"I see these guys shuffling along in these prisons of poverty where their manhood, their independence, their very identity is stripped away by the desperation of accepting charity....stop criminalizing poverty and create a legal place of refuse for every homeless person....How can we call the homeless our sisters and brothers if we treat them like stray dogs or abandoned cats, forcing them into human kennels, stripping them of their dignity, telling them they are unworthy of a place of their own?”
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Can Life Be Lived in Dignity by Every San Diegan?
BY Rocky Neptun
November 12, 2009. East Village, San Diego……………Bill Foster rolls his tattered sleeping bag up carefully, not to disturb the layers of newspaper underneath, avoiding the dirt soiled sidewalk and looks at me with a smile. He knows I’ll be good for breakfast and plenty of coffee.
Almost clean-shaven, ruddy-faced without many wrinkles to show his 54 years, Foster often panhandles enough change for only one meal a day. He tells me he’s just no good at it, even after all these years. He sleeps in the downtown because “there is safety in numbers;” having been attacked by territorial transients along the San Diego River bank and by neighborhood youth when he moved to a creek near Bancroft Street in Spring Valley.
“I have enough left over to cover two coffees at the roach coach over at the construction site, want to join me?” he asked. To his relief, I suggested a nearby restaurant. But first, we hiked the nearly two miles to the only public restroom on the streets of downtown at 3rd Avenue and C Street, where he could change clothes and shave. Its stainless steel walls and stalls were clean, overseen by an attendant who told me that it took years for activists in support of the homeless to get the city to agree to this facility. “But, the no-fly zones, no bums allowed areas, continue to be pushed out, block by block as new condo projects go up, away from the toilet, so more and more folks just go where they are at, especially in the mornings when they can’t make it here. “
Over bacon and eggs, Foster tells me of his former home world in northern Ohio. Most of his life was centered roundabouts the neighborhood store one block over from his parent’s house. From childhood’s fetching cigarettes at twenty-five cents a pack for his parents to penny candy, he became an employee in junior high school making deliveries. Through high school he worked and dated the owner’s daughter, finally marrying her after he became a full-fledged clerk. Inheriting the title to the store, he and his wife worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep it afloat while the neighboring factories closed up and moved their jobs to Mexico. Carrying food debt for his neighbors split him from his terrified wife. After the 1980 divorce, he moved to San Diego with just under $1,000 in his pocket.
Knowing retail, he went to work on the 11 p.m. shift at a corporate convenience store in Chula Vista; where he worked for several decades, never promoted because he was told he was “too slow,” but did manage to secure health insurance from a manager because she was afraid to work the graveyard shift. Yet, in spite of his years of service, he was terminated 6 years ago, when a new district manager decided to fire everyone with health insurance and altered the books to show Foster had stolen money. Without a previous “reference” for his work in Ohio and the “thief” jacket which effectively barred him from retail anywhere, he has been unable to find a job and lives on the streets.
“Why don’t you go to a shelter at night?” I ask him rhetorically. He smiles, knowing I know why, but eyeing my notebook open, with pen ready, and the tape-player nearby, he senses my need to record his courage. “Shelters are fine institutions, but not everyone belongs in an institution,” he chortles. “I tried going a few times but it is such a demeaning process; some staff treat you as public vermin, criminals and sickos, while, others order you about like little children or mental retards.” READ MORE ...
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/26/18633631.php
