Home Town

He first appeared sometime in the mid-70s.  We thought he might be a vet with PTSD.  In retrospect, he was one of the first homeless people I recall.  Before that we had the term "shopping bag ladies" and before people used the term bum freely.
In my childhood, everyone seemed to have a home.  Maybe not a house, but definitely a home.  Somewhere to go at the end of the day.  A safe place; a campsite.
We didn't know what to make of him because he was silent.  We wondered.  Was he broke? Hungry? Was he well?
When I picture him I see him in shades of brown and black.  He was a white guy, but living on the street can make you filthy in a hurry.  His clothing was tattered; his shoes barely had soles.  He walked...a lot.
People gave him a nickname: "the victim."
"I saw the victim today, " they'd say.  He was down on Telegraph and Ashby, making his way back to College Avenue.  He walked long stretches but by late afternoon always made his way back to the same intersection, or nearby.
Over the years, I gave him money a few times.  I wondered where he went at night too.  There was a door between two businesses on one of the main drags he frequented and I liked to think he opened it each evening and climbed a staircase to a small apartment.  Maybe he's doing some sort of psychological experiment and wants to collect data on how people react to his look, his needs, his presence in their neat and orderly world.  I liked to think that, but I always knew better.
In the decades that followed, scores and hoards of homeless have followed.  It's the visual reminder of the failure of our economic and health care system, isn't it?

Recently a major TV network aired a special on the homeless crisis in Los Angeles.  I thought I knew homelessness from my town, Portland, Or.  I thought I knew it from my many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Los Angeles is every other city times 10. It's been compared to Calcutta, India the scope is so large. Mile after mile of tents and encampments.  One observer has called it dystopic.  Aptly named.  Instead of "Night of the Living Dead" we have "Day of the Living Homeless."
We see the physical change in our urban areas all the time.  The constant encroachment of new apartments and condos, the reconfiguration of streets, the gentrification of communities that force the inhabitants on the periphery of their hometowns and replace barber shops with bridal shops, diners with brewpubs, grocers with baristas.
Maybe Armageddon will arrive not in the form of a massive earthquake, a foreign power, or global warming.  Maybe it's lining up right now on the fringes, in the bushes, on traffic islands and the space between railroad tracks.  They aren't victims and their numbers are growing.