Akron: You are endangering people’s lives

Yesterday at an unstructured homeless camp this was the scene:

The city brought approximately 8 people to clean up a homeless camp. These were not paid city workers. These were people required to do community service work. They used free labor to do this work.

I watched as the 2 or 3 paid city workers stood around and directed these community service workers to destroy tents, and throw everything into trucks to be thrown away.

This is how we do things in America. Just destroy the lives of homeless people. They don’t matter. They are nothing other than a cancer on the skin of our cities. So sweep them away.

I’ve become so jaded that doesn’t even shock me any more. But there is always a new level of atrocity and shock that finds its way into my mind.

These camps are basically toxic waste dumps.

  • Needles
  • Shit
  • Piss
  • Rotten food
  • Rats

These are centers of disease.

I know for a fact that a person living in this camp recently got back from a long stay at the hospital because he contracted Hepatitis A.

The Ohio Department of Health is reporting that Summit County (Akron) now has 64 reported cases of Hep A… Compared to Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) which has 54 cases. The population of Cleveland is 385,525. The population of Akron is 197,846.

The Atlantic is reporting that Typhus and Tuberculosis Are Spreading in Homeless Populations in California. It’s only a matter of time until they come to Ohio.

The reason these camps are so toxic is because cities refuse to work with these people. They are given no trash service. They are given no toilet service. All of those things would be considered luxuries that would make the homeless “too comfortable”.

So as the city vindictively tortures homeless people because they hate them, they are spreading disease.

Akron ignores diseases that shouldn’t even exist yet are sweeping our city.

This is not anything new to me. It’s just Akron.

But what was new to me was that the city of Akron put truly unsuspecting citizens who were required by law to do community service in the heart of this environment.

I walked over to a group of workers and said, “That tent could be full of needles, go slow.”

They looked at me with big, shocked eyes. They had no idea what they had been forced to get into.

The only protective gear these people had been given where cloth gloves. No rubber gloves. No masks. Just their personal clothes, personal shoes, a yellow vest and cloth gloves.

I’m not an expert in communicable diseases. But I would think OSHA would see this as a nightmare.

I don’t know if these people were given a choice as to which jobs they were required to do as part of their community service. But I sort of doubt it. They probably were forced into this scene.

I’m not overstating this scenario by saying: this job could have been a death sentence. They worked all day in this camp. And they still have more to do.

And they will do this work over and over again as homeless people move, set up camps with no support services and are swept away again.

All homeless haters love to tell me what a piece of shit all these people are. But then conveniently  they never tell me what we should do with them. I only see 3 options: kill them, lock them up or treat them.

It doesn’t take a mental giant to realize that killing them might not play well on the evening news. And we already don’t have enough space in our jails for the criminals we currently have. So, the way I see it, we have one option: Treat these people.

Work with them. Engage them. Give them basic services that help minimize disease and make it so they are less likely to steal and do other crimes.

I know the mayor thinks I’m an idiot. But I’m here to tell you: The city of Akron is spreading disease, pushing homeless people further away from society, making them less likely to engage with service workers and now is jeopardizing the lives of people that were forced into disease-ridden, toxic environments because they got a speeding ticket.

This is madness. And it all stems from hatred. The homeless are ruining the mayor’s vision of an Akron utopia filled with bearded hipsters and wealthy senior citizens.

This is no joke. This shit is real. And it’s only getting worse. This is a disaster and public-health crisis and the administration is doing nothing about it.

 

 

“Sage Lewis” is not their problem. Homelessness is their problem.

Martin Luther King Jr,’s  Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.] starts this way:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

It seems to be a recurring theme for those in authority to see the acts of someone who stands up for the oppressed and those victimized by the system to be “unwise and untimely”.

Mayor Horrigan made a video that said “sometimes the loudest voice isn’t the wisest.”

And a recent Editorial Board article in the Akron Beacon Journal declares that “Tents are for camping. They are not an adequate response to homelessness.”

They all sit in their comfortable bubble never once asking the homeless themselves how they feel.

Yesterday I asked Dave Butler and Rebecca Reeder what they thought about tents. They were one of the couples that got housing at the end of our tent community only to be quickly thrown out because they had dogs… something the facilitators of the housing program knew full well. At the end of that process they were just trying to jam people into houses as fast as they possibly could.

Dave said, “At the end of the day a tent is better than sleeping under a bridge or out in the rain. That sucks.”

That pretty much says it all. You don’t need a fancy blue ribbon panel of elitist intellectuals to come to that obvious conclusion.

Intellectual, wealthy, powerful people have always loved to create policy that suits them and hurts the poor. Sadly, it is a scene in the theater of human history that gets played out over and over again. They never seem to learn.

We know what Keith Stahl, the director of residential services at Community Support Services Inc. believes because he has told it to me at least twice: “The street is motivating.”

I’m sure he is thinking, “Dave, if you hate sleeping night after night exposed to rain and snow with no shelter you should get a house.”

He got a house. And then he was thrown out of it because he had a dog.

These are the messy parts of reality that governmental systems try to sweep under the rug and hope we never question. They will attempt to spin it that Dave and Rebecca have somehow failed the system. The system certainly didn’t fail them. “The system works” is a motto they love to repeat endlessly.

The Akron Beacon Journal editorial board article begins with the words “Sage Lewis”. They are attempting to turn my name into a villainous phrase. “Sage Lewis” A trouble maker. A fool. A person who is causing more harm than good. “A person who hasn’t moved the needle”, as the mayor has said in an editorial that also included my name in the first sentence.

It’s not about the homeless for them. They don’t care about the homeless. It’s personal for them. Our movement is making a dent in their decades-long complete and total control. They don’t like anyone saying anything even slightly different than what they are saying. It’s shocking to them that they even have to deal with this annoying topic of homelessness.

It hurts their egos that have become fragile over 30 years of no one ever standing up to them in a public way.

“The homeless”

We, as a community, will never even begin dealing with this human rights atrocity until they begin their articles with the phrase “The Homeless.” Not “Sage Lewis.”

I am not the problem. The problem is that we have people suffering and festering on the streets with nowhere to go. The problem is not that they have an activist trying to solve their systemic problems.

The problem is that the system does NOT work. It needs severely retooled.

Just because they don’t like tents doesn’t mean that American citizens who have lost everything have to suffer because their sensibilities are hurt.

The homeless are the ones dying in the streets, in the backyards, in the abandoned houses and in the sewers.

Their feelings will recover. The homeless are dying.

But saying this is all pointless. They are The Borg. They are now the system. The system is now them. Any other input does not compute and therefore is wrong.

“The system works.”

If the system doesn’t work for you then it is you that must end. Long live the system.

We have to move around them. The system is merely a rock in the river. We are the water.

We have to use tools that ignore their machine language “if then” statements. They have lost their way. They have lost their humanity. They have lost their very ability to adapt and learn. Their program has been written and there is no room for new code. They are “the Collective” called the government. The only way we will solve the actual problems of the world is to work around them while they fight us every step of the way.

We are on the right side of everything good and meaningful in history. Every great thinker, philosopher and spiritual leader would stand with us. Jesus, the man they pray to every single city council meeting, would stand with us.

We just have to continue to do the work.

In 1935 Akron became the home of AA.

Akron will become known as “The Recovery City.”

It is in our DNA. It is in our heart. It is in our soul.

We will be the city that teaches the rest of America a new form of recovery. A recovery for homelessness. A recovery for opiates. A recovery for systemic hopelessness.

This is our true Renaissance. Not a pseudo Renaissance artificially created by 15 year housing tax abatements.

The real Renaissance will be profound, revolutionary and innovative.

It will be a Renaissance created by the people in spite of the government who can’t see the forest for the trees.

And once we do all the work, I assure you they will take all the credit. They will say it was their idea all along.

But that too is just the way of the world. The credit is irrelevant. All that matters is the work.

People are living on the streets because the system is a blunt force tool. It is a hammer that thinks everything is a nail.

Homelessness is complicated. Homelessness is a condition.

They need to stop talking about me and start talking about the actual problems in their city. But that’s how they do it. They attempt to assassinate the character of their enemies in hopes of confusing the people and getting away from the real issues at hand.

We will not waiver. We will not quit. We are right. They are wrong.

We will be waiting for them on the the right side of justice and humanity once they wake up from their zombie trance and realize they can’t ignore their actual problems because it makes them feel icky.

(The featured image is a picture of a statue at the National Prisoner of War Museum, Andersonville National Historic Site, Georgia, United States.)

 

A setback that was meant to be

I came to work yesterday to find our porta potty completely burned to the ground.

Fire is a powerful force.

If you had not known there was a porta potty sitting there the day before you would have just thought that you were looking at a small fire.

Except the windows around the porta potty got so hot that they blew out. Black smoke went up the building.

This was the remains:

We believe this was the work of an angry person that we had kicked out.

It’s easy to cast blame on the homeless, the drug addicts, the drunks.

But nothing like this happened when we were a fully running village.

Ask anyone who was around when the village was fully running and they will tell you the exact same thing: It was never like this.

I’m telling you: the city of Akron destroyed the community these people created and took with it their dignity, hope and their very humanity.

They know not what they did.

So, we are left to clean up the ashes and move on.

The fire department and I had a long talk yesterday. We were both concerned about this incident. The lower level of the building has not been yet granted its occupancy permit.

So, together we made the decision to temporarily close down the lower level until our occupancy permit has been finalized.

I believe we are looking at 1 to 2 months work.

By temporarily closing that level we will be able to much more easily do the work that is needed to get that level where it needs to be.

IN THE MEANTIME: we are going to move our day center into the back yard.

This is going to give us all projects to work together on. And it is also going to give us a chance to think about what we want the back area to be where the tents once where.

We are going to need to think about where we are going to temporarily have our clothing room and our food pantry.

Between the red house and the upper level of 15 Broad street we will still have laundry, bathrooms and showers.

For now, instead of coming down the right side of the building, come down the LEFT side of the building. We will be in the back area doing our work there for the time being.

This is actually a nice time of year to be outside.

I truly believe every step of this journey has been pre-ordained. I truly believe we are all on a spiritual journey that is going to come to a place of profound salvation. We just have to keep walking the path.

So, come check out what we are working on in the back yard. If I know the homeless, you are very likely to find something cool and beautiful.

 

 

How I ended up running a drug house

One of the issues I struggle with when talking about homelessness is the blanket thinking about the homeless.

“The homeless.”

That’s like saying “What are we going to do about “the people”.

There are so many different kinds of people in the homeless community.

  • Some have mental health issues
  • Some have drug issues (which really needs to be broken down by drug type)
  • Some are alcoholics
  • Some don’t have any mental health or addiction issues at all
  • Young people
  • Old people
  • Various races
  • Veterans
  • Families
  • Chronically homeless
  • Newly homeless

It goes on and on.

That’s why “the system” of homeless services breaks down at some point. Systems are very rigid and are one size fits all. So when you don’t check all the right boxes of the kind of person the system caters to then the system spits you back out onto the street.

My belief is that ALL humans deserve some sort of shelter. Being a drug addict shouldn’t make you exempt from having some place to sleep. Akron native Jeffrey Dahmer got 3 hots and a cot and HE ATE PEOPLE!

So, I wanted to try my hand at sheltering people with active drug addictions.

I started letting them into one of our houses because I no longer have a place to put people in tents.

Do you know the phrase, “trap house?” I hadn’t ever heard of it before doing this work. But I know EXACTLY what it means now.

A trap house can be many things.

For example, I’ve seen a drug dealer go into a house and offer the owner of the house some drugs in exchange for getting to stay at the house. Eventually, the owner of the house gets in debt to the drug dealer. Then the dealer takes over the house. He moves all his friends into the house and the actual owner of the house becomes “trapped” in his own house.

I’ve seen a person who lives in the suburbs rent the kitchen of a house in the inner city to cook meth. The other residents of the house get trapped in the house because they are now stuck in a place that’s cooking meth (and they can’t use the kitchen, which is its own kind of annoying).

But mostly I see houses where people use drugs. Drug dealers show up. And drugs move in and out of the house. There are used needles everywhere.

A trap house is hell on earth.

The mayor has publicly said “living in tents is simply beneath human dignity“. He should spend some time in a trap house. He’s got them all over his city.

It is very common for people to move into a tent because they are sick and tired of the bullshit that goes on in the trap house they currently live in.

And they are everywhere.

We have a huge drug issue in Akron. And it’s all being run out of these trap houses. A lot goes on behind the walls of the houses of Akron that “proper” society can’t imagine.

Trap houses are dark, evil places.

Severe drug addicts become zombies. Nothing matters. Lying, cheating, stealing, violence. It all makes sense when you are in a deep, dark addiction.

Lying is the worst of it.

Lying makes up look like down. It makes even a sober mind question the essence of reality. Where does the truth stop and the lies begin? Does truth even exist anymore? It’s dizzying.

Without 24 hour surveillance and a highly secured building where only the residents can get in and out, a place where active drug users are allowed to live will turn into a trap house.

This is the food chain of homeless shelter options from bad to good.

  1. Trap house
  2. Tent in the woods
  3. Tent in a sober village with security
  4. Tiny house in a secured village
  5. Sober group transitional house
  6. A house or apartment of their own.

A tent is not the lowest point of shelter. A trap house is. (I didn’t include a homeless shelter in here just because you can plug it in at any point in the continuum. It’s always an option for some people. And it’s not an option at all for other people. Some people can’t or won’t use a shelter for many reasons.)

I have an A B C concept of transitional sheltering for homeless people.

“C” is living in the woods in a tent. You aren’t ready to engage in a community. You are still using drugs and not getting help for your mental health issues. But you are also tired of living in a trap house. A shelter won’t take an active drug user or drinker. That’s why you need tents in the woods.

“B” is living in a tent or tiny home community. This should be a drug free / alcohol free community where people are required to contribute to the community a certain amount of time each day. You also need to be working on your housing, mental health and addiction issues. You can drink and use drugs. But you can’t drink or use drugs in the community. You also have to be sober while you’re in the community.

“A” is a sober transitional house where you pay rent either with cash or working in the house or a neighboring homeless community. You are highly engaged in your mental health treatment and addiction treatment. And you are working on a realistic housing strategy. Any kind of drug or alcohol use in the house will immediately get you kicked out of the house and you’ll be moved back to the B Level.

A person can move through A B and C levels over and over again as they work on their homeless recovery. You need all 3 aspects for the program to work. I’m telling you: You need tents and a homeless village to help people transition out of homelessness. 

Homelessness is a condition. It is not simply the lack of 4 walls and a door.

But a trap house is not part of the homeless recovery program. You are never more homeless than when you are living in a trap house.

I simply do not believe you can take a regular house and make it a shelter for active drug users. It will become a trap house every single time.

So yeah. I ended up with my very own trap house.

A lot of landlords are proud owners of trap houses all over Akron. 50% of our housing stock in Akron is rental property. Of course wealthy landlords are running trap houses. It just happens.

Fortunately for me, I know a lot of homeless people that don’t want to live in a trap house. They want to live in a house that is safe and nice.

We kicked out every single person living in this drug house I created out of good intentions. We are cleaning it and painting it from top to bottom.

No one will be able to live in any of our houses that aren’t actively working on addiction recovery in a certified program and also working on their mental health issues with a mental health professional.

Gary Mikes, who is an incredible example of what a person can become in their life, told me from the beginning that I should not let drug users in any of our houses. But I’m a slow learner. I learn best by failing.

Now I know. I’m not going to be running “wet houses” any more. You just can’t do it in a regular house.

I still have a strong desire to shelter ALL homeless people. But right now I’m doing it in the woods. And I’ll send them to one of the many trap houses in our community if they haven’t gotten sick of that lifestyle yet.

 

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