I'd live in a tent in the back yard before I'd let my mother sleep on a park bench. Just sayin'.......... 
I'd live in a tent in the back yard before I'd let my mother sleep on a park bench. Just sayin'..........
She was a little wacked, not cashing the checks. She could have kept books on the checks vs. the total she was owed and still pursued her case.
I learned a long time ago not to assume that someone was crazy just because they told you a story that seemed outrageous or fantastic.
A wonderful man I knew in Sacramento told me about the tattoo on his arm and about a place called Theresienstadt.
Someone else told me about how he was getting harassed by the police and then one day I was there doing his laundry when the police showed up to harass him...and I got handcuffed just for being there.
And etc.
So anymore when someone tells me something ‘crazy’ I take the time to check their story before I make up my mind about it.
Bad things do sometimes happen to people.
The very first ‘homeless person’ we saw living on the streets of one major USA city....this was back in about 1972 or 3.....anyway, she was there every day with her worldly possessions in a couple of plastic garbage sacks. My then-boss asked her up to his office. He spent several days with her...going through her jumbled piles of old papers. The result? It did very much appear that yes, she had been cheated out of money (by her lawyer in some sort of trust situation as I recall). Now, she was homeless and gradually losing her grasp on life
Another woman on the streets.... was there begging on the same corner for years and years, right near the big, ornate City Hall. It was so obvious that the mayor appointed the daughter of a former mayor to help solve the homeless crisis with ESPECIAL mention of this one woman. I happened to go by her every day and so we took up conversing. She was maybe 80 percent sane, she appeared to have some drug problem which I presumed contributed to those days when she was not as well connected with reality. At any event, she was mostly “there” and so we could chat. She had been abused by her husband or boy friend...which set her down the path she was on, alas. I managed to make arrangements for her (long story)...to receive free rent in a BRAND NEW nice apartment ... being run by a church charity... (for which I would contribute, again a long story)....I ran back to the lady on the corner all excited with the good news I had to share with her. Rents were very high in town and vacancies were scare. There was zero chance this woman could have gotten into a place to live on her own. Nevertheless, she immediately turned it down. She said she did not want to be enclosed in any building with other people, I guessed that was another consequence of her having been abused (indoors) by her former. ANYWAY, I explained that she was to have her OWN apartment with a door she could shut and lock if she wished, and that it was a very nice unit with indeed a good view... and that there was a church assistant downstairs to help her with any problems and that also the building had security, too, so she should be safe there. She refused to even walk three blocks to go look at it.
That was the end of my amateur social welfare caseworker career, ha!
But it again illustrates the difficulties some of these ‘street poeple’ have in their lives. Obviously, the rest of them are just lazy beggers who do not deserve help.
BUT SOME of them genuinely do have problems worthy of some help, if only....if only....
This WashingtonDC lady sounds quite similar to the two women I mention above, someone who maybe, just possibly, may have had some cause for winding up where she is today
maybe. May God Bless, I don’t have the answers.
Wanda Witter has grit, real honest to goodness grit.....and yes, Wanda should write a book about the humongous agency known as Social Security and the Bureaucrats within....the group of homeless women whom she knew and trusted should also be in ‘the book’. A more than interesting story....
Not the first “rich” person to prefer living on the street. Be sad but don’t be surprised if we hear she’s back on the street in a few months. I suspect this really is about mental illness more than anything else.
Della Brown
Queensryche
You’ve got a cardboard house
Live there all the time
Keep your memories tied with string
The face that many once adored
Twenty years gone maybe more
Somewhere you lost the dream
Mama watched your every move,
But now you’re all alone, oh yeah
She’s been gone for awhile
Daddy left some time ago,
Fading years pass too slow
He’s the only one, could make you smile
Oh, you’re still crying
Big city bound
Gonna make your mark
Read your name in the lights
All the ads and people say,
Beauty lets you get you way
Tried your best to prove them right
But living on the streets ain’t bad,
Sad people make you glad
Pardon me, could you spare some change
Oh, you’re still crying
Street corner girl
Watch the crowd go by
Fill your tin can with life
Summer days tend to slip away
Like your men you couldn’t make them stay
Hard to choose, whiskey or a wife
Sometimes you wonder where’s the end
Where you goin’ where you been?
Happiness seems so hard to win
Most never care to find
Della Brown sees it al the time
Looking for that man
To make her smile again
Oh, you’re still crying
Written by Christopher Degarmo, Geoff Tate, Geoffery Tate, Scott Rockenfield • Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
The world has some awfully interesting people...
Strange story.
.
Having worked in health care (large,famous,big city hospital) for decades i can say with absolute authority that the large,and probably overwhelming,majority of this nation’s homeless qualify as one,or more,of the following: 1)schizophrenic 2) alcoholic 3) drug addict.