My bed in the back of my Prius.....August 18, 2012
Erik Sternad, Executive Director of Interface Children & Family Services, writes about his experience for the second year of sleeping in his car and going without food to make the point that hunger and homelessness are very real issues in Ventura County. His thoughts......
Of course there are hundreds of reasons to not want to be
homeless, and I’m not qualified to speak about what it’s really like, but I did
sleep in my compact car on Saturday night just the same. I’m doing my small part to
raise awareness of the vctogether.org campaign. Every day this collaborative of
40 Ventura County agencies is responding to the needs of our hungry and our
homeless, those among us without health care and in need of the referrals that
calling 2-1-1 can help provide; referrals to programs and services that can
help them get back on their feet. Here are some of my observations from Saturday
night.
Observation #1: Where do you sleep if you don’t have a home?
There are some shelters, or in your vehicle (if you have one), or outdoors if
you don’t. What feels safer, what do I have access to today? Saturday night the
several of us who slept in our cars to highlight this campaign had a long
debate about where we should sleep. Was an empty industrial park area better
than in neighborhoods we knew? Should we stay together or be on our own? You
get a feeling of uncertainty as you head toward that very personal and
vulnerable time when you must bed down for the night – that is if you don’t
have a bed to call your own…
Observation #2: It felt humiliating to sleep in my car. What
would people think of me as I crawled out of my car in the light of the early
morning? “Who is that guy sleeping in my neighborhood? Why is he sleeping in
his car? What’s his problem…? Did he get kicked out of his house?” You just
want to get up and away from the scene in the light of day as soon as you can
without someone seeing you. Imagine starting every day like that…
Observation #3: Where do you go if you need a bathroom in
the middle of the night? Will you have to fully wake up, get to an all night restaurant/gas
station, or just go outside and hope it’s safe and no one bothers you?
Observation #4: It’s just uncomfortable sleeping in a car.
You crawl in as late as you can and get up early. You can’t stretch out, it’s
hot with the windows up, but you feel unsafe with them down. It feels safer in
some ways than sleeping outside, but it’s like you’re sleeping in a fishbowl
all the same...
A friend told me Saturday night that he has a colleague who was
homeless this year. He’s a professional, with a job and friends, and a complicated
life like the rest of us. But when his income at work dwindled because of the
recession, he lost his fight to keep his home and stayed in the backyard of a
friend in a tent for 9 months. In a tent for 9 months… when it was cool out and
very hot, when it rained and the wind blew. Every morning he’d wake up, get
dressed and go off to his professional job. Few knew what he was going through.
That’s one of the many faces of homelessness in our county.
None of us can know what a homeless neighbor
goes through, but we can all do nothing…or we can all do at least something. In
fact, Ventura County Together is all about helping together. Please
consider a gift to www.vctogether.org ,
it won’t stop homelessness, but it will help someone who didn’t have a home
last night – and isn’t that enough?
