This story is rooted in years of organizing and working among houseless folks in the different cities I’ve lived in. It is about people I’ve known and loved over the years, and about the contradictions and frustrations and impossible choices people have to make to survive in the purposefully abandoned cracks of capitalism. I have seen the ways charity gets in the way of justice, and the ways nonprofit structures full of well-intentioned people can end up doing harm. I’ve been a part of those structures. I’ve helped and done harm. I’ve also seen people on the street take matters into their own hands, find their power and agency, and get organized to fight and win.
I can guarantee you some version of this story is playing out in your community. In a post Grants Pass world, where sleeping outdoors is increasingly criminalized and housing is an expensive commodity and not a human right, houselessness is an ever-growing crisis that exposes the moral rot at the core of our society. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene I am mindful of how disaster capitalism that seeks to profit off climate displacement is accelerating the trend, from the mountains to the coasts.
This story doesn’t have a tidy ending. It is purposely open-ended, because the ending is something we must collectively supply ourselves. What would it look like to “win” this fight? Would the city granting the people’s demands be enough, or would it be merely a temporary concession, vulnerable to co-option and retraction as long as land and shelter is controlled by the reactionary regime of capital? If you were there holding the encampment with Chaz and Rusty and Hank, how could you push the horizons beyond concessions and reforms to challenge the geography of capitalism itself? If this was your town, where do you see yourself in the story?
I’ve been on the streets for more than fifteen years, and every year it’s the same story. April 30th is the day the warming shelter closes. It’s always this big surprise, this big crisis, as if nobody saw it coming. Every year, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men stand around scratching their heads like they don’t know what to do.
“I guess we just call the cops,” is what they always say.
And so the summer goose-chase begins: pop a tent anywhere you can find, somewhere out of sight. Sooner or later someone sees it anyways. They snitch. Cops show up at midnight flashing light in your face and telling you to move on. The real assholes slash your tent. If you’re a repeat offender, they might take you to jail. But if they don’t, you pick up your shit and walk all night until you find another place. Rinse and repeat.
April 30th rolls around and me and my buddies, Rusty and Hank, are out on the street with all our shit in garbage bags. We have a plan: grab a campsite in the woods north of town. So that’s where we sleep for the first month, until the sweeps start.
There’s a day shelter most of us go to called the Center. They’re good people at heart, and there’s this young hippie named Sammy who runs it. We go down there every day to get some breakfast, play Scrabble or spades, talk shit, eat lunch, then they have some kind of activity before they close in the mid-afternoon.
It’s hot as hell that year. It gets hotter every year now. But I remember that being the first of the really hot years. The sweeps start just as the weather’s getting hot. We learn about the first one at breakfast one morning at the end of May. The cops had run bunch of folks out of a park that night.
“Where are we supposed to go?” they ask the cops.
The cops tell them, “go to the day shelter.”
“It’s night time, dumbasses!” they shoot back. “They’re closed!”
“Go to the Center,” the cops say, “or go to jail.”
So at least a dozen people are sprawled on the porch that morning. Sammy is pissed. Not at them. At the cops. He pulls out his phone and calls up the Chief himself and practically starts chewing him out: “you know the city doesn’t let us let people sleep here, right? You know we’ll get cited for zoning violations, right? I don’t want y’all complaining to us about camping on the property when your officers are ordering people to come here.”
So the Chief tells Sammy they’ll look the other way, and Sammy calls a community meeting. “Alright, y’all,” he says with a smile. “We’re suspending the ‘no sleeping on the property’ rule.”
Everyone perks up. The Center’s property is a nice spot. Big wide lawn. Shade trees around the edge. A little playground. A porch with a roof for when it rains. Me and Rusty and Hank decide to ditch our site north of town and come straight there.
“But we have rules,” Sammy adds. Of course. It goes without saying, but he says it anyways.
Because that’s the thing, there’s always problems once people get comfortable. Happens every year when we do this dance. I kind of wish they’d just leave us be. No staff. Let us decide the rules. We’re grown-ass adults, right? We should be able to handle things. But there’s always the one or two idiots who ruin it for everyone else. I know. I’ve been that idiot. But now I’m too old for that shit. I just want to sleep in peace.
That night at closing time all the people who plan to camp meet on the porch with Sammy and the staff.
“Same rules as during the day: no drinking. No drugs. No fighting. We have to keep the place clean. We need a volunteer to check people in so we know who’s here at night. Someone in charge of coordinating clean-up in the morning. And we’re trying to put pressure on the city to stop the sweeps and start giving us more resources. Anyone interested in talking to the press?”
Rusty’s hand shoots up. That dude has the gift of gab when he gets manic, and he’s riding high. People love him. I volunteer to be the check-in guy, so Sammy hands me a clipboard and a pencil and I start writing down names. Everyone who wants to camp has to come see me. A bunch of volunteers show up with coolers of bottled water and snacks. A bunch of communists. They’re friendly, say a lot of interesting shit about “mutual aid” and hand out their propaganda. I don’t go in for that kind of thing. I’m not political, but like I said, they’re friendly, and I don’t care what your politics are as long as you treat me with respect. A couple of them stay the night.
I get the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages. To be honest, I prefer sleeping outdoors. It’s hard in the warming shelter in the winter. It’s crowded. It stinks. People talking in their sleep. Pacing around talking to themselves. They get sick of each other and start fighting. Being inside, even when it’s a room of my own, feels like being in a cage. I get antsy. Bad dreams. I’m a vet, you see? Seen some shit. Outside I can breathe!
So I sleep like the dead and wake up just before dawn all refreshed. Rusty has been up all night talking to the commies and I can tell they’re having the time of their lives. I think he’s into their shit, which is fine by me. I know he’ll crash sooner or later and forget all about politics. Then me and Hank will practically be spoon feeding him and making sure he doesn’t OD.
It takes us fifteen minutes to pick up trash before opening, and when Sammy shows up I give him the list: twenty-two people camped out that night. Most of them were run off other spots by the cops.
We’re all sitting around eating pancakes when two cops show up, just in time for the morning meeting. Apparently they haven’t gotten the memo from the Chief, or the Chief hasn’t sent it, or they’re just trying to fuck with us. Sammy comes out to the parking lot and heads them off. The staff don’t like cops barging in unannounced, which we all appreciate. So he catches them outdoors.
“Looks like you had a lot of folks trespassing on your property last night,” this sergeant says.
“That’s because y’all were ordering people to come here,” Sammy says.
“So you’re saying they had permission to sleep here?” says the sergeant.
“Is there anywhere else they’re allowed to go?”
The cops look at each other, shrug. “We see you have ‘No Trespassing’ signs up, but if you’re telling us they have permission we won’t enforce it.”
“That’s right,” Sammy says. Then he sort of winks at me and gives them a don’t call us, we’ll call you vibe that really means fuck off. So the cops fuck off, and I can tell Sammy is feeling pretty good about himself at that moment.
A shit ton of people come through that day because it’s hot as hell, and the center is handing out bottled water. They get two porta-potties delivered, paid for by a GoFundMe, which is supposed to get the city off their backs about sanitation. Rusty gives his first press interview to a TV crew at lunch. He’s got this wrinkly sunburned face, big red beard, gravelly voice that gets loud when he’s excited, and he’s fired up.
The TV runs a story about people camping at the Center on the evening news. Rusty is on there, but so is the Chief of Police, talking some bullshit about littering and doing drugs and how camping is a public health hazard. They get business owners complaining about how we drive customers away and how tents are “unsightly.”
Our little camp grows that night. I check-in over thirty people. A couple of folks string up a tarp and make a shelter on the porch. Someone shows up with a camp stove and fries bacon and sausage for the whole crowd. Hank borrows a guitar and gives a little performance. It’s a beautiful vibe. I look around and people are helping each other out. A real feeling of love and solidarity. I’m thinking we just might make this shit work this year.
Every night the camp grows. The center is going 24-7. The commies and the church folk are competing with each other getting volunteers in the rotation because the Center’s staff can’t work around the clock. But I wonder why we have to have babysitters at night. We aren’t causing trouble. Nobody’s drinking or using on the property. We’re cleaning up our trash.
But I see the way people look at us on their way to work in the morning. We’re quite the crowd, people of all races, hanging out every which way on the steps, the sidewalks, the porch, some sprawled out sleeping in or sleeping it off, talking loud and cussing in English and Spanish and Spanglish, sweating in the heat. You can see waves of heat rippling off the pavement and we’re crowded into every spot of shade. Tarps and tents everywhere. We’re not causing problems. We’re not doing anything wrong. But people don’t like the appearance of us. The sound of us.
That was the first two weeks. Week three is when the honeymoon ends.
First, the porta potties overflow. I go to take a leak one morning and there’s shit and toilet paper and trash all stuffed in there where it’s not supposed to be. Diarrhea all over the seat and the floor. And the rental company isn’t scheduled to pump it out until the next day. And the trash is overflowing, too. Trash day isn’t until Thursday, but when you’ve got dozens of people around 24-7, you might be overflowing by Monday. We’re cleaning up the grounds, but those hot, stinking garbage bags don’t all fit in the trash enclosure.
Tuesday morning, I’m standing there with Sammy when he gets that first phone call. President of the neighborhood association. I see his face getting redder and redder as she chews him out. Sammy can’t get in a word edgewise, and eventually he gets so pissed off he just hangs up on her. “She accused us of trashing the neighborhood,” he says. It’s a flat-out lie, of course. We even check. Everyone was sacked out all night. Nobody left the property. It wasn’t our people doing whatever she said people were doing up the street. We even sweep the block picking up trash, but there isn’t any more litter on the sidewalks than usual.
By the middle of the week we’re pushing fifty campers, and it’s getting crowded. Sammy gives us the first bit of bad news: “we have to cap it at fifty.”
That puts me in a bad position. As the check-in guy, that means I have to start turning people away. But I take the responsibility seriously. Two nights later we hit the limit, and Margie and Tyler show up. Thinking I’m doing the right thing, I tell them, “sorry, I just can’t. Rule is fifty.”
Now, we all know them two. They’re not bad people, but they drive us nuts sometimes because they fight all the time. They’ve been staying in motel rooms, but it’s mid-month and they’re already out of money. They need a spot. Margie is agitated and she turns on me. “Who the fuck put you in charge, anyways? You’re not staff! You’re not the fucking boss. There’s a fucking spot right over there and we’re taking it!”
Tyler is here trying to calm her down, trying to smooth it over, but she isn’t having it. Finally he snaps at her, and soon enough it’s a scene. One of the church volunteers calls the cops. Five minutes later two cruisers roll up to the sidewalk. Margie and Tyler are already gathering up their shit, getting ready to leave. The two cops come strolling over, all burly, thumbs hitched in their vests like they do.
“Did someone here call us?”
The church guy walks up. “I did. There was an altercation.”
“Who was involved?”
One of the commies intervenes. “It’s fine. It’s over. We asked them to leave and they left.”
But the church guy is looking straight at Margie and Tyler. The cops see him looking, see the couple all agitated stuffing shit into their backpacks, and put two and two together and go strolling over. The commies follow. I don’t. I’m staying out of it. But when I look back the cops are digging around in their bags. Then Margie is in cuffs. One of the commies is filming with her phone.
Guess who gets blamed for the whole thing? Me.
Nobody says it out loud. I can just tell. After that night some people don’t look me in the eye. Others start sucking up to me. They see what’s what. I’m the gatekeeper now.
Now I’ve got people coming at me, asking if I can get their friend in. Snitching, saying they saw so-and-so with a 40 in their tent and they should get kicked out because there are well-behaved people who deserve the spot. To be honest, for a minute there, it goes to my head. I start passing reports up to Sammy. The snitches aren’t lying. Mostly. At this point we’re picking up empties. Half-a-dozen folks are passed out drunk and miss breakfast every morning.
Still, Sammy doesn’t want to start kicking people out. They have no legal place to go. So he gives us a lecture at morning meeting. “You can’t drink on the property, folks! If we have to warn you more than once, we’ll have to ask you to leave.” Then he and the staff start pulling people aside throughout the day, giving them a talking to, begging them not to fuck it up.
The pressure is coming down on him and the Center. The neighbors are complaining to the city. The cops step up patrols around the block. They’re still doing sweeps around town, still telling people to show up at the Center, but we can’t take them, so when I turn them away, I feel like I’m sending them straight to jail. After a few days of that, I’m catching hell from other campers who think they can do a better job than me. So finally I say, “fuck it, and fuck y’all,” and I go to Sammy and quit. He gets another volunteer. That person doesn’t last two nights before they quit, too. Sammy surrenders. He takes over the job.
But not everything is going badly. We’re still getting press, and the city is getting embarrassed. At the beginning of week three there’s a City Council meeting, and we send a delegation. It’s me, Rusty, Sammy, a few commies, and five others from the camp. Plus some button-down nonprofit types. A local community organizer has called a protest, and dozens of people picket outside supporting us.
One of the nonprofit bosses gets up and makes a speech, but the rest of the speakers are folks like us, people from the street. I’m proud of what we did that night. I don’t remember what I said, but Rusty is in fine form.
“Madame Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilors, members of the press and the public!” he begins, spreading his arms like a circus impresario. “I think we can all agree that a good night’s sleep is not an optional amenity for a human being of sound body and mind. But the officials of our fair city are acting like it is! And not all of us here in this room are of sound body and mind! I’m not just talking about those of us here with unwashed bodies and stinky clothes. You, too-” he points at the Councilors “-consider yourselves to be human. But y’all forget that being human means we share a common frail condition. Given some of your attitudes towards the masses, some of us question your claim to belong to the company of our beautiful benighted species.”
Rusty is just getting warmed up, and this is already a little too spicy for the Mayor’s taste. The Mayor shoots Rusty a look that says, you better behave! But Rusty doesn’t seem to notice.
“Admit it – y’all are afraid of us!” he shouts, pointing his finger in the air. “Most people are just one accident, one layoff, one sickness away from joining us here on the friendly streets, and it scares the bejesus out of you. Y’all are closer to joining us than you are to ever being billionaires, but you pretend like you’re better than us. You put your head down and hustle and grind every day so you don’t become us. We do the business owners and corporations a service! We are a living reminder of what happens if you don’t keep up the pace and punch the clock. They should be thanking us! The very idea of us scares the workforce out of bed in the morning. It’s the same reason why the landlords can charge such outrageous rents. It’s extortion! Is that why you pay these nonprofits chump change in your annual municipal budget to string us along, barely alive, but not solve the problem?”
You can tell the Mayor is pissed as he gives Rusty a 30-second warning on his mic time.
Rusty isn’t paying attention. He points around the room. “You create houselessness by exploiting our labor for profit, then charging us everything we earn for access to basic needs like food and rent, then buff up your image by tossing back a few pennies of the money we earned for you while you chewed us up and spat us out.”
His time runs out but he keeps on going. The Mayor starts banging his gavel and telling him to sit down. Then our communist friends start talking back, yelling “let him speak!” And they almost get kicked out. It is a scene there for a minute, and I’m busting trying not to laugh.
You can tell three out of five Council members are sympathetic – they want the liberal vote, but they don’t want to piss off the business owners, so they have to walk a fine line. But there’s one counselor who is a real dickhead, calling us animals and parasites and people who make bad life choices, that helping us only hurts us, and “providing services only encourages people to be homeless.”
That really pisses me off. I want to ask him to come spend a few nights on the street and see how he likes it. I want him to see how long he can make it before he starts drinking, using, whatever. After a while the stress gets to you. You just want to make the pain stop any way you can.
The next day, the city hands down an ultimatum to the Center: clear the property by the end of the week, or get cited. Well, of course that gets us all fired up even more. Sammy calls a meeting. Two dozen of us show up.
“So, what are we going to do about it?” he asks us.
“I say we refuse to leave!” Rusty answers.
“Yeah!” others chime in.
Sammy starts looking nervous. “You realize the city is threatening to fine us, right? They could shut us down.”
“But you can stay open, anyways,” someone argues. “Call the governor, tell him they’re violating our human rights. He’ll back us up!”
“I say we write up a petition to the President! Or the UN!” someone else says.
I roll my eyes. There’s always someone who has delusions of grandeur.
We put out a press release, informing the public of the city’s ultimatum, hoping to embarrass the politicians. It works. The Mayor grants a stay of execution: they give us to the end of July, an extra six weeks. It feels like an eternity. Long enough to get some shit done. Long enough for things to go to shit.
After four weeks everyone is getting tired. Volunteers are running thin. Staff are pulling overtime. Things are getting intense at night. It was the week the drugs hit. A car pulls up to the property just after dusk. Five minutes later, people are walking around like zombies, seizing, passing out. Fucking spice. Synthetic weed. You never know what’s in that shit. There are rumors about fentanyl, so I always keep Narcan on me just in case. I confess to partaking myself from time to time, but this time I stay sober and keep an eye on my friends.
More people are drinking by this point, too. A lot of them have run out of warnings. Staff start cruising through a couple times a night and writing people up. That’s the point where Sammy stops being your friend and starts being a cop. Do I blame him? Did he have any other choice, with the city and the neighbors and his Board of Directors and the media breathing down his neck? I don’t know. But I remember that morning when he hands out the first batch of trespassing papers. He goes up to this one guy who’s passed out, shakes him gently by the shoulder, trying to be nice, trying to be cool about it. He hands the guy the pink paper and the guy doesn’t argue, doesn’t put up a fight. He knows the score. He slowly sits up, gathers up his shit, packs it in a garbage bag. A few minutes later the poor fucker is stumbling down the street with the bag over his shoulder with no place to go. Sammy moves on to the next one.
We go about the rest of the day like nothing happened. It’s a normal day, but there is that intensity that comes from the fact that we’re trying to do something. We’re trying to make the Center our space, our hub. But as the days become weeks and the pressure mounts, we know it isn’t our place. No matter how much blood, sweat, and tears we put into it trying to make it ours, we can never own it. At the end of the day, it’s just another business even if it’s called a “not-for-profit.” The staff are our friends and supporters until they aren’t. The law doesn’t let them. When you get down to brass tacks they have to be agents of the city, zoning enforcers, gatekeepers of our right to exist in public. It’s either Sammy or the cops. At least Sammy isn’t going to take you to jail. But he can give you that pink paper promising to call the ones who can.
We spend the next six weeks fighting the city, demanding a place to go after July 31st, D-Day, the deadline when we all have to leave. In private, Sammy and his coworkers are giving us warning after warning: “you have to be gone by July 31st!” We’re all working our asses off trying to find apartments, and the staff are, too. But rent is through the roof. Nobody’s taking vouchers. People are out flying signs try to save for a motel room, anything to get off the streets and out of the waiting arms of the jail.
Slowly but surely, morale goes to shit. Rusty starts spiraling, coming down off his mania. One minute we’re sitting around talking when the spicemobile pulls up. I turn my head for a second, and next thing I know he’s doubled-over on the curb, seizing like a motherfucker. Hank and I look at each other like, “here we go.” And we sit down either side of him, watching him, making sure he doesn’t stop breathing.
Next day he isn’t talking anymore. Isn’t interested in fighting the city. No more interviews. No showers. Barely eating. He’s a zombie. Drinking. Smoking spice. It’s a struggle getting him to eat, to stay hydrated. He takes all my energy, but what can I say? I care about the guy. He’s got nobody else. We’ve been through everything together, so I’m not going to let anything happen to him. We’ve been through this before. In a few days or weeks he’ll snap out of it and he’ll be the same jolly old Rusty with the gift of gab. If I can keep him out of jail.
That means getting us someplace to stay so we’re not caught out on July 31st. That’s in three days. We need cash. It’s been years since I’ve had a job. I hurt my back real bad at the last one I had ten years ago. Been trying to get on disability since, but keep getting turned down. I do odd jobs when I can manage them. I fly a sign when I have to.
So that’s what I do. I cut up a cardboard box from the trash enclosure at the Center and take a Sharpie to it:
Homeless Veteran
Out of Work
Anything Helps
God Bless
I leave Rusty with Hank and walk almost a mile out to the highway exit. I hope to get there a little past eight, morning rush hour, when it isn’t too hot. There’s a good spot with a traffic light by the offramp. Plenty of people stop. You can make enough for a hotel and a Big Mac with some time and patience and willingness to take abuse.
But I’ve been sleeping in a tent on a leaky sleeping pad for weeks. By the time I get to the spot my back is killing me and I’m walking half-stooped. I prop myself up against a signpost in the median. Car after car rolls to a stop. I try to make eye contact, force a smile. Most people avoid me, pretend I don’t exist. Occasionally someone nods or smiles. “Get a job!” someone inevitably shouts at me from a late-model SUV as they accelerate through the light. I don’t react. Finally, someone rolls down the window and holds out their hand. They’re third in line, so I have to walk. I take a step. Stabbing pain. I take another. Lightning flashes down my left leg. My knee buckles. The traffic moves. The car stops just long enough to hand something out the window.
“God bless you!” I manage as I take it. One dollar, and a gospel tract about sobriety. I’m not fucking drunk! I want to shout. I’m in pain! But I’d give anything for a drink.
Barely able to stand, I stumble back to the sign post. I have no idea how I’m going to get back to my tent. I try to stretch, stay limber. Every movement hurts. Car after car passes me by.
Finally, one I recognize. He stops. It’s Sammy, in his rusty two-tone Buick.
“Jesus, Chaz!” he says. “You look like shit. Are you okay?”
“Give me a ride?” I ask.
“Yeah, get in!”
I take a step and go to my knees. “It’s my back, man, I can’t walk!”
Sammy hops out. Cars are stacked up behind him. Someone blasts their horn. He helps me up, supports me as I collapse into the passenger seat. Cars are roaring around us, impatient. We pull away and take a right, headed back to the Center.
“How’d you do, besides throwing out your back?” he asks.
“Shitty. No way I’m paying for a motel room if I can’t even fly a sign.”
Sammy sighs. “No, I guess not.”
“Can you help me out? The Center has money, right?” I ask, swallowing my pride.
“You know we don’t hand out cash, sorry.”
If people would just hand out cash half our problems would be solved. “I’ve got no place to go. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
He sighs again. “I don’t know. We need a shelter in this city.”
“I hate shelters,” I grumble. “We need to be left alone is what we need! Just let us fucking camp and take care of our business instead of constantly chasing us around! I’m disabled. I can’t fucking walk.”
“Yeah…”
“You agree, then? So you won’t call the cops on my ass when I stay put in three days?” I ask.
“What do you mean, ‘when?’ You mean you’re not leaving the property?”
“What do you expect me to do, levitate?”
Am I serious when I say this, or am I just venting? The idea of openly defying the rule of law feels cathartic when I put it into words. But real, concrete action is another matter. Is my defiance just an idle Hollywood fantasy taking shape in my exhausted, frustrated mind, or are my words the preamble of something real?
When we get back, Hank and Rusty are sitting at one of the four-top tables with mugs of black coffee. I slump into a folding chair and face them.
“Any luck?” Hank asks.
“Back went out. Sammy drove me here. We’re pretty much fucked.” I don’t bother suggest that Hank take a turn with the sign. He doesn’t have a thick skin like me. He’s a little younger and looks able-bodied, but he’s got PTSD and can’t work a steady job. It always goes sideways.
“Well fuck it, then!” It’s Rusty, suddenly animated, sitting up straight.
“Jesus, keep your voice down, Rusty,” I whisper.
He leans closer. “I say we stay put. Fuck this place and their ‘Board of Directors.’ Fuck the city and their ‘zoning.’ Sammy and the staff can go fuck themselves.”
I feel my own frustration flare as Rusty’s words echo the ones I said to Sammy just moments ago. But now the words sound crazy coming from someone else, and hearing them from another angle, I change my tune.
“Sammy’s between a rock and a hard place,” I say with a sigh. “Go easy on him, Rusty.”
“He’s got a house to sleep in and a paycheck,” Rusty says, leaning closer. “He don’t need me to go easy. What about what we need?”
“What do you think is going to happen if we stay? We can’t put up a fight. Look at us!”
“They can’t arrest us all!”
“Yes, they can.”
“There’s fifty of us!”
“No, we’re down to thirty, tops. Look around. They can and they will.”
“Okay, fine. Maybe they will. But we’re going to jail, anyways, right? I say we take a stand, and we force Sammy to take a side. Either he calls the cops or he don’t, right?”
Sammy is standing at the front desk sorting mail. He’s got bags under his eyes, exhausted. He’s a reflection of the state of the place. Week after week of 24-7. I wonder if he’s secretly relieved to have D-Day so close, at the possibility of “back to normal,” whatever that means. But do we need him? Can’t we just run our own affairs? What if we just take the building? Make our own rules? What if we just lived here? Could we pay our own bills? Keep the kitchen stocked? Do our own maintenance?
That’s the fucking problem with society: private property. Somebody has to own it. You can’t have it unless someone else doesn’t. We are the houseless. We exist to be excluded. It is our purpose. We exist to keep the rent high and wages low. The Center can’t exist unless they’re willing to throw us out. If they don’t throw us out, they cease to exist. It is light and dark, yin and yang, action and reaction. In our world, a thing cannot exist without its opposite.
“Fuck that,” Rusty says. He has snapped out of his funk. “I’m sick and tired. I’m staying. Who’s with me?”
I look back at Rusty and the resolve in his eyes tells me that this is no empty talk, no mere fantasy to him. This is for real. I look at Hank, and Hank is sitting up straight, eyes flashing with fight, and I see his pride, his self-respect.
“We don’t deserve to be treated this way,” Hank says. “Seems like every time we build something for ourselves they take it away. We’ve built something here. We shouldn’t give it up without a fight.”
Looking back and forth between these two men I share everything with, I don’t want to let them down. And Hank is right. I also deserve better. There is a shame that the world tries to load on us, and it’s easy to take that on board and internalize it and let it settle into your bones. It makes you accept the constant abuse and rejection, take the blame for the sickness of society. But I see the dignity in my friends’ faces and I realize that with other people at my side, my words to Sammy didn’t have to be empty: I’m not leaving, either. I deserve to fight for myself.
“Sure, Rusty, I’m with you,” I say.
So we spend the next two days fomenting our revolution, one-on-one and in small groups, just getting people to commit to staying. Those radicals and church folks who’ve been showing up all along are committed, too, and that gives us confidence. Their support gives us more credibility. Of course, word gets back to Sammy, and he calls a public meeting after lunch the day before D-day. He stands up in front of everyone looking all sympathetic and guilty.
“You aren’t wrong, y’all,” he says, “but you know my hands are tied, right? If I let y’all stay, the city will shut us down. Is that what you want?”
“If you trespass all of us, you won’t have a community left to serve,” Rusty says. “Is that what you want?”
Sammy sits back down, rubbing his eyes. He sighs. “None of this is what I want.”
“Look, Sammy,” I say. “You’ve gotta decide who this place serves. Do you serve the city and your funders, or the people? You’ve always been a guy who cares about everyone here. I hope you’ll make the right choice and fight for us.”
“So, you’re not budging?” he asks, looking around the room.
The people respond with shaking heads. Sammy nods and closes the meeting. Then he disappears into his office.
Closing time on July 31st comes, and Sammy stands and holds up an envelope, then tells everyone what we already know:
“I’m sorry folks, but you can’t sleep on the property tonight. This is an official notice from the city that we’re in violation of zoning. I know it sucks, but we can’t keep going like this. If you stay, you’re going to get trespassed.”
“By who?” Rusty asks. “You? Or the city?”
Sammy just looks at the floor and shakes his head. “I don’t want to see any of you go to jail. You know that. I know the situation is messed up.”
“We’re going to jail no matter what,” Rusty says. “It’s illegal for us to lay our heads anywhere out there. This city is making sleep a crime, and we won’t stand for it.”
Now Sammy is biting his lip, looking at the floor, looking at the ceiling, anywhere but at Rusty.
“What are you going to do, Sammy?” I ask.
Finally, he looks me in the eye. “I don’t know, Chaz. What are you going to do?”
“You know we’re staying,” I say.
He nods back. He looks around the room. We’re not budging. The commies and a few church folks are standing with us. They have a pickup truck full of bottled water and snacks parked outside. Their intentions are obvious.
Sammy gives us the extra night, clearly hoping we’d change our mind. The next morning the sun is supposed to rise on an empty lawn, but there are two dozen tents still rooted to their spots. I can’t move even if I want to. My back hurts too much, so when dawn breaks I’m flat on my back on the porch, staring up at the rafters of the overhang. Someone has busted out the camp stove and started cooking bacon.
“Morning, Chaz.” I turn my head and it’s Sammy with a big smile on his face. He’s holding out his hand, offering me a boost. I take it and sit up slow.
“What has you so chipper this morning?” I ask.
“I told the board I’m camping out with y’all.”
“You did what?”
“I think they might fire me.” He sits down next to me, still smiling like someone who just got out of jail. “And you know what? I don’t think I give a fuck.”
“Well shit. Welcome to the party!” I smack him on the back. “Now what?”
He shrugs. “I guess that’s up to y’all. We could just do what we do every day and wait for the city to make the next move. Or not. You could put out a statement. Whatever you want. I’m down for whatever.”
It’s the Board of Directors that makes the next move. Three of them show up during breakfast and pull Sammy into the office.
“Well, that’s it,” Sammy says when he emerges an hour later. “They said we have to trespass everyone. They went on about ‘fiduciary responsibility’ and ‘civil liability.’ They’re cutting me some slack, though: they’re not making me do it. They’re going downtown to file the papers themselves. But if I stand in the way…”
“…you get fired and trespassed along with everyone else,” I finish his sentence.
“Exactly.”
“Look Sammy, I don’t think you should risk your job. Take the out. Take the day off. No point in you going down for this.”
“Yeah, well, I appreciate it, Chaz. I’ll give it some thought.”
By this point people have started showing up. A few more of our houseless friends, but mostly folks from the community. Apparently the commies put the word out on social media, because people are showing up with protest signs and shit. Rusty, Hank and I think we should call a meeting, and we say so to Sammy. He says, “go ahead and call it, then. I’ll help facilitate, but y’all are in charge of this fight.”
Fight? I wonder what kind of fight this is going to be. How hard are we willing to go for this place? What if we really make it ours? I realize that’s exactly what we’re doing: as soon as we cross that line, start occupying it like we own it and stop behaving like someone’s guest, it’s ours.
So we have our meeting, and I say some of this shit out loud, and it feels weird. Remember how I said I’m not political? Well, it feels pretty damn political. Some folks get real fired up. Start talking about defending the place from the cops. I feel a little wary about that – I don’t aim to catch any charges, and I really don’t want to see shit get torn up. Plus, I’m disabled, and I can barely walk at this point.
Something breaks through in that meeting. It goes on for three hours. We have the usual folks with delusions of grandeur, saying they have connections in high places and they’d get them to jerk the Mayor’s chain, or get the Chief of Police fired and blacklisted. But Sammy manages to pull out the most important points, and we put out our demands:
· We demand control of the nonprofit. At least 50% of the Board of Directors are to be folks who have experienced houselessness. Budgeting, rules, and programming decisions are to be made by the community, not paid staff. Staff are there to advise, support, and facilitate, not be in charge.
· We demand that the city stop the sweeps and let people sleep anywhere on public property, and that the city allow private property owners to permit camping.
And of course, the punchline:
· We will hold the Center until you meet these demands.
The air is electric, and people are spoiling for a fight. The commies – or rather, the anarchists, because I’m learning the difference now and we’ve had both types hanging around – start walking us through collective defense formations on the lawn, preparing people in case the police attack the crowd. I think the authorities are hoping we’ll all just calm down and go away on our own, because that first night comes and goes and nothing happens other than a few patrol cars cruising by. The Lieutenant comes back the next day with two patrol officers. We elect Sammy to be cop whisperer, so he goes and talks to them. He comes back a couple minutes later and we all gather around.
“They’re about to formally trespass us,” he says. “They say if we aren’t gone by 5pm today, they’re going to mass arrest us.”
There’s a long pause while the news sinks in. Time to face the music.
Someone stands up in the back. “You know what?” she says, looking heated. It’s Margie, the one who I turned away a few weeks before, standing there with Tyler. “I’m sick of this shit. Fuck the police. Let them try to arrest me again. I don’t give a shit, anymore.”
Others chime in with similar sentiments, and the group gets all riled up again. But to be honest, I’m uncomfortable. Worried. I’ve been in too much pain to take part in the drills, but it’s clear that if we’re going to have a chance of winning, we’re going to have to fight the cops. What’s going to happen to me? I’m in no shape to defend myself or move around much. I raise my hand and say so.
It’s Sammy who rescues me. “You can lay low at my place if you want,” he offers. “I have a sofa.”
I wonder why he didn’t offer me his sofa two months ago, but I don’t say that out loud. I take him up on the offer. He, too, has decided to take my earlier advice and not risk arrest. We’ve all agreed we want someone around who knows how to help us keep the lights on.
I stick around through the day, helping any way I can, but when five o’clock rolls around, I give Rusty and Hank a big bear hug and wish them luck. Then I climb into Sammy’s Buick and he drops me back at his apartment before going back to the Center to observe from a safe distance. An hour later I watch it all go down live on the 6 o’clock news. The city embarrasses itself that night. They send in a line of riot cops to tune everyone up. They’re right there on live TV pushing and dragging old ladies, young kids, shooting pepper spray. Some of our people really put up a fight, and then they lead the cops on a goose chase all over town before ending up right back at the Center, holding the lawn. I bust up laughing when Rusty and Hank tell me their version in the morning. I wish I were young again. I really feel like I missed out.
“You didn’t miss out on a thing,” Rusty says. “You been here every step of the way. You helped make this happen.” I look around the lawn. The crowd has grown again. The tents are gone – the cops took those – but everyone is still full of fight. Friends are already delivering new tents. Word is that half the remaining Board members are resigning. The rest have asked to meet. Three City Council members are on their way. They want to talk.