Material Values

Every week I work the Real Change vendor desk for 6 hours. Usually it's elementary, if not easy, work. Vendors pay 35 cents for each paper. If I can't work out in my head that at that rate 83 papers is $25.05, no problem, a computer does the math for me. Occasionally a vendor comes in a plunks down $25, and says, "I want what that will get me," and the computer isn't set up to do it that way, and I have to think very hard to figure out that they should get 82.857 papers. But even that's just memorizing your basic times sevenths table.

Then there are times it's neither elementary nor easy, like the other week when a vendor came in with a swollen jaw who'd just been robbed of all his belongings. He said he gave everything up freely to the creeps who jumped him, but they roughed him up anyway.

The police are reportedly stepping up their presence downtown and working harder to stop violent crime, but the issue I see coming up over and over again is that there is no recourse for homeless victims of theft. The injuries are treated in emergency rooms. But if a homeless person has everything he owns taken away, there is nothing done about it.

Amazingly, people think there's nothing that needs to be done. They didn't have anything to begin with. Now they still have nothing, right? They're homeless! That's the way they're supposed to be, right?

No, they didn't have nothing to begin with. They had little. There's a huge difference between having little and having nothing. Let me give some examples, based on my own experiences.

When I was homeless I had little. One of the little things I had was a Radio Shack knockoff of a Walkman, and six cassette tapes. I remember distinctly that for many months there were precisely six tapes. I counted them often to make sure they were all there. I won't bore you with the titles. The important thing is that with those 6 tapes I had a home entertainment system. That's pretty good for someone without a home.

During one bout of homelessness I had a freak Bic pen. It somehow lasted an entire 8 months. It was like the Loaves and Fishes that fed the multitudes. It was like the oil in the lamps that wouldn't burn up. It had the added quality that if you touched it to paper and pulled it away, it released a long filament of ink that could be laid down anywhere. It was priceless.

Another little thing I had was a family album. There were pictures in it from before I was born, going back to 1917, of parents and other family. Honestly, I'm not too fond of my family, but I'm fond of having had one. Having a family, and having evidence of it, enables me to prove to strangers that I am as human as they are. I was born of a woman just like them. I was once very small and am now larger, just like them. This sort of thing is invaluable especially to someone who has no home.

When I was homeless I had more than my memory of who I am, I had documents to prove it. I had Washington State ID, a birth certificate, even a military dependent's card left over from childhood, and a slew of old school IDs I've never tossed.

It turns out that all wage-earning employment and most assisted housing in this country require, by law, proof of identity. Heaven forbid that the poor homeless person you're lifting out of poverty isn't the poor homeless person he says he is.

If I had lost everything, I would have been left without music, magic, proof of humanity, and a way out.