Tall Monastic Guy: Re-Framing the Homelessness Crisis

When you drive through stretches of Denver and see mind numbing numbers of unhoused men and women sleeping on the street it’s not hard to see that we have a crisis on our hands. The question is what exactly do we call this crisis? Many will focus on the lack of affordable housing, others will focus on a lack of jobs or a living wage. Others will highlight the proliferation of opioids or other drugs. I’ve also heard some speak of the crisis as centered on the breakdown of the family or even plain old laziness.

After working among the chronically homeless for the past dozen years I’d like to propose that the crisis we’re experiencing in Denver and around the country must be called a crisis of presence. As I walk around the alleys, sidewalks, and bridges where unhoused friends stay, seldom if ever do I bump into social workers, street chaplains, pastors, or policy makers. If our current situation is truly a crisis, I would expect to see our most creative and compassionate citizens walking the streets seeking to know the men and women at the epicenter of it. This highly stigmatized community of street dwellers appears largely to be left to figure this crisis out for themselves.

It’s not as if the city isn’t talking about it and it’s not as if the budget doesn’t show large expenditures of resources directed toward this crisis. It’s just that the crisis won't begin to be adequately addressed until it is called by its right name, a crisis of presence.

After years of listening to stories within the unhoused community there is an overwhelming common thread in the form of trauma. Just this week, I listened to a man tell me of being sexually abused at the age of three by an uncle while his drug-addicted mother watched. I've heard so many nightmare stories of childhood trauma and family abuse, military trauma, along with the trauma that quickly accumulates from calling the streets your home. We can't have a conversation about this crisis without turning our attention to the impact of trauma.

Trauma re-wires the neurological system. It re-arranges the decision-making process to the point where the traumatized seem to speak an entirely foreign language from the perspective of those who haven’t experienced it at those levels.

For many of my friends on the street simply being indoors for too long triggers an unconscious anxiety which leads to unwelcome behaviors. Due to trauma and other forms of mental illness, I watch person after person acquire long awaited housing opportunities only to sabotage it through misdirected behaviors and decisions which eventually displace them right back to the streets.

Borrowing from the words of Father Gregory Boyle, what I seek is “a compassion that can stand in awe of what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it.” I am in awe of the strength and resilience of how those carrying heavy doses of trauma survive day to day.

In light of this re-framing of the crisis what then is ours to do?

When I ask my friend, Theresa, who has been on and off the street for over a decade this is her response, “I just need a sober friend who understands and sees me for who I am.”

This sober friend Theresa speaks of is what I mean by presence.

Sobriety is not just about freedom from the chains of substance abuse. Sobriety is being fully awake to the reality in front of us.

The invitation in front of us is to be a redeemed collection of people willing to wake up and slow down enough to see the reality of those who feel their best option is to sleep on the street. From the perspective of the powers that be, compassionate presence will likely never appear efficient or even productive, but in the long view it is presence that will allow us to see the reality and subsequent action needed for any situation.

Our streets are filled with children of God who have suffered unimaginable trauma who are waiting for us to wake up and practice the work of presence.