helping himself to help others
Vietnam veteran learns to fight his addiction
By JASON SINGER
singer@sanduskyregister.com
SANDUSKY
Editor’s Note:
Hunger gnaws. Pain is acute. Shame is seen. An economic recession equals a homeless population less hidden and looking more like a cross-section of us. The Homeless but Hopeful project is a yearlong series of stories about the American Dream lost. It documents the lives of local homeless people struggling to overcome the past and claw their way toward a better future.
They found him 30 feet from the motorcycle, legs mangled, neck broken.
His shattered pelvis left his legs contorted like a toy figurine. His tattered body reeked of blood and alcohol.
According to the police investigation, Jim McCowan approached the S-curve on Ohio 269, heading north from Bellevue to Castalia, at nearly 100 mph.
Drunk and disoriented, McCowan missed the turn and launched himself off the road. He plummeted 15 feet into the field below.
The impact of the crash propelled his girlfriend and future wife, Ruth, into a nearby telephone pole. She snapped her spine, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.
The impact catapulted McCowan 30 feet into a dirt pile. The paramedics found him beside the pile, a motionless, mangled heap.
Hours later, at the University of Toledo Medical Center, his blood alcohol content registered 0.287 percent.
McCowan remembers little about that night, except what he calls an “out-of-body experience.”
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“I remember looking down at my body,” he says. “I could see two people near me, a man and woman, I was looking at my body, but I was an observer.
“I killed us both. We were dead at the scene. I killed us. It’s a miracle we are somehow still here and able to talk about it. I guess God has a different plan for us.”
Student and soldier
Eight years later, in the basement of the Sandusky Library, in an isolated study room in a faroff corner, McCowan, 57, hovers above his black MacBook laptop.
His long, gray hair, tattoos and black BMF Racing T-shirt with a war eagle look more like they belong at a bar or racetrack.
But McCowan fervently scribbles notes about humanism, drive theories and other psychological jargon onto two yellow notepads. He’ll study today for at least another three hours.
As far as homelessness goes, McCowan is an anomaly.
In some ways he fits the stereotype: He’s a Vietnam veteran whose battles with drug and alcohol addictions left him on the streets.
Those addictions took him to rock bottom that warm, spring night in 2001 when his motorcycle hurtled into a field.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, veterans comprise a disproportionate number of homeless Americans. They make up 23 percent of the homeless community, yet only account for 13 percent of the general population.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of homeless people struggle with substance abuse addiction.
Despite being a veteran and addict, McGowan also falls into a rare category: A homeless man pursuing a college degree.
McCowan attends Argosy University, one of the nation’s largest online colleges, and is working toward a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Martha Burt, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington D.C., which studies homelessness, said statistics don’t exist on homeless college students because nobody considers them a “priority.”
But Michael Stoops, executive director for the National Coalition for Homelessness, says it’s a growing community because of the recession, and the population is larger than some experts think.
Stoops said many homeless students are reluctant to reveal their situations because of the stigma attached to homelessness.
“Being public about being homeless makes people immediately ask, ‘Why are they homeless?’” Stoops said.
In McCowan’s case, his veteran status and addictions are linked.
McCowan enlisted in the army at 17 and shipped out to Vietnam at 18. He first tried heroin while on a two-year tour of duty there, where he served as a helicopter crew chief. The memories of war haunt him.
“Let’s just say it was an experience,” he says. It’s the only subject he seems reluctant to speak about.
“I came home at 20 years old, and I wasn’t even old enough to drink in a bar,” he says. “My drug use progressed though. I got out in ’72, and it was like the ’60s kept on going.”
McCowan’s been sober for five months now. After earning his psychology degree, he wants to be a substance-abuse counselor.
A deeply spiritual man, McCowan says that’s his calling.
“I want to help people,” he said. “I think some counselors — and this is not a knock on them — haven’t ever gone through what I’ve gone through or what other addicts go through.
“And being able to talk to a person with like experiences, maybe you’ll be more comfortable and more likely to open up with someone like that. …It’s different.”
From welder to wanderer
McCowan, a Bellevue native, spent most of his life as a welder and iron worker. He built petroleum tanks, water tanks, jail cells and buildings.
For 16 years, he lived in Kentucky, much of the time working for Applied Engineering, a Georgia-based company that built petroleum tanks.
He says he made as much as $100 per hour at some jobs.
“Those jobs are a thing of the past though,” he said.
After the crash, McCowan could no longer carry heavy objects or do the manual labor required in some manufacturing jobs. During the crash, he broke the C1, C2 and C3 vertebrae in his neck. Doctors call that injury the “Hangman’s Break,” because it’s the same three vertebrae broken when someone is hanged.
Most who suffer that injury never recover.
“ThedoctorssaidIshouldeither be dead or a vegetable,” McCowan recalled. “I guess God had another plan for me.”
In August 2001, three months after the wreck, while he and Ruth rehabilitated at St. Francis Health Care Center in Green Springs, they married in the facility’s chapel.
To this day, they’re the only patients to ever do that.
As a wedding gift, the nuns at the facility gave Jim and Ruth a painted cross depicting the scene at the time of Jesus’ death.
McCowan keeps it in his bedroom at the homeless shelter.
“It reminds me that God loves me,” he said. “He sacrificed himself for me. He didn’t abandon me. I abandoned him.”
In 2003, after his mother, mother-in-law, brother and two other relatives died in a six-month span, McCowan struggled with his faith and slipped from sobriety back into addiction.
He didn’t understand why an addict like himself could survive a motorcycle crash while others died around him.
“I had a pity party for myself,” McCowan said.
This summer his wife said enough is enough. She booted him out of their house.
“My wife kicking me out actually saved my life,” McCowan said. “At first, I didn’t see it that way. I was angry at her. But now I see it was necessaryformetogetmylifeback in order. She’s a great woman. I’m truly, truly grateful to know her and love her.”
Seeking redemption
McCowan doesn’t own many possessions.
The little color in his small, 12-foot-by-12-foot room at the homeless shelter comes from the pale yellow walls and faded floral bedsheets.
There are no photographs, no posters and little furniture or decoration.
Near the entrance, however, sits a painting of an evergreen forest situated on rolling hills. Above the trees, a poem, titled “Don’t Quit,” brings a little sunshine to the painting’s cloudy sky.
The poem urges its readers to not give up in the face of adversity. Jim’s wife gave him the painting and poem as a reward last month for reaching four months of sobriety.
The poem deeply resonates with Jim.
“I know some days will be harder than others,” he says. “But it reminds (you) that if you want something, and you believe it, you can achieve it. It just has to do with your will, and believing in the goal and believing in yourself.”
Reggie Alexander, Jim’s sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous, said Jim’s on the right track to recovery.
Alexander, also formerly homeless, has been sober for 10 years.
“It’s one step at a time but it can be done. I’m proof positive of that fact,” said Alexander, a soft spoken black man dressed in a wool cap and wool sweater. “He’s putting some work in. He’s trying to do what’s right, as opposed to doing what’s wrong, which can be so easy. He’s sincere about it.”
Working at it
Jim’s sources of strength aren’t limited to 12-step programs and God.
Inked on his left forearm is a tattoo of a phoenix, the ancient mythicalfirebirdwithgold,purple, blue and green plumage.
The word “recovery” is tattooed into Jim’s arm between the phoenix’s outstretched wings.
According to legend, the phoenix rose from its own ashes with a renewed sense of life and vigor. Now Jim’s trying to do the same.
He attends AA meetings daily, sometimes more often, and he’s on pace to graduate college next year. He calls or visits his wife often, trying to heal the wounds he caused.
Unlike the phoenix’s tears, which in mythology instantly cure suffering and illness, Jim knows redemption on Earth takes work. But he’s taking steps toward recoveryandhopestorisefromthe ashes, like the phoenix, stronger than ever.
“You have to do the things to take care of yourself,” he said. “Prayer, hard work. But if you do that, things will get better. That’s what I’m working on every day: Getting a little better.”
Homeless numbers rising, burdens shelters
By JASON SINGER
singer@sanduskyregister.com
SANDUSKY
For three weeks, Jim McCowan called the Volunteers of America Crossroads Homeless Shelter on Superior Street every day.
And day after day, the shelter told McCowan to call back tomorrow.
“They couldn’t take me,” he said. “They just didn’t have space.”
So McCowan stayed with one friend one night, and another friend the next night.
Somenights,toavoidbecoming a burden, he slept on the banks of the Bellevue reservoir. McCowan wasn’t the only one.
This summer, along the reservoir’s high, dirt walls, scores of homeless people pitched tents and brought sleeping bags to reluctantly camp beside the waters of the secluded basin.
Sue Reamsnyder, president and chief executive officer for the Volunteers of America of Northwest Ohio, said there’s simply not enoughshelterspaceforeveryone who needs it.
“When the temperatures get reallow,orthere’sbadweather,we put extra mats on the floor to hold more people,” Reamsnyder said. “But even then, we were pretty much full all winter last year.”
Part of the problem, some residents and officials said, is that Crossroads is the only homeless shelter in the immediate area.
Even with its 76 beds — and 10 additional mattresses added to the floor during winter — the shelter can’tmeetthedemandsofthearea, which has at least several hundreds of homeless people.
But Reamsnyder said another shelter isn’t necessarily the answer. Shelters are expensive. They require 24 hours staffing, and in this economy, that may not be feasible. So part of the solution is to prevent potentially stable residents from becoming homeless in the first place.
Reamsnyder said Crossroads is beginning a Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing program soon that will do just that.
“Sometimes when folks come into the shelter they have other issues,likenotcomplyingwiththeir medication or issues with alcohol or drug abuse, or other instabilities that they need to work out,” Reamsnyder said.
“But there are some folks who would be pretty stable if they had housing.”
The program will pair those potentially stable candidates with local landlords to find affordable housing. It will also provide rent assistance for those who need it.
For now, however, some of the local homeless are left to fend for themselves.
Cedric Nicks lives in an abandoned home in the west-central section of the city.
On a chilly November morning, as sleet pounded the outside pavement, Nicks’ breath is visible in the low, early-morning sunlight.
If Nicks couldn’t smell the mold in the walls, he saw its effects on the floorboards.
Every fourth or fifth floorboard had been rotted out, showing a 15-foot drop to the home’s cement basement floor. The surface on which he sleeps appears to be on the verge of collapsing.
Nicks throws on an extra sweatshirt — a green hoodie with faded white letters that spell “Ohio.”
“I’vegoneoverthereafewtimes,” Nicks said, referring to the homeless shelter. “But it’s been full each time I’ve dropped by.”
Nicks doesn’t have a phone, so he can’t call Crossroads on a daily basis to ask about openings like McCowan did.
But Nicks said he’s doubtful he’ll landabedanytimesoonbecauseof thelargedemandfacingtheshelter, and the likelihood that demand will increase with the economic woes facing the area.
As he spoke, Nicks rubbed his hands together for warmth.
The pinkie finger on his right hand is bent at a 45-degree angle from what looks like a broken bone.
“I’ll just have to drop by sometime and get lucky, I guess,” Nicks said. “Hopefully, I will get lucky, or I’ll find a building to survive the winter.”
SanduskyRegister.com Front Article
Homeless but Hopeful: The struggle to find work
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 11:36 AM EST
SANDUSKY
She sits in the parking lot of Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Through the slits of the church’s 9-foot-high picket fence, she can see the Volunteers of America Crossroads Homeless Shelter.
She’s close enough to see the group of homeless men smoking cigarettes. She’s close enough to hear their voices as they shoot the breeze.
But on this early October night, the shelter has no space for her.
So Beth Brown, 52, will sleep several hundred feet from Crossroads in her 1998 gray Plymouth Neon with 113,000 miles. Isolated gray strands, as well as the faint wrinkles on her forehead, hint at her age.
Earlier that day, unable to pay her rent and fearing eviction, Brown packed that car with all her clothing and a few cherished possessions.
A longtime factory worker who spent her life firmly planted in the middle class, Brown suddenly finds herself with no bed on which to sleep. As she sits in the car, she fears what the future holds for her, what she will do if she can’t find a bed.
“I never thought I’d be homeless,” she says. “If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody.”
A victim of the recession
Two months later, on a frostbitten December day, Brown dresses in gray sweatpants, worn Nike sneakers, a plain black sweatshirt and an off-white fleece jacket.
On the sleeves and at the bottom of the jacket, sketches of black, bare trees creep up her arms. The jacket doesn’t provide enough insulation, and Brown shivers when a cold wind cuts through it.
Reserved but thoughtful, Brown, standing in the Crossroads parking lot, stares across Superior Street into the dreary distance. Feelings of hurt and frustration smolder like the fire at the tip of her cigarette.
She brushes a light brown lock of hair behind her ear. It’s a nervous habit. After a long pause, Brown gestures to the Crossroads entrance sign — she’s lived there eight weeks now.
A philosophical person, she explains the shelter’s appropriate name.
“That’s where we are in our lives: At a crossroads,” she says of the shelter’s residents. “We’re good people, but we’ve hit a bump in the road. And now things can get better or worse. We have to help each other, and if we do, I have faith in God things will get better.”
Just one year ago, this situation seemed unimaginable.
Between January 2000 and September 2009, Ohio lost 412,000 manufacturing jobs, more than any other state in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Auto plants closed and factories shuttered, displacing workers who knew no other life.
Despite the layoffs, however, Brown endured.
“I could always find work,” she says.
A stocky, bespectacled woman with pink cheeks and a warm smile, Brown sometimes persevered even when her factories didn’t.
Brown worked 11 years at Norstat before it closed its doors earlier this decade. She spent three years at
Industrial Powder Coating before it suffered a similar fate.
In 2005, she took a job at Monroeville Industrial Moldings (MIM), a Norwalk-based plastics plant.
The factory, which specializes in highway safety equipment, produces safety blocks that stabilize highway guardrails.
For four years, Brown manned MIM’s assembly lines, trimming the plastic blocks, cooling them in water and packing them.
“I worked 18-hour days sometimes,” she says. “I’d work a 12-hour shift until 11 p.m. and come back at 5 a.m. I wasn’t a slacker. I did whatever they asked.”
Nonetheless, in January, the factory laid Brown off. She filed for unemployment and registered with three temp agencies in the area, hoping to secure another job.
Day after day, the news reported more jobs lost. The temp agencies didn’t call. Her savings dwindled.
After her unemployment expired, Brown could no longer pay rent. In October, fearing an eviction would permanently stain her credit score, she voluntarily packed up and left.
A friend from work told her about Crossroads, which she visited that early October night.
“I was scared,” she admits. “I was really scared. I didn’t know what would happen next.”
A Giving Heart
Brown might best be described as simple and sweet.
Quiet but friendly, street smart if not book smart, she believes in putting others’ needs ahead of hers.
In fact, her world view mandates it.
“I think we’re basically here to love and believe in God and to help each other out,” she says.
She shuttles shelter residents back and forth from their jobs. In between rides, she takes another resident shopping.
Her car and dependability, as well as her easy-going nature make her popular at the shelter.
“She’s a real nice woman,” says Jim McCowan, a fellow Crossroads resident. “She’s got a good heart.”
Brown says the outside world perceives the homeless as the dregs of society.
But in actuality, she says, a snapshot of Crossroads’ population closely resemble a cross-section of everyday America.
“We’re normal people,” she says. “We’ve just hit some tough times.”
Brown says everybody at the shelter treats her well, so it’s easy to return the favor.
“I’m so, so grateful for everything they’ve done,” she says of the employees, before returning her focus to the residents. “I want to see everyone here get back on their feet, and I’ll help anyway I can.”
Brown still hopes to get a job and return to Norwalk. She was born in that city, and loves it dearly.
But with no family to turn to for help — she’s divorced, and her parents died in 2003 and 2004 — she needs to land a job before she can afford an apartment.
She’s wants manufacturing work, but few factories, if any, are hiring.
“It’s all I’ve known,” she says of factory labor, fretting that no job will open up. “It’s all I’ve done.”
Unfortunately for Brown, the experts don’t forecast a boom in local manufacturing jobs anytime soon.
Brian Coughlin, executive director of the Erie County Economic Development Corp., said it’s unlikely automotive plants and other heavy manufacturing jobs in the area will bring back the thousands of lost jobs.
“I’m talking to people, business owners, and I ask, ‘How are you making it?’ and they usually say, ‘We did some cost-cutting and layoffs,’” Coughlin said. “And then I ask them, ‘Are you going to hire those people back?’ And the answer is generally, ‘No.’ So my non-statistical, up-close-and-personal survey is that a lot of the lost jobs are lost.”
Coughlin said some light manufacturing jobs, which depend on water, may come to Great Lakes communities such as Erie County.
“You’ve probably heard people say, “Water is the new oil,’” Coughlin added. “That’s what we’re banking on.”
When those jobs might arrive, and whether laid-off workers like Brown will have the training to acquire them, is anyone’s guess.
In the meantime, Brown says she will continue to pray, apply with temp services and help as many other people as she can.
Lessons learned
In the little free time she has, Brown says she likes to watch movies, the TV show “Two and a Half Men,” and read romance novels.
She especially likes popular writer V.C. Andrews.
Asked what appeals to her about those novels, she flashes a small smile.
“Because everyone lives happily ever after,” Brown says.
She hopes her life will have a similar ending.
Although she tears up when discussing the downturn her life took, she’s trying to make the best of the situation.
She recently earned her GED, which she hopes will make her more employable.
As part of the process, she studied geometry, photosynthesis and American history — the class she failed in high school, which led to her dropping out.
“It’s always something I wanted to do,” she says about earning the degree. “It made me feel good about myself.”
She says she hopes by telling her story, people will place greater value on their comforts and possessions.
Her tribulations, she says, taught her you can quickly lose what you’ve spent years building.
“Appreciate what you have, because you don’t know when it’ll be gone,” she says, as her honey-brown eyes well with unshed tears. “It’s true. It’s really true.”
Jeremiah Jobe works toward new, better life
By JASON SINGER | Monday, August 24, 2009 1:16 AM EDT
Jerimiah Jobe sits at his computer and finishes up his on-line college coursework at Crossroads homeless shelter.
Hunger gnaws. Pain is acute. Shame is seen.
An economic recession equals a homeless population less hidden and looking more like a cross-section of us.
The Homeless but Hopeful project is a yearlong series of stories about the American Dream lost. It documents the lives of local homeless people struggling to overcome the past and claw their way toward a better future.
SANDUSKY
Imagine a college student whose dorm is the local homeless shelter, whose cafeteria is the local soup kitchen and who writes term papers from Sandusky's streets.
Meet Jeremiah Jobe.
Jobe, 24, is pursuing an online college degree in business, with a focus on energy initiatives. He carries around a Toshiba laptop. He reads Scientific American religiously. He loves satirical author Douglas Adams.
But he spends his nights at Crossroads Homeless Shelter, with no money, no car, unpaid debts and an uncertain future.
Jobe takes full responsibility for his situation.
"Being homeless is my own fault," he says. "I've made a series of not-so-great decisions. I think that's the story for most homeless people: A series of not-so-great decisions."
According to the Urban Institute in WashingtonD.C., about 840,000 homeless, or 28 percent of the total homeless population, have received some education beyond high school.
But Martha Burt, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, said Jobe's situation of pursuing higher education while homeless is unusual.
She said homeless college students used to be almost non-existent, but the recession has made it difficult for college students to find jobs.
Combine that with their parents' financial struggles, and homelessness in college students has become a small phenomenon.
Burt says statistics on homeless college students don't exist, because no one thinks they're worthy of study, but it's undoubtedly a growing population.
"There is a very low awareness level amongst colleges," says Barbara Duffield, executive director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "Once state and federal responsibility to homeless kids stops--at the end of high school--it's as if they cease to exist. They fall off the map.
"People have this 'you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps' myth about college. There is a real gap between the myth and the reality for those who are trying to overcome poverty by getting an education."
Originally from Norwalk, Jobe and his family moved to small-town Iowa when he was a teenager.
Bright but immature, he earned a reputation in Audobon, Iowa -- population 2,300 -- as rebellious and clownish.
"I was 20, but I had the mind of a 15-year-old," Jobe says.
Jobe was never arrested as a juvenile, but at age 20, police caught him stealing change from unlocked cars on the street.
According to AudobonCounty court records, he was charged with more than a dozen counts of petty theft, but pleaded guilty to five counts of burglary and one count of theft and spent three years in prison.
Jobe said his reputation as a young troublemaker -- in a town where everyone knows everyone -- led to the harsh penalty.
"Three years in prison for $3," he said quietly, his eyes peering at the ground. "I guess it probably straightened me out."
Jobe thought he'd get a fresh start once released from prison. But he found out people don't forgive and forget so easily.
"You think you paid your debt to society by serving your prison time," said Jobe, who struggled to find a job upon his release. "It doesn't work like that."
Although his mother and stepfather have a thriving waste-hauling business, Jobe doesn't go home. He feels he brings shame to his family, especially considering the size of the town.
"I've burned bridges ..." he says, trailing off. "I don't like to pry into their lives. They've got a nice life."
In terms of the future, all Jobe wants to do is build solar panels. He talks about solar panels and their inverters and photovoltaic arrays like they're yesterday's baseball game.
Whenever the subject arises, his blue eyes twinkle with excitement, and that passion is only occasionally hidden by strands of shaggy blonde hair drooping down over his eyes.
Jobe says he's already put together a small business plan to build solar panels, and thinks the country must focus on sustainability.
"Green initiatives are America's future," he says. "I was saying that even back during the Bush administration. We've got to be progressive."
But the odds of turning around his life are against him. More than 40 percent of men released from prison today return within three years, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Furthermore, the University of Phoenix hasn't told him whether he qualified for financial aid.
"They started me in classes before the paperwork had even been processed," he says. "So there's a real chance I could end up owing them $2,000."
He has other financial problems, too. His license is suspended until he can pay back a $700 "no insurance" ticket in Iowa. He says he was driving a friend's car and didn't know where the insurance was.
Although he brought the insurance to the clerk of courts the next day as the police officer instructed, he missed his court date thinking the matter was settled. The ticket is still outstanding.
Adding to his troubles, he may not have a place to sleep by mid-September.
Jobe is living in the emergency shelter wing of Crossroads, which has a maximum stay of 90 days.
But with almost eight weeks of his stay elapsed, time is running out to plan his next move.
He hopes to get into the shelter's transient housing program -- which guarantees a room for two years -- but Sondra Anderson, the director of homeless services, said Jobe must show progress in his job search and self-determination to earn entry into that program.
"It's a step toward permanent housing, so we have to see those things," she said. The two have agreed to sit down and discuss his situation in the coming weeks.
Jobe admits he doesn't have a plan if the 90 days elapse and he can't get a room. Nonetheless, he's resolute he will get back on his feet, find a job and own his solar panel business one day.
"I'm going to do it," he said. "I'm not going to stop until I succeed."
Homeless in Sandusky: Don Dezanett does what he has to do
By JASON SINGER | Sunday, August 23, 2009 11:42 PM EDT
An economic recession equals a homeless population less hidden and looking more like a cross- section of us.
The Homeless but Hopeful project is a yearlong series of stories about the American Dream lost. It documents the lives of local homeless people struggling to overcome the past and claw their way toward a better future.
SANDUSKY
They call him "Dumpster Don."
On a cool summer morning behind a store on Venice Road, Don Dezanett rummages through a dumpster overflowing with trash bags, cardboard boxes, books and rotting food.
He finds jeans stained with spoiled milk, sweat and cheap beer, and checks if they fit.
At 60 years and a frail 150 pounds, the size 33 jeans are a little big. But Don throws them into his shopping cart anyway.
Clothes, food, backpacks and materials for his camp are all treasures pulled from dumpsters.
"I go over to Cedar Point. Those tourists throw everything away. Fishing equipment, cameras, you name it, they'll throw it away. ... I like the summer because if they have a case of beer, they'll drink two beers out of it, they leave the whole cooler, ice, beer," Don says with a laugh and smile that's missing some teeth. "I'm like, 'All right, ice it down for me! Thanks guys!'"
Based on a headcount conducted last fall for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Sandusky has 153 of the estimated 3 million homeless Americans.
Sondra Anderson, director of homeless services at Crossroads Homeless Shelter, said headcounts produce low estimates, so Sandusky's actual number probably exceeds 200.
Chronically homeless
The government counts Don Dezanett among the "chronically homeless." Officials define it as an individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for more than a year, or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.
Don's disabling condition is severe inflammatory arthritis. At night, his ankles swell to the size of billiard balls. He's been homeless for eight years and is extremely resourceful.
For more than three years now, "Dumpster Don" has called Sandusky home and considers the woods off of Venice Road his domain.
He sleeps in a tent someone discarded long ago. He makes money collecting cans or selling scrap he finds in dumpsters.
With other scrap, he built a homemade shower, hoisting a bucket of hot water up into the trees using a makeshift pulley, and letting it slowly pour down over himself.
"You learn a lot being a Boy Scout and the son of a police chief," he says. "God bless my daddy's soul. He taught me a lot."
He hasn't held a job since 2001. To Don, homelessness is a lifestyle.
He is one of 123,000 people -- about 4 percent of the entire homeless population in the United States -- who fall into the "chronically homeless" category.
For years, Don said he wanted to get a job, but homelessness exacerbated his arthritis to the point where he can't do many tasks involved with low-level pay.
"People get laid off and fired, and it's very, very difficult to try and get a job," he says, his smile disappearing for the first time. "And because of my age, I'm 60, and because of my disability..."
He rolls up his sleeves. His left wrist is the size of a small grapefruit.
"That's just my wrist," he says. "When I get home at night, my knees, ankles swell the same way," he says.
Adding to the pain
Adding to his pain are a growing number of attacks on homeless people.
A report from the National Coalition for the Homeless earlier this month shows a rise in violence against the homeless, with at least 880 unprovoked attacks against the homeless at the hands of nonhomeless people, including 244 fatalities.
Anderson, director of homeless services at Crossroads, where Don occasionally seeks a meal, says Don often gets assaulted while living on the streets.
"He comes in, black and blue, his eyes puffed up," she says. "Teenagers. Beatin' him up for no other reason than he's homeless."
Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said society dehumanizes the homeless and condones violent treatment.
He pointed to a blurb titled "Hunt the Homeless" in the August edition of Maxim, a popular men's magazine. It spotlights an upcoming "hobo convention" in Iowa and says: "Kill one for fun. We're 87 percent sure it's legal."
Stoops said since homeless people are reluctant to go to the police, assaults against them often go unreported, so statistics on the topic are probably low estimates.
U.S. Rep. Eddie Johnson, Democrat of Texas, recently introduced a bill in the House of Representative to make attacks on the homeless a federal hate crime. Ohio, as well as five other states, have considered similar bills to turn it into a hate crime.
Don says it's the worst part of his life.
"Damn kids," he says. "If I wasn't in so much pain, I'd whip all of 'em. But sometimes there are four, five of them. It's unfair. ... But I'll survive. I always do."
Homeless in Sandusky: Family struggles to get by
By JASON SINGER | Tuesday, August 25, 2009 10:41 AM EDT
SANDUSKY
In a parallel universe, the Rhone family might have been an Obama-era Brady Bunch.
Four handsome boys. Four beautiful girls. The youngest one, 6-week-old Delicia, in curls.
David Jr., 18, the oldest child, can take apart and rebuild computers like Lego sets. He's an honor roll student, and wants to go to college for computer programming or architecture.
Deja, 13, the oldest daughter, is an aspiring artist who crafts homemade bracelets.
David Jr., a high school junior, wants to stay at SanduskyHigh School. He's been there one year, and says the teachers "actually care" here.
But he understands his parents must move -- as they've done several times -- if he and they can't find work and permanent housing soon. The Rhones are homeless.
"I want to finish school here," says David Jr., his eyes glued to the ground. "But if there aren't any jobs..."
The Rhones aren't in a unique situation. Families comprise 40 percent of America's 3 million homeless, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, and that number is increasing.
The number of homeless families jumped 9 percent last year, and in rural and suburban areas the number jumped 56 percent, according to a report released in June by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"The typical homeless person has changed to become less focused on the chronically homeless or single-individual homeless to somebody who is part of a family, whether it be a mother or a father or a child in a homeless family," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said. "I think what that tells us is that the economic crisis is forcing more families who had previously been well-housed into homelessness."
David Sr., 35, and Vanessa, 34, the Rhone parents, fall into that category.
Just last year, the family rented a spacious four-bedroom home in Gary, Ind. David Sr. had a full-time job, a burgeoning recording studio and a small landscaping business.
But the home needed a lot of repairs -- they rented it for cheap from a financially troubled landlord -- and David Sr. poured all their extra income into repairing it.
When the family vehicles broke down and they couldn't get to work, suddenly the American Dream became a dream deferred.
"I loved that house," David Sr. says. "I probably shouldn't have been (putting that much money) into it. That's what got us here, I guess. But I liked it so much. It was perfect."
Sardines and smelly diapers
For more than a year, the Rhone family has crammed into a one-room residence at the Crossroads Homeless Shelter.
It's the human equivalent of sardines: David Sr. and two children sharing a mattress on the floor. Other cribs and beds strategically bunked around the room to maximize space.
Vanessa must change Lelicia and 1-year-old Dayna's diapers in the bedroom because there's no place else to do it.
"You might want to open the door and windows," she jokes after removing Dayna's diaper on a recent steamy day.
"Ewwww," says Daniel, 6, the most animated of the bunch. He holds his nose and grimaces.
In a nearby bed, Deja tickles Danielle, 4, and kisses her. When Dayna starts crying, Devin, 9, holds and gently rocks her until she calms down.
David Jr. said because the family's so tight-knit, if they do find permanent housing again, they would have a tough adjustment period.
"We're so close," he said. "I don't know what we'd do anymore if we were separated by all that space."
David Sr. says he really appreciates everything the shelter offers them -- food, shelter, help with a job search.
But if they can't find permanent housing soon, he said the family might have to save a couple of paychecks and drive down to Texas, where Vanessa's family lives. Texas is one of six states that had a budget surplus in 2009, and has a growing job economy.
Growing roots ... somewhere
David Sr. wants his family to grow roots somewhere though, and if he had his preference, that place would be Sandusky.
"She's got so many friends it's crazy," he said of Deja, who will be entering seventh grade in the fall. "And (David Jr.) has a girlfriend. He wants to go to college up here. We don't want to move them if I don't have to. We'd like to stay settled somewhere."
David Sr. has a job. It's a late-night janitorial gig at the YMCA. But for a family of 10, a minimum wage, 35-hour-per-week job doesn't cut it.
Vanessa would also like to find a job once the baby's old enough. She's worked assembly line jobs most of her life. And David Jr. wants to find a job as well.
But with job vacancies in Northern Ohio few and far between, the light at the end of the tunnel is dimming. Adding to their woes, the housing stock in Sandusky is diminished, and Section 8 vouchers are frozen.
For now, the Rhones face an uncertain future.
"We'll be OK," says Devin, 9. "We've got each other."
David Sr., an affable guy who smiles and laughs no matter the subject, believes the family will get out of this soon.
He envisions a future where he can re-open his recording studio, landscaping business and maybe even start a family-run restaurant.
"She's the best cook in the world," he says of his wife.
Asked what his mother cooks best, Devin, 7 says, "Tacos, chicken, pasta, raviolis..."
Daniel says his mother will cook him a "lot of pizza" when they get their own kitchen again. But the family's not sure when that'll be.
"We're not really sure what the future holds," David Sr. says.
Editor’s Note:
Hunger gnaws. Pain is acute. Shame is seen.
An economic recession equals a homeless population less hidden and looking more like a cross-section of us.
The Homeless but Hopeful project is a yearlong series of stories about the American Dream lost. It documents the lives of local homeless people struggling to overcome the past and claw their way toward a better future.