Hoping for a handout

OF JUGGALOS, HOMELESSNESS AND HAVING THE TOOLS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Posted
April and Will wake up each morning, make their bed, scrounge for breakfast and head to the library.

Computers and Internet are free there. They own cell phones but can’t afford minutes.

She goes to Facebook and posts what’s on her mind: “Got blessed today two nice young women came up to me and a friend and gave us $5 each 4 bags of chips 2 juices and two foot long subs and one big water bottle and two cookies."

April Schmidt and William O’Donnell are on the streets. (They don’t often refer to themselves as homeless.) The I-496 bridge over Pennsylvania Avenue has been their shelter since about mid-August.

Their story brings them to Lansing after a two-day walk from Flint that left them blistered but unbroken. They live entirely on their own terms, and that’s the way they like it.

“I’m trying to just make my life better, not make it worse just by staying in one place,” says the 21-year-old April. “That’s not helping me at all.”

It’s a nomadic life mostly by choice that invites danger and destitution nearly every day.

Will, 26, agrees. “There’s going to be a lot of trials and tribulations with where we go and everything, and if one spot don’t work, we just go to another.”

What most of us see as instability April and Will accept as normal and even freeing.

They live day to day latching onto an imagined future job in a future place with future prosperity. Three weeks ago the goal was to get to St. Cloud, Minn., where April is from. A guaranteed job was waiting for Will packing bird seed, she said. She would have her sister as support. She could go to cosmetology school.

But they needed nearly $200 for bus tickets.

“It’s going to be a journey,” Will says. “But if we gotta walk it, we gotta walk it.”

His voice forces a tone of determination that some may only hear as delusion.

They’ve gone to churches, asked shelters for money, they’ve even asked friends.

They end up frustrated.

“This town ain’t helping me really,” April says. “People say they’re going to help. But when someone does help, it’s something small.”

When they "fly signs" April says sometimes people help yetsomeone often yells, “Get a job!”

But they may not have the wherewithal to get one or keep one.

Chronically homeless

April and Will would be categorized as chronically homeless, the hardest to serve, much less save.

They are among the more than 8,700 homeless in the Ingham, Eaton and Clinton county region, according to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. Of that number only 7,800 or so are actually counted through shelters or services used. The rest are estimated as part of the overall homeless population that can be sleeping on couches or in encampments.

Solving chronic homelessness takes more than a house, said experts at the Michigan Summit on Ending Homelessness in Traverse City last week. The chronically homeless live with a disability — including serious mental illness, chronic substance-use disorders, or chronic medical issues — and are homeless for long periods or repeatedly.

Those who’ve known a lifetime on the streets have a savvy and a system about how they live that’s just as normal as it is for some to get up with an alarm clock, take the kids to school and get to work on time.

Data shared at the summit showed of the single adult homeless in Michigan:

—66 percent had an identified disability

— 72 percent were mentally ill

— 33 percent had addiction issues

— 33 percent had chronic health conditions

— 66 percent reported more than one homeless event in their past; 33 percent reported more than two events

Homelessness is often a condition as a result of failed life skills, and it will take an inculcation across many skill sets to prepare the chronically homeless to be self-sufficient, reliable and accountable.

Common issues include long-term unemployment or unstable employment, lack of transportation, sudden loss of income, and a medical crisis that impacts employment, state officials say.

Even though the statewide homeless numbers dropped by about 1,000 from 2012 to 2013, officials say more veterans, older people and women and children are becoming homeless.

And there are 19, 272 who are at risk of becoming homeless, sometimes just a paycheck away.

Homeless angels

Lansing serves as a homeless beacon of sorts, says Mike Karl, founder of Homeless Angels, a nonprofit service agency.

“There’s 25 percent of people in shelters in Lansing that are from out of the city,” he says. “Sometimes they think there’s more funding here because this is the capital.”

A few weeks ago Homeless Angels posted a video of April and Will on Facebook with a plea to help them get to Minnesota.

Local homeless services will assist with getting jobs, housing, training and paperwork. But they won’t help with a bus ticket out of town.

Karl says his agency is “a more hands-on personable agency. The most important thing is we want to build personal relationships.”

That means not judging anyone’s circumstances. So when April and Will asked to have a video made, Karl obliged.

April and Will sit side by side in the video, their piercing blue eyes fixed to the camera as they tell a story of love and a belief they can make it.

“A couple weeks later they called us and said they wanted to move to a different place and that their video was no longer needed. So we took it down.”

Karl says there are no good or bad homeless stories.

“We want to put a face on homelessness, that they’re not invisible, they’re people,” Karl says. “That they all have a story, that everybody is different. We try to help everybody equally.”

Before the video was taken down, Karl said Will’s mother called hoping to be put in touch with her son. He said he messaged Will on Facebook but doesn’t know if they connected.

“April and William I think have been bouncing around.”

Lifetime lifestyle

Both April and Will say they’ve lived much of their lives on the street.

“The first time I was homeless was when I was 8,” says Will. “I’m used to bouncing around from place to place. It’s basically the kind of lifestyle I like to live.”

April’s Facebook posts carry a tone of pride, as well as defensiveness:

“Yea I´ve been homeless since Feb 2nd of this year it OK with me no biggie it just sucks that people have to judge people on their past.”

“It ain´t all bad it feels natural to me.”

Will eagerly shares his life history.

“My older brother was adopted by my aunt and uncle when he was just a baby,” he says. “Me and my two younger brothers were split up in the foster care system. My two younger brothers got adopted by the same family. Me, I got bounced around the whole state. I ended up graduating in high school in LeRoy, Mich., with a 3.75 GPA.”

Will’s work history is colorfully embellished if not entirely accurate. He says he’s worked for carnivals (yes, some games are rigged, he confesses). He’s been the pit boss at the Detroiter Truck Stop (he knows how to work a grill). He’s worked for NAS- CAR and he’s fought MMA (14-0). He says he served four years in the Marines in Iraq earning the rank of gunnery sergeant (highly improbable) with a medical discharge due to post-traumatic stress disorder and a bullet injury (once he said in his butt, another time in his back).

He says he suffers from seizures.

April is more reserved, sharing her story with fewer specifics like names and dates. She graduated high school in Eden Valley, Minn. in 2011 and is just glad to have gotten out. A few weeks after joining a carnival with her boyfriend when she was 18 she learned she was pregnant. She hasn’t seen her son since he was 2 months old. The paternal grandparents took her son, she says, after having April sign some papers. She thinks she signed over her parental rights.

Her parents never married and both live with their respective parents, so they can’t help her. She says she can only hold down jobs that don’t have a lot of people around.

“I shut down when I get around a certain amount of people,” she says.

“I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, schizo, borderline disorder, bipolar.”

Is she on meds? No, she says they are not effective.

Both say they don’t do hard drugs, just weed and alcohol. Neither has a driver’s license.

April and Will get by mostly on April’s EBT card. They can buy some food items. But she´s can´t draw cash with it.

They´ve talked about selling plasma and applying for jobs, but they haven´t yet. Monday Will got $5 "signing" – holding up a sign at a corner – near the bridge.

Their routine is breakfast and lunch at the Open Door Ministries day shelter on North Capitol Avenue or the Volunteers of America shelter on Cedar Street. They spend days in the library using the Internet (except Will got banned for harassing the security guard). They go outside for smoke breaks and to chat it up with friends.

Dinner is either at the City Rescue Mission on Michigan Avenue or the VOA.

A good evening is catching a home Lugnuts baseball game, sitting outside the fence of the downtown stadium.

They describe a helpful homeless community in Lansing, even the police.

“I went on a water run and the cops at the Quality Dairy gave us cigarettes,” April says.

Facebook, juggalos and hippie truckers

April’s face and fingers are fixed onto her phone, swiping, tapping, smiling, frowning.

She’s a professional at drive-by WIFI, grabbing a signal quickly enough to download or post an update.

She’s addicted to her newsfeed.

It’s a powerful glue in their loosely bound lives, connecting them to family, fantasy and drama.

They met this spring on the Juggalo Adding Game page, a place for fans of the Detroit hip-hop band Insane Clown Posse. The fans were labeled a “loosely organized hybrid gang” by the FBI in 2011, for which the band, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit.

April and Will exude the Juggalo culture.

April is Will´s "Lette," and other Juggalos are "family."

They seek rides on the Hippie Truckers Ride Board, a hitch-hiker’s Craigslist of sorts.

April started to ask friends on Facebook to help Will get to Minnesota. But when that didn’t turn out, she hopped on a bus in July to meet Will in Flint. Will was staying with one of his brothers.

They planned a future with a job, a home and children.

Then his brother got locked up and the two of them were on the streets.

Then Will says he got attacked, bashed in the head with a rock “20 times." He needed staples in his scalp. April admits being terrified.

“It was the first time I had seen anything that brutal,” April says.

Then Will proposed at the hospital during a follow-up visit.

“And right after he got checked in, he got on one knee in front of me and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ and pulled out a heart-shaped necklace,” April recalls.

Then the couple came to Lansing.

Their social media timeline isn’t without concern or criticism from friends.

Will´s brother chastised him on Facebook Aug. 30 for wanting to travel with no means.

"If you can´t help yourself why ask for a handout?" he posted.

“We’re trying to get somewhere”

Despite living under a bridge with only the clothes on their back and a cell phone they “found,” the couple has high hopes.

“We’re trying to get somewhere. We’re trying to make something of ourselves,” April says.

They take pride in distinguishing themselves from other homeless people.

“The way I look at it, the ones that are out there just with the layers and their clothes are torn and everything I consider that like being professional homeless. Because they’re really not trying to get off the streets. It’s just something they’re used to.”

He doesn’t seem to remember saying living on the streets is something he’s used to.

The couple had just gotten back together after a fiery breakup that lasted four days on Facebook. The fight happened after staying in someone´s home.

An accusation came that Will tried to sexually force himself on April. The homeowner asked Will to leave. April felt violated.

There were threats to kick one or the other’s asses. Will posted for two days about killing himself.

They say it’s all patched up and they’re stronger than ever.

April says an uncle contacted her after seeing the Homeless Angels video. He lives in Olean, N.Y., and is offering a job at a paper mill and a place to stay.

Their eyes brighten. They grin and talk of the life and security they know is ahead.

Will wants to help April get her son. He’s got it all figured out sequentially.

“Once we’re situated and have a place for a year, we’re going to get an attorney, and I’m going to help her get (her son) back,” Will says. “Even though he’s not my kid by birth or anything, I’m still going to treat him like he’s mine anyway.

“A judge will look at us and say ‘They’ve been in a place, he’s got a job, she’s waiting for disability to come in, they’ve been in a place for at least a year,’ ” he says methodically as though he’s gone over it in his head a thousand times. “They have rent receipts to show it. They’re paying their bills. They’re paying their rent. Why not give him back to them?”

All they have to do is do it.

HEAD COUNT

Michigan homeless population

2013: 92,341 2012: 93,619 2011: 94,033

Source: Michigan Homeless Management Information System


Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here




Connect with us