a 50 year old black male, no interest. On 18th and
Cherry, Frank - told of being picked up Sunday but leaving the shelter
as soon as he could.
Impression: Many regular habitue's are gone from the Streets
consequential to Mayor's initiative over this past weekend. Nearly
all that we did speak with had been in shelter on weekend but walked away,
back to the streets.
_______________________________________
MEMO
TO: Richard Melaragni
FROM: Joe Ferry/Melissa Moorman
RE: Outreeach (January
25, 1985)
9:00 p.m. - Out in van to Curtis/Ledger Buildings area.
Met with Tony Serrano and Ken. Much discussion about the events
of the past week, the forcible removal of people from the streets by police.
Tony recounted his techniques and "good luck" at having been able to avoid
being collared and taken to a "nursing home or mental institution".
The information that the two men had about the operation and various
agencies, shelters and programs was extensive; in many ways insightful,
some of it based on their own experience, some of it faulty and based on
street talk, hearsay and gossip. Tony, especially was very
open about his ways and means of surviving, trying to get along, successes
and failures at dealing with DPA, his use and misuse of DRC services, the
wisdom, street smarts and guidelines he's developed over these past few
years since losing work and the deaths of his parents.
He was completely astounded when I told him that I could arrange for
him to stay in a private, clean hotel room while we assisted him to get
back on DPA, look for work etc. Only after I promised that
i was not trying to trick him into a funky overcrowded shelter did he agree
to come. When placed at the Parker Hotel he was full of gratitude
and still disbelieving, "I can't wait to take a bath, I haven't had a bath
for two months."
Ted wouldn't come but showed much more interest than I'd seen from him
in the past. Both men were sober and clear of mind, physically
sound.
Near 7th and Market Street we encountered a psychotic man, Thomas Lopes.
Initially hostile, and delusional, he eventually talked himself into a
pleasant set of delusions in which Melissa and myself were two old friends,
"Peggy" and "Snooks". He followed us into the van, to 1340
Cherry and then to PNH where he indicated he would spend one night.
Donny Liberty was on the vent south of 7th and Market. I
got him a cup of coffee. He articulated much anger about recent
events. He said that since the day I brought the Mayor around
everything has been bad. He's been chased from his normal abode
on the portico of the Public Ledger Bldg.; Curtis Company personnel have
chased him and others away; the cardboard that they've used for shelter
construction has been made unavailable; he narrowly escaped being arrested
last Sunday by the police; and (since that Mayoral Directive) has been
made to move along by the police who threatened to force him into a shelter.
All this suffering and "I'm not even an alcoholic". I encountered
Donny often over these past three years - he's never been as talkative
as he was this evening. These places around Liberty Bell (Independence
Park) are his usual space. He goes to St. John's Hospice for
meals. Oftentimes in past he's mentioned "a Federal Problem"
and "I was put on the streets, I didn't choose to be here", he's always
withdrawn from conversation when pressed for any details.
The streets tonight were clear of many of the regular people we've seen
here before. The action of the police in accomplishing this
goal is clearly much more effective than the social worker approach.
For many of the folks on the streets their lives are out of control, caught
in the vortex of madness or drunken dissipation. Offers to
help, gentle, persistent or otherwise, when made seriously by folks who
know what they're doing and who are empowered to act effectively, are broadly
useful to many hurting individuals and at the same time accomplish the
goals of the municipal government, but there remains some for whom this
help is useless.
Given that there are appropriate material resources (food, clothing,
shelter, care given with respect and a clear prospect and process for recovery
of social status and responsibility) then we are still faced with the situation
of someone saying " No " Shall we as a community tolerate or
accept the "No" and its implication - humans on vents, grovelling through
garbage, death in the middle of cold nights on Chestnut Street?
Or should we send out the police, and refuse to tolerate the "No"? But
then we have to accept imprisonment and confinement as a social response
to madness and dissipation.
_____________________________________________
MEMO
TO: Richard Melaragni
FROM: Joseph Ferry
RE: Outreach (January
27, 1985)
After receiving a call from a concerned citizen, I traveled to 37th
and Ludlow and encountered Samuel Carson on a vent behind International
House. Although reluctant at first, he was eventually induced
to come. Brought him to 1340 Cherry Street. He
was released from the House of Corrections on January 25, 1985 after 4
and 1/2 months incarceration for conspiracy to commit simple assault.
While in prison he was being treated for hallucinations with Prolyxin medicines.
He has family in west Philadelphia but his connection with them is broken,
he reports that his heavy alcohol abuse has gotten him in trouble with
his family. Prior to incarceration he had been of the streets
for 1 and 1/2 years. Earlier tonight he had been rousted from
30th Street Station. He's 26 years old. I arranged
shelter for him.
On a vent at 36th and Ludlow was a blanketed 30 year old black male. He
showed little indication to talk and turned down offers of shelter.
On a vent at 18th and Cherry, Frank and another fellow were sharing
a bottle.
There was no one at Chestnut Street, no one at North Broad, no one at
the Curtis/Ledger Buildings area and no one at the Union League neighborhood.
At 10th and Walnut on a vent was Hammerman Richards. He'd
been picked up by police last week but stayed inside only one night.
Tonight was a summation in some ways for the two of us. I had
little to do, there being no one on the streets. Hammerman's
usual companions were gone off to shelters or elsewhere. He
had his bottle, smokes, blanket and vent. I was warmly dressed
leaning on a lamp post. We talked in between the bursts of
traffic din going by on Walnut Street. Mr. Richards was one
of the first persons I spoke to in 1981 when the agency started to focus
its emphasis on "the Problem of the Homeless". I met him in
the Market Street - Frankford El stop at 8th and Market. He
didn't come in at first, but eventually he did, got sober and came to watch
me run a road race that Thanksgiving. He wore the clothing
I donated him and found a job. I remember being personally
affronted as if he had hurt me when he returned to drinking.
I was walking along Camac Street when I saw my Converse sneakers and my
green corduroys showing beneath the pulled up blanket of a vent man.
I told him that he was a no good worthless loser who wasted all my time
and effort. He eventually forgave me for such stupidity and
arrogance. We both made subsequent efforts to improve, more
or less without long lasting effects. We've come to some separate
peace. I don't punish him often with reminders of the children
he left behind, the family destroyed, the man he could have and could still
become. I allow him his bluff and bravado, he allows me my
earnestness, the boughten concern, he doesn't remind me often of commitments
I didn't get made. He's an unusual man. Everything
he does he does full tilt - the drinking, the street life.
His nickname is the Hammerman, this because he usually carries a hammer
with him, not for defense but in his work as junkman and scavenger, paper
and metal recycling expert. He bragged to the Mayor that He's
lived on the streets for 15 years - cold, rain, snow, heat and muggers
constitute no impediment or danger to him. He mocks our requirement
and our rhetoric that street people are helpless, all bereft of power,
neglected. There is tragedy here, but Mr. Richards is both
victim and perpetrator as in some way we all are.
At 17th and JFK Blvd. Marion Fletcher has returned to her position,
enthroned on a milk crate, wrapped in a blanket. From a distance
in the night, with steam blowing out from the vent below her, she is the
Madonna on a cloud. "Marion, why did you leave the nursing
home?" She had been picked up by the police last week and taken
to PNH. She left earlier today. She said she had
a yen for a Roy Rogers hamburger. She said she was going back
to the home tomorrow. She allowed that "it's a nice place,
but it got crowded and they need the room for new people."
This place is sacred to Mrs. Fletcher, she has beliefs that her son is
underneath the earth in this area. She returns here when she
can.
Andrew Richards and Marion Fletcher are on the streets tonight. Otherwise
the City and the private groups have been successful in sheltering the people
that for too long were out there alone.
_____________________________________________
MEMO
TO: Richard Melaragni
FROM: Joseph Ferry/Hugh Hunter
RE: Outreach (January
29, 1985)
Neither the station wagon nor the van were available from the 13th and
Arch streets garage. We walked around the Center City area
on foot in the area bounded by 13th Street to 20th Street and Cherry Street
to Walnut Street. We encountered the following people.
Tony Bryan, alias Caspar, alias a few other names. He was
sleeping on the corner of Arch and Broad. He had a pretty good
sleeping bag, was not using a vent. He was a young man, possibly
psychotic. He refused shelter.
Lisa Richette had cornered Ruby Boyd at 17th and JFK Blvd.
We spoke to Marion Fletcher at 18th and JFK Blvd. She remained
on her vent (left the Philadelphia Nursing Home one week ago).
"Charles" was at 16th and Ludlow. He was sleeping near a
warm vent. He had been staying at the Red Cross, but went out
to drink. He may return when he sobers up.
At 20th and Walnut the vent was unoccupied. There were scattered
blankets and cigarette butts, the apparent remains of a "Trevor cares" meal
and a votive offering of three cigarettes and thirty six cents left on top
of a pile of blankets.
Louis Groll was sleeping inside a plastic bag over a vent at 18th and
Stock Exchange. He was trapping moisture inside the plastic,
it was raining on him, but we could not persuade him to come with us or
alter his system. Carlos at the other end of the street refused
shelter. Both had been taken to the Philadelphia Nursing Home
two weeks ago and later walked out.
Three fellows were drinking wine on the same block behind a dumpster. We
later encountered two of them panhandling at the 30th Street Station.
Howard was at 16th and Moravian and refused shelter. George
McDonough was at 16th and Chestnut and refused shelter. Both
these individuals appear to be street alcoholics. McDonough
may be brain damaged, he mutters constant profanities and racial slurs.
We returned to 1340 Cherry Street then travelled to the 6th and 7th
Street area. We interviewed Donny who had been living on these
streets for years and had always been inaccessible to us. He
agreed to come with us to the MacDonald's at the 30th Street Station for
cigarettes and coffee. We spent perhaps an hour to an hour
and a half with him before he asked us to drive him back to his vent.
Returned to 1340 Cherry Street.
STREET WORK
October 29, 1985 - 35 degrees, clear - 8:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m.
At Sixth Street, south of Chestnut I spoke with some men at the cardboard
village. James Ellis was there. I hadn't seen him
since the night last January when the Mayor came out with us.
Mr. Ellis said that since then he has stayed most often at My Brother's
House Mission on South Street. He also reports much use of
802 N. Broad and St. John's Hospice. His account of his financial
situation didn't make much sense to me. He has no income.
He said something about not enough evidence yet. He looked
strong physically. He was much milder in expression than I
had seen him before.
Clem Cantwell came up while I was talking to Ellis. He's
been drinking and on the streets more or less since last summer.
No money now but DPA due on November 12. His main squeeze is
in Jefferson Hospital, 9th floor, new building. Margie Ranser
may have to undergo a spinal operation. Clem has been going
to Jefferson Hospital's outpatient for a damaged shoulder recently sustained
during a beating. I arranged POS for him at Parker. Got
him a cup of coffee and was brought up to date on characters in East Center
City's bottle group.
There was a quiet man, 30 years old, named Jack with Clem. He
recoiled slightly at my approach so I didn't speak much with him.
Long lost Donny Liberty was already asleep in his cardboard castle. He
spoke with me briefly but I couldn't entice him to come out.
After bringing Clem to the office, retrieving his case record and making
placement, I toured West Chestnut and Walnut Streets. I saw
Tommy Dunphy and John Friel at their usual spots (9th and Walnut and 20th
and Walnut). Near 6th and Market behind the bank were four
men. One old guy named Mr. Mason. Clem asked me
to check on this man because he's been sick recently.
At 30th Street Station I saw only four people that I could identify
as homeless with some confidence. Three young men and one fortyish
white female.
I looked for Marion Fletcher on JFK Blvd. but I couldn't find her.
I did find many other people huddled in the doorways of the Centre Hotel
and on the vents near 18th and JFK. All were wrapped in blankets
given to them along with sandwiches by the Sisters of Mercy.
I spoke with Jean Beck and Mary Moore. I had never run across
these two elderly women but from their extensive knowledge about missions,
street visitors and social agencies, I could see that they had been homeless
for a while. Both were oriented and coherent and were in no
panic about their situation.
On my way back to 1340 Cherry I found Howard Burke searching his body
for a cigarette. I had gotten him into Riverview a year or
two ago and he stayed there quite a while, but the call of the wild came
upon him and he discharged himself. How he survives God only
knows. Finding cigarettes in his pocket is for him a task calling
for maximum mental concentration. Tonight he told me he'd like
to go back to Riverview soon, as the cold is coming.
The streets are full of disaffiliated homeless people. There
are among them, Donny Liberty, Howard Burke, Marion Fletcher, the two elderly
women at Centre Hotel who seem especially isolated and frail.
November 5, 1985 - 8:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m.
Spent some time with Donny Liberty but was not able to get him to come
with me for a cup of coffee. He had occupied a ledge on the
Public Ledger building portico that was protected by the roof and so it
was a dry spot. He said, as his reason for not coming with
me, that he was afraid that he would lose his space. There
were a few other men on various ledges but none seemed covetous of Don's
accommodations.
Better luck with Marion Fletcher and Ruby Boyd. Mrs. Boyd
was on the north side of 18th and JFK, Marion on the south in the entrance
way of a shop attached to Centre Square Hotel. I discussed
with them the value of me going to the Social Security Office to try to
get the income to which they are entitled. Both women took
positively to this idea.
Ruby was able to give me a partial birthdate, December 25,__________.
She thinks she's 59 years old - that would make it 1925. She
tells me William Boyd was her husband and her maiden name was O'Neal or
O'Neil. Though she didn't know her or his SSA No., she informed
me that before he died he worked for the quartermaster and also a man named
Laskin. She worked at Stephen Smith Home under a supervisor,
Nellie Marshall.
Marion Fletcher gave me March 8, 1916 as a birthdate which will make
her 70 on her next birthday and also gave me her SSA#. She
had been married to Daniel Slane and with him had a son, Joseph, born on
June 30 (can't remember year) in Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce.
The three people I contacted tonight have lived on the streets since
at least 1981 when I first met them (Donny I met in 1982).
They have developed a way of taking care of themselves with minimal resources.
Steadfastly all have refused shelter offers or permanent housing.
Ruby Boyd did come to our shelter briefly in 1982. Mary accepts
shelter once or twice a winter from Sr. Mary Scullion. Marion
was, along with Ruby, picked up last winter by police and spent a few days
at PNH. As far as I know Donny has had no place for years.
November 12, 1985 - 8:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.
Clem Cantwell had told me of an old man who sheltered in an alcove of
the bank building at 6th and Ranstead. He said the fellows
name was Mason and that he had looked sick recently.
Mr. Mason was there. He was asleep, sitting on a milk crate,
hunched over so the brim of his hat met the collar of his coat, sealing
out the wind and rain. Mr. Mason said that he had been waiting
for me to come for the past couple of weeks since Clem had informed him
of his speaking to me. Mr. Mason is a 69 year old man, a widower
for the past nine years. His only "kin" is a daughter, Barbara
Ann Hall, who lives in Seattle, Washington. He writes her often
and she visits him at Christmas time each year. His total income
is $260.00 (SSA) old age pension. Generally he gets a place
to stay (Bond Hotel - $75.00/week) at the beginning of the month.
He tries to save some money so that he'll have someplace decent when his
daughter makes her visit, as he is ashamed of his present circumstances,
and doesn't want his daughter to know of the "difficult straits" he is
in. As far as I could see, tonight, neither ETOH (alcohol)
or MH (mental health) are contributory to Mr. Mason's situation. Arranged
POS Parker, Plan Personal Care Boarding Home (PCBH) and SSI (application
for supplemental income).
At cardboard village spoke with Donny. James Ellis still
there, invited him to 1340 Cherry. He said he is awaiting vacancy
at shelter at 4th and Arch.
On JFK Blvd. informed Ruby Boyd and Marion Fletcher of my referral to
SSA in their behalf. Both said they would accompany me to SSA
office. Ruby doesn't want her case thrown in with Marion Fletcher's.
While speaking with Marion Fletcher, I met Sr. Mary Scullion who was
bringing food making contact with these folks. She said that
she may have some information regarding Fletcher and Boyd that will help
with the SSA application.
Finally I spoke for a while with Jean Beck at 18th and JFK, an elderly
woman, gentle of manner but not presently interested in housing. When
the weather gets worse I think she'll come with me.
November 20, 1985 - 8:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m.
Warm weather tonight. Only a few people at cardboard village.
Mr. Ellis, Mr. Burke and Donny. I spent the evening with Donny.
He was much more talkative than he has been recently. He spoke
much about his years sailing and about the events leading up to his leaving
the sea. In 1954 he was afflicted with TB. He got
very sick aboard a freighter bound for Puerto Rico. Upon arrival
in Puerto Rico, Donny was flown to a federal hospital in New York and was
treated there for 10 weeks. He returned to Philadelphia but
never again was able to go to sea.
He had been a seaman from 1937 to 1954, working out of The Union Hall
at 5th and Arch. Donny is 67 years old having been born in
1918. Some years ago he was terminated from DPA but never received
SSI or SSD because of some bureaucratic confusion involving the quality
of the disabling nature of the TB and its interference in his employability
or capacity to work. With great bitter resentment he eventually
gave up trying to straighten these affairs out. SIU wouldn't
let him ship out because of (inactive) TB, U.S. Public Health discharged
him, Philadelphia Health and Pennsylvania Health Epidemiologists continued
to hound him, DPA would not give him a grant if he was eligible for SSI
or SSD and Social Security questioned the extent of his disability and
never made a pro or con decision (inadequate documentation).
It's hard for me to follow the exact trail of events in all this as
Donny gets extremely voluble, red-faced, angry and upset even in the retelling
of it after many years. He's been living on the streets without
any but charitable support for years.
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