The Coffee Table

There’s No Place Like Home

I was homeless for about six hours on my recent trip to the west coast.  I had to check out of one Airb&b apartment in the morning, and couldn’t  check in to the next until evening.  I had a  clean, shiny, rent-a-car, so I didn’t look homeless.  But I discovered that even if your homelessness is disguised and temporary,  it is uncomfortable.

Fortunately, the Oregon Coast has lots of public beaches where one can walk without being regarded as suspicious.  And many have public restrooms, some of which are clean and have soap. Others are smelly and you don’t stay long enough to investigate soap.  But they are there.  I can barely imagine being homeless in a place where there are no public restrooms and it’s difficult to just be without drawing unwanted attention.

My homelessness was quite temporary. In my fancy car.  That holds my nice luggage and a few groceries. With money in my wallet. And yet I felt displaced.  Uncomfortable.  I just wanted to know, for certain, that I had a safe place to sleep that night. I had an inkling—only the tiniest of inklings—of what it might feel like to not have a home.  I didn’t like it at all.

At one point I parked in a public lot near the smelly bathroom. (I had not yet sampled its fragrance.)  The parking space was small, and exiting my vehicle required some gymnastics. I couldn’t help but see inside the car parked next to mine.  It was chock full of stuff, in disarray, and a man was sleeping in the driver’s seat.  His car was not clean and fancy.  And I wondered if he slept by day and drove at night because the public parking was closed after dark.  Or if he had to find someplace more discreet to park after sunset.

So I got to thinking about homelessness in our nation. 

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness,  “In January 2020, there were 580,466 people experiencing homelessness on our streets and in shelters in America.” 

That’s a lot.

Covid  interrupted data collection, hence the two-year-old statistics. But I’d wager it’s still a lot.

While temporarily homeless, what eased my anxiety most was the money in my wallet.  If homeless folks had the means, they could secure housing.  And sustenance.

Andrew Yang, presidential candidate in 2020, popularized the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI)—at least temporarily.  Folks who write for the International Journal on Homelessness (IJOH) have apparently not given up on this idea. 

A 2021 article in the IJOH noted how in UBI experiments people were not forced to choose between rent and food.  And the “U” in UBI guarantees that nobody is excluded. As the article explains,  using the safety nets our nation currently has in place to help the homeless, “people who are not disabled enough, are not poor  enough, are not  old  enough,  are  not  able  to  work  enough,  or have  not  previously  worked  enough  are  deemed not  deserving  enough  and  are  left  to  fend  for themselves.”  But UBI is non-judgmental.  Everybody qualifies.  

My son talked to me about UBI long before Andrew Yang began his presidential campaign.  Hence, the seed of the system’s possibilities sprouted in my brain years ago.  But after being “homeless” in all my prosperity, for just a few hours, I felt ashamed that our nation allows homelessness to happen for real, and concluded that experimenting with UBI as a solution seems logical.  And viable.  And I, for one, will expect my candidates for office to support it.