The Difference Between Him and Me

They were layering up at the homeless shelter in Ottawa as they headed out the door Monday morning. Summer is over. The rules say shelter residents must leave by nine but most are gone by the time nine rolls around. First to go was the woman who works as a maid at one of our local hotels. She had brought her bike inside for safe keeping. I thought of the hotel up by Route 80 where she was heading, the shelter’s location downtown, and the long way up our big river bluff that separates them. I don’t ride my bike up that big hill.

“You going to be warm enough?” I asked as she pulled on her stocking hat and gloves.

“After I start pedaling hard I sort of make my own heat,” she said. “Unless there’s a lot of wind, then I stay cold the whole way.”

She was, I’d guess, about forty. Forty, living in a homeless shelter, working as a maid.

“Monday’s our biggest day, after the weekend. I don’t get as many hours during the week cause not as many rooms get used. But Sunday morning and Monday are usually big.”

She seemed to relish the prospect of working a long day. More hours mean more money. I held the door as she picked up her bike and walked out.

A woman on the street recently complained to me that she’d been asked to leave the homeless shelter because she was on Social Security Disability and made too much money. People still talk to me as if I’m working in social services and have some say over how people in the local community are helped. It makes me smile. It’s all part of my shift to retirement, which equates to unemployment, which takes me out of influential spheres. I’m glad to be gone.

“Look into that will you Dave?” she said.

I don’t have to look into it. The shelter is always available to people on an emergency basis, but a long term stay includes an assessment of each person’s situation. A person on social security disability typically has the means to buy their own shelter. If they do not or cannot manage that resource, there are agencies to help them, like Bridges Senior Center, or shelter staff. But a person with means, even limited means, who uses the shelter as a long term resource takes a bed away from a person for whom this country provides no resources. That’s why there are few senior citizens in the shelter.

I try to imagine waking up in one of the bunk beds, stumbling my way on stiff joints across the dorm area, basically a big open room for the men, into a group bathroom, and then making my way to the counter for coffee and breakfast. It would be like waking up in a public place-an airport, a bus station-with others seeing you at your worst, your groggiest, your sloppiest. Wait, it is a public place. It’s the total lack of privacy that I think would be the hardest thing to endure in a shelter. Always on display.

I worked the seven to nine shift. After eight I took a walk back towards the washing machines to see if everyone was out of bed. The women have a smaller enclosed space that I avoid. A few men were still sleeping, one curled against the wall in a lower bunk with his back towards me. Another lay on his back on a top bunk, snoring softly, his hair a mess, his beard stubbly.

“It’s going on nine fellas.”

The guy’s snoring stopped. I couldn’t tell if the guy facing the wall heard me or not.

To their credit the PADS organization, which has done a good job raising funds with a second hand store, is expanding the Ottawa shelter by adding three family rooms where parents with young children can live privately. They worked out an arrangement with the city to expand their lease and occupy an unused adjoining space. Through volunteer labor and a minimum of professional paid help, electricians mostly and the heating and air conditioning folks, they are close to completing those rooms. I helped with the demolition right after I retired. Now new interior walls are ready for drywall. I always love seeing an empty space refigured, newly imagined, and put to use. They believe that old part of the building was once a stable. It’s solid. They raised the floor, put in a new exit, closed off an old door, created a play area for kids. I can’t wait to see families there, living more like families were intended to live rather than in a communal dormitory space.

The guys I woke up had made their way to the tables. They sat there, slouched over coffee cups, saying little. I sat with them. “Good Morning America”, the TV show with the bouncy well dressed actors posing as journalists, played in the background. Little of the on air discussion related to the morning that lay before the Americans in Ottawa’s homeless shelter. They ignored it.

Finally the previously snoring guy spoke to the now sitting lower bunk man.

“What you got going today Carl?”

“I got an appointment at the clinic at 2:00, and other than that not a god damned thing.”

I chuckled to myself. Being retired and being homeless are not so different. That man’s schedule sounded identical to mine. The difference between him and me is that I have a home, privacy, and means. He does not. In America that’s just the way it goes.