Gimme Shelter
Wednesday 22 November @ 14:47:23 |
 by MAX SPARBER
I was living in New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina hit, just over a year ago. Like most residents of the city, I heeded Mayor Ray Nagin’s warnings to leave and went to Houston to weather the storm. I stayed at a shelter there, and the next day, with the flooding of the city, found myself suddenly homeless, along with the entire population of New Orleans. Even though my apartment in the French Quarter had not been damaged by the storm or the subsequent flooding, it would be more than a month before residents were allowed back into the city; by that time, I had returned to my home state of Minnesota. But that’s how fast it can happen—one day, with little warning, the world turns on you, and you don’t have a home. You spend the next several weeks, or months, in shelters, or sleeping on friends’ sofas, or living in your parents’ basement.
 I had been homeless before, in my early 20s. It doesn’t require a cataclysmic act of nature to put you on the streets, especially if you’re young and financially naive. I decided to move to Los Angeles at the age of 21 and simply hadn’t saved enough money for the move. I had never moved across the country before, and the cost of living in Minneapolis in 1991 was quite a bit lower than it was in Los Angeles. I had saved up enough money to get an apartment in Minneapolis, but Los Angeles was three times as expensive. I tried to find work, but, in just a few weeks, despite extreme frugality, I had worked my way through my resources.
At the time, near the famous corner of Hollywood and Vine, there was an organization called The Teen Canteen, which was set up to deal with the basic needs of homeless teenagers in Los Angeles. At that time, Los Angeles was something of a Mecca for runaway teenagers; I suspect it still is. Aside from providing free lunch every morning, bus passes, free haircuts at a nearby barber school, and some educational programs, the Teen Canteen also offered a shelter referral service. A mustached and well-muscled fellow named Mr. Rambo asked me a series of questions. Although I was in my early 20s, Rambo wanted to send me to a teen shelter, as I was young enough to qualify, 23 being the cut-off age.
He made a few phone calls and then came back to inform me that the shelter where he usually sent people was filled, but did I have a problem with homosexuals?
He explained that the Gay/Lesbian Community Services Center of Los Angeles ran their own shelter for gay and lesbian teens, who made up a disproportionately high percentage of runaways, but often had a hard time in usual shelters. They were at risk of violent attacks, and, as a certain percentage of them turned to male prostitution and some were addicted to drugs, they also were at risk for contracting AIDS. Of course, the shelter could not turn away homeless teenagers who were not gay, but, generally, they didn’t have to, as straight teenagers were steered, or steered themselves, to the other shelter. I was desperate, and didn’t mind the idea of staying at a shelter for gay and lesbian teens, and so Mr. Rambo drove me down to a little facility near Santa Monica Boulevard called the Citrus House.
The building was small and nondescript, with a high chain-link fence around it (they locked the fence at night, and strictly enforced a curfew). It was divided in half, one side of the building for young men, the other side for young women. The latter was generally pretty empty, for reasons I have never been able to ascertain, but the young men’s side of the building was sometimes so full that the staff would take advantage of the times when the women’s side was empty to house the spillover of young men there. Of course, on the rare occasion that a young woman would actually show up, all the young men had to be moved back to their side.
The shelter had several rooms per side, each featuring two or three bunk beds. There were chores, including regularly cleaning the building, and there were mandatory educational classes, including several on preventing AIDS. Youths were allowed to stay in the shelter for two months, although their stay could be extended, based on need. I stayed three months. Most stayed several days. It wasn’t too hard to get kicked out of the shelter. Regularly violating the curfew would do it. Not finding a job would do it. AIDS testing was mandatory, and, if you tested positive you were moved to a completely different shelter. I was with a young man when he got a positive test back. We walked around Hollywood for the rest of the afternoon, occasionally stopping in bars to get cocktails, which he treated me to. We didn’t talk at all. He didn’t want to talk, he just seemed to want company. That afternoon, he packed up his belongings and took a bus to a different shelter. He was obese and alcoholic, and he had a very slow-witted quality to him, and I have often wondered what happened to him from that point on. I told him to feel free to contact me, but he never did. I imagine he’s probably dead by now.
There were guards at the Citrus House. They stayed at the shelter all night, armed with stun guns. When youths were kicked out the shelter for violating the rules, the guards accompanied them to their room to collect their belongings. Once a young man got violent. He had been a bad match for the Citrus House anyway, as he was openly homophobic, and spent one evening at dinner making veiled threats toward the other youths in the shelter. For some reason, when he was kicked out, he decided to wrestle with his guard. She was a short, squat, solidly-built woman, and she pulled him outside, hit him with the stun gun, and carried his belongings out to him while he was still writhing in the street.
If we didn’t have a job, or worked late, several of us in the shelter would go to a nearby In and Out Burger, just across the street from the Klasky Csupo office, where they produced The Simpsons. We would each order a soda, but for one especially stingy young man, who would order water and squeeze complimentary lemon wedges into it, adding sugar to make free lemonade.
Several of these young men were male prostitutes, and they chatted about malingering on Santa Monica Boulevard, looking for clients. Several of them had stories about getting picked up by movie stars in limousines. I never believed them, because they were terrible liars, and you couldn’t believe most of what they said, but, in the following years, a number of the celebrities they mentioned were caught in scandals involving cross-dressers and limousines. So perhaps movie stars do prowl Santa Monica Boulevard in long black limousines, looking for teenagers they could pay for sex.
The shelter required that its residents find a job. Many didn’t and were kicked out. They required you stay off drugs and alcohol. Many didn’t and were kicked out. Mind you, they didn’t test for drugs, and there was no real problem if you wanted to get a cocktail when away from the shelter, which I often did. But the youths at the shelter frequently showed up drunk, or high, and were escorted out of the building. One young man, a redhead with enormous hearing aids, was found with a gun in his locker. He was kicked out. A young couple moved in for a few days, a boy and a girl in their mid-teens. He broke up with her and moved out, and she slashed her wrists in the shelter bathroom. Sometimes a group of teenagers would move in for a few days, and a few days later would be gone, and I had no idea where they went. Once I saw at least five young men from the shelter all piled into an old car. They pulled up to me in the street and informed me they were going to Las Vegas for the weekend. I never heard from them again.
A few people in the shelter just found other places to stay. There was a young man I became friends with who was illustrating a weekly cartoon about his experiences, and the local gay/lesbian newspaper picked it up to run it, and there were nibbles of interest from gay/lesbian newspapers in San Francisco and Sacramento. I believe he got involved with an older man and moved in with him. For three months, all these teens came and, quickly and usually without ceremony, went. I was quiet but friendly, I went to work in the afternoon, came home at night, played table tennis, did my chores, and saved money to get my own apartment. I was an oddity in the shelter. I had a college education, which was rare. I was working, which was rarer. I obeyed the rules, which was beyond rare. I didn’t talk about myself that much but listened a lot, and, since the other kids in the shelter liked to talk, they enjoyed having me as a listener. I had a counselor at the shelter, a friendly woman who kept my money in a safe for me and helped get me set up to move into a transitional living program, so that when I moved out of the Citrus House my next apartment would have affordable rent. On the day I left the program, she gave me a gift certificate to Target for $50. I used it to buy cleaning supplies and crackers. I was quite hungry. I was a vegetarian, and the only food they had in the shelter for vegetarians was some canned vegetables and macaroni and cheese. I left the shelter weighing 125 pounds. I am 5’ 11’’.
The day I moved out of the shelter I promised myself I wouldn’t be so careless again. I was done with homelessness. It had been an instructive mistake, but one I would not repeat. From that point on, I would never be homeless again. But, you know, you can be as careful as you want, and then, one day, a hurricane whips up in the Gulf Coast, a city floods, and there you are, in a shelter again. We’re all precariously perched on the edge of homelessness, just one medical emergency, financial misstep, or weather emergency away from sleeping in a strange bed, getting fed by strangers, and struggling to piece our lives back together. ||
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