homeless stories page 5
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 17:13:43 -0700From: coh <[email protected]>
To: "Homeless People's Network"
how quickly his life changed when he could no longer hold a job.“I was a person until I got injured. It was nice when I was working and people would say 'nice job.' Now I have no job, nobody talks to me. ... All I want to do is get up to poverty level. That's all.”
On Feb. 3, 1990, Mr. Lapierre's ability to control his income changed. “I was at work at Continental Bakery” in Natick, he said, when he slipped and broke his leg in “so many places.”
“I was a maintenance worker ... I was making very good money -- I was making $17 an hour,” he said, explaining that he had been on the job for three months when the accident happened. Before that, he said, he operated a crane for Morgan Construction Co. in Worcester for four years. “I've had good jobs all over,” he said.
Surgical scars run up and down the leg. A recent surgical wound is still open, draining. Daily, Mr. Lapierre uses a prescription medicine to wash it when he changes the bandage.
A vinyl tarp over the picnic bench, wheelchair and a square of raked ground defines the family's living room. The bedroom is a four-person tent with a divider in the center. Mrs. Lapierre and Sarah sleep on one side of the divider and Mr. Lapierre and Joshua sleep on the other side, where the television and VCR are set up.
A bassinet where newborn miniature Doberman pinscher puppies sleep is between the women's beds. Mrs. Lapierre said she bought the adult dogs several months ago and plans to sell the puppies and adult dogs to add money to the family till.
When she bought the dogs, she and her family were living in a small, cottage-like building at 41B Bushnell Road, Sturbridge. The property owner let them live there in exchange for low rent and chores, and sometimes for free, according to the Lapierres and Jeffrey M. Chasse, a Sturbridge lawyer and member of the Worcester County Lawyers Referral Service. Mr. Chasse handled Mr. Lapierre's bankruptcy filing this month.
Like her husband, Mrs. Lapierre is on Social Security disability, according to Mr. Chasse.
The Lapierre family was evicted from the Sturbridge home July 29 in a mediated decision in Dudley District Court, after the Board of Health found the building did not meet electrical, plumbing and other building codes for occupancy.
It had been a small barn-like building that someone converted into living quarters without building permits and without working to code, according to Sturbridge Health Agent Bernard J. Lorkiewicz.
After eviction, the Lapierres spent the $550 the Board of Health gave them to put some belongings into storage, bought food and two tents, packed up their car and moved into the Webster KOA Family Kampground.
Sarah, who sat quietly and only complained when urged, said she misses the friends she made at Tantasqua Regional High School, and finds the campsite boring. Joshua said it is not that bad, except that the rain seeps through the tent onto everybody.
“That's why we all have colds,” he said as he made peanut butter sandwiches and offered to share them.
A second tent holds the family's clothing and food supply, which, until a few days ago, was a lot of cans of refried beans, a box of Cheerios, bread, peanut butter and milk. Friday, Nancy Savasta brought food from the nonprofit Community Food Distribution Program she oversees.
Buffy, Sarah's 1-year-old golden retriever, sits in her open kennel near the picnic bench, lifting her head to watch Sarah whenever she moves. Buffy is one of the reasons the family has stopped looking at subsidized housing as an alternative to tent living.
Generally, local housing authorities overseeing state-subsidized housing disallow pets except by agreement with landlords. And the Lapierres said they could not find state-subsidized housing where pets are allowed.
Mr. Lorkiewicz said he gave the Lapierres leads on housing. But Mr. Lapierre said none of the prospects would allow pets.
According to Mrs. Lapierre, getting rid of Buffy is not an option. She said the dog has comforted Sarah though some rough times, and it would be emotionally traumatic for Sarah to give her up.
Even without Buffy, the Lapierres would be hard-pressed to find state-subsidized housing. Waiting lists are long. The state Department of Housing and Community Development provides rental assistance for public housing and provides Section 8 housing vouchers for housing in privately owned rental properties.
In Webster, the public housing is filled, with a waiting time of about two years; and the waiting time for the Section 8 housing list is five to 10 years, according to Tracie L. Dresser, leasing and housing occupancy manager for the Webster Housing Authority.
The town has 35 Section 8 vouchers. Last year, when the Webster Housing Authority opened the waiting list, 1,200 people applied, Ms. Dresser said, adding that the situation is similar all over the state.
Subsidized housing is not the Lapierres' first choice. Mr. Lapierre wants to own a home. He was hoping to someday buy land and a house, but said he is considering a $5,900 mobile home, which he would park at the KOA Family Kampground year-round on a rented camp site.
Even that home is a longshot for the family, since it has been unable to find a bank that will lend it the money because of its low income, lack of collateral, and recent bankruptcy filing.
Mrs. Lapierre is holding out hope, saying she could get half the cost of the mobile home by selling all the miniature Doberman pinschers, and would pay the rest in monthly installments. The family's combined monthly income is $1,158 -- $464 from Mrs. Lapierre's disability check and $694 from Mr. Lapierre's disability check, according to bank records.
“That's it. We don't see a penny more,” Mr. Lapierre said last week.Mrs. Lapierre said she is disabled from cerebral palsy and a history of emotional stability problems that sometimes land her in hospitals.
Mr. Chasse said he has never seen a family in such a dire financial condition with so few options. He said he has known the Lapierres for about a year, and that even in winter Mr. Lapierre wore cut-off pants because he could not find pants to fit over his injured leg.
“He's a very bright man, very forthcoming. He has such physical problems. They've just transcended his whole life,” Mr. Chasse said.
Describing the Lapierre children as courteous, Mr. Chasse said he feels bad that they do not have the same advantages as other children, such as playing Little League.
Mrs. Lapierre said she lies awake crying because she cannot give her children a childhood. When Joshua earned money by doing chores at a neighbor's campsite, he offered to give the money to his parents. But Mrs. Lapierre said she insisted he spend it for a toy.
“Be a child,” she told him.
Sarah has been baby-sitting, and her parents want her to save for back-to-school clothes and supplies. But, seeing her father's broken sandals, she bought him new ones last week.
Even without the things she needs, Sarah is looking forward to going to school. She said she enjoys classwork and reading and hopes to attend Bartlett High School.
Joshua said he also is ready to go to Bartlett High School when school reopens next Wednesday.
By then, Mr. Chasse is hoping the children will be someplace warm.
“I shudder to think what will happen to them in the winter,” he said. Michael Finamore, owner of the Webster KOA Family Kampground, said he does not allow children to stay in tents after Labor Day because he believes the cold is unhealthy for them.
According to Philip C. Hailer, director of communications for the state Department of Communities and Development, there are few places people with low incomes can find subsidized housing in Massachusetts. In this state, he said, high housing costs have exacerbated the need for state- and federally-funded housing.
“Right now in the Worcester County area we have over 5,500 waiting for housing,” he said, adding that most of the applicants are families.
Mrs. Lapierre said she had considered asking the state Department of Social Services to take her children until she finds housing, but her children said they want to be home, and home is where their parents are.--------------------------------------------------------
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Morgan <[email protected]>
Morgan W. Brown
Montpelier Vermont USA
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This is from an e-mail sent to me by my friend Harmony. Her testimony in it tells some of their story. I want you to understand that “homelessness” has different faces to it, that it is different things each time. My hope is that they will find their plot of land and someday soon I can get to visit them, and my sister, in Norway!
Joe,
Am forwarding this to you because I am hoping it will be of interest. I can
"see" your being able to share your experiences on the Digital Divide discussion list. Recently our "pal" Bush drastically cut funds to programs that help those on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide. This included cutting funds to libraries, etc. All kinds of programs- just axed and done to death.
I have shared once or twice on the digital divide list, and seem to be the lone person coming from a homeless/formerly homeless place. Quite often when I've wanted to share, I feel intimidated beforehand by all the credentials, degrees, and social positions of the others on the list. Although no one has been rude or discourteous, very few people have responded to my posts, leaving me feeling rather "invisible and unheard".
I want to share with these people how I had a home on the Internet before I regained a home in real life. I want to share how things were made possible because I could use free email on the free internet computer at the library to communicate with people (as opposed to money for a payphone, or postage for a letter). I want to share with them how wonderful it felt to exchange emails with a homeless person in Japan and to know that, for once, we weren't all alone in social isolation.
I think I will always have a vivid image of my husband Bjorn-Tore as he worked on our website on our computer in our VW van. He also taught himself Java scripting in the van. There we were, parked beside an abandoned supermarket, and getting power for our computer by being plugged into its outdoor electrical socket. (that socket was open for anyone's use- it certainly didn't have a lock on it)
That we were able to make it back into a home I credit in large part to being able to access the Internet. Certainly not ALL the credit, but an incredible amount.
At any rate, what follows after is for your consideration; odds are you have
insights that are well worth sharing.
(((love you)))) ((((hugs))))
Harmony****** Forwarded Message Follows *******
Kind of separate but not equal… you know.
The digital divide has not been bridged. Perhaps those who are describing it are not of the culture, the geography, the leadership of those who truly suffer from the inequality of the digital divide. Sometimes people who only know it as research have missed the point. The perspective makes a difference. The march to define, utilize, make common practice of the use of technology is slowly beginning. Reporters could tell this story if they wished. It is easy to document.
This is more important than being served food at a lunch counter.
Think INFORMATION COUNTER, information resources.. and economic resources. Think the future. Think knowledge resources. Benton's analysis of the data reveals that the gaps in technology access among citizens of different educational, income, racial and geographic backgrounds are not abating. According to "A Nation Online's" own numbers, only one in four of America's poorest households were online in 2001 compared with eight in ten homes earning over $75,000 per year. Even more striking is the fact that this gap expanded dramatically between 1997 and 2001.
There are a lot of people without real experience trying to define the digital divide. I bet they understand digital apartheid. You can drive around most cities and check out the resources in a school by the community. That speaks volumes.
Digital Divide... Lack of Inclusion?
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA)(which no longer exists and why?) described the effect as "the concentration of poverty and the deconcentration of opportunity."
Allen Hammond, a lawyer at New York Law School, and Larry Irving, former head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, used the term to characterize the difference between those who owned computers and were online and various classes of Americans, including women, Blacks, American Indians , Hispanics, the disabled, rural and migrant, geographically distant low-income Americans, who were not.
A business man says… (Sorry everybody, my copy of Word 2000 went nuts back there! Joe!) Mario Morino of the Morino Institute states , "The digital divide is economic and educational gaps that have existed in this country long before the microchip and the Internet were invented."
There was a meeting at the Leadership Council on Civil Rights yesterday
The Leadership Council
1629 K Street, NW Suite 1010
Washington DC 20006
Phone 202-466-3435
We were Republicans and Democrats, mothers and fathers, students and teachers, foundations, associations and projects, who really work in the areas of digital divide. We were online partners meeting for the first time in some cases.
We want to reframe the problem, suggest that perhaps there is a different perspective, and create a better knowledge of what's going on. You may be able to help us. We want to restart this conversation in order to better define the reality of the use of technology in the USA.
The idea was to examine the background information on the Technology Opportunities Program (Tops) and the Community Technology Centers (CTC)
In addition the latest digital divide report released by the US Dept of Commerce, A Nation online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, paints an overly optimistic picture of Americans access to and use of information technology. While the data clearly shows that there are increasing numbers of Americans connected to the Internet, broadband services and computers, the data does not accurately capture another more disturbing reality.
The real digital divide is about far more than just the gap between the technology "haves" and " have-nots". Rather, at its core the divide is about an information knowledge gap between the "information literate", and the "information illiterate".
With the proliferation of information technology throughout nearly every aspect of our society, the impact of this knowledge gap on our social, economic, and political health is greater than ever before. As more and more interactions and transactions occur using information technology -from e commerce to e-government- we are at risk of alienating a large part of American not only from a robust world of information opportunities, goods and services, but from the" political marketplace " as well.
One need only compare schools, hospitals, or small businesses in low-income neighborhoods and more wealthy neighborhoods to see first hand how the divide between the information literate and the information illiterate continues to grow. There is no more urgent task facing this Administration than ensuring all Americans share in the information revolution that is transforming the nation's economic, political, social, and cultural life.www.civilrights.org (contact them to see how you can help.)
Bonnie Bracey
[email protected]
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