Due
to the spike in Atlanta homeless murders (one woman had her throat cut by
her drug dealer, another woman in the same camp was shot five times point
blank in her tent), I want to touch on exploitation and partner abuse.
The
number one way for women to extend their life expectancy is to marry well, as
homicides typically happen during narcotics disputes, outside bars after closing
hours, or, especially for women, at the hands of their domestic partner, so the
following client profile is one of the few where a woman gets off the street
despite a mile of Bad Boyfriend decisions that block her path to housing.
Tonya
slept in a church parking lot, ten feet from the soup kitchen entrance and a
hundred feet from her mother's bedroom window at the adjacent senior high-rise.
Depressed, paralyzed on side of her body, with an eighth grade education and
memory lapses that meant she was always losing her ID, she was autonomous
enough to qualify for supportive housing save for one obstacle: the Con Artist
Boyfriend (or CAB as we'll heretofore refer to him).
(I
should note that Con Artists come in all stripes, from the motherly old woman
who bathes her blind friend and then spends his panhandle earnings on crack, to
the younger brother type who cares for a disabled veteran and then empties
his savings).
CAB's
biggest issue was his unwillingness to take bipolar meds. Homeless often choose
not to take antidepressants/antipsychotics because it makes them drowsy, a
huge trade-off when you're always at risk of being robbed or attacked, or
because they dread the initial month where highs and lows are muted to a
zombified flatline. And to be fair, CAB was a lovely person in his manic
phases, charming and helpful and full of the milk of human kindness, wholly
repentant of all the times he dumped Tonya out of her wheelchair, beat her
mother, punched someone in Bible study, or pushed a social worker to the ground
so hard she neededx-rays.
None
of that mattered. Tonya was in love, the way a third grader moons over her
favorite Jonas Brother, and waved away CAB's indiscretions in exchange for a
partner who, to his credit, was extremely intelligent, resourceful, scared off
predators, and took care of her physical needs. On his good days, CAB
would share a mattress with her in the church parking lot and carefully dress
her, pulling socks and pants off her legs behind a truck to maintain privacy,
and then wheel her to a bathroom, for which she shared her disability check and
snuck him into her mother's apartment during the winter months.
When
the doctors first introduced us Tonya had lost everything, no documentation, no
way to access her money, just a wheelchair in a wet parking lot, so we found
her a bed at City Charity #5 (no ID needed! hot meals prepared! a free clinic
on site!). She twisted her head up toward CAB's face, waiting for his
reaction, but even though he encouraged her to spend the night in the women's shelter,
she refused because they couldn't be together.
(side
note: technically she qualified for Domestic Violence shelters as well, but
that would mean her admitting to victim status and entering the black hole of
DV case management, where clients can no longer be located on a physical map.)
Having
her mother live a literal stone's throw from the office helped, so after
sneaking in behind a pest control team, I spoke with Tonya's mom about
accessing social security benefits and, after pushing the necessary papers
through, had her new debit card mailed. This proved extremely useful when Tonya
was hospitalized on Grady's 13th floor (aka the locked psych ward) and I was
able to track down a friend of a friend's tiny office to discuss a discharge
plan. The social worker pulled up a huge spreadsheet of housing options, most
of them small and informal, and handed me the numbers of three little old
ladies (or LOLs, in tribute to the LOLNADs of "House of God") who let
rooms to poor folks on SSI.
The
most promising LOL was a registered nurse with her own van who, after running
a preliminary background check, came to pick up Tonya the next day. Everything
lined up. The room was within Tonya's meager budget, included medical home
visits, and CAB had spent all morning verbally abusing her since he'd been banned
from yet another soup kitchen. We loaded her in the van and breathed a sigh of
relief...for about two hours, when she suddenly returned in tears. Tonya
didn't want to be alone.
The
thought of making any woman share an apartment with CAB felt irresponsible,
sealing them both in a cheap room where no eyewitnesses could de-escalate his towerings
rages. All we could do was wait for her to change her mind. She turned
down the next two rentals we found and eventually disappeared for the winter
when CAB was banned from the church property for fighting.
Enter
covid-19. An angel donor paid for 240 hotel rooms for ninety days, and
a social worker emailed me asking if I had Tonya's ID for a housing referral. I
warned her about CAB's behavior but didn't stop them from seeking respite,
happy a new case worker had taken them, relieved in the same way an exhausted
parent turns to their spouse at 3am and says "your turn".