Goodbye, supportive housing!

[from 1/5/11]

Last week I mentioned that Anitra “Cosigner” Freeman and I have moved out from rooms where we have lived together for 13 years, into a one bedroom apartment in a different building. When I mention that the old place was supportive housing, and the new place is nonsupportive housing, some people raise their eyebrows. “Why, Wes & Anitra? Why would you give up all that warm fuzzy support?”

Was I the kind of kid who hated Teddy Bears? Did I stick pins in them and kick them down stairs? Is that why I reject other people’s earnest efforts to help me through life?

Well, yeah, maybe. I was the kind of kid who could spot the lie behind Teddy Bears. Why do Mommy and Daddy give you a Teddy Bear to hug? Because they don’t want you hugging them.

Those earnest efforts aren’t always what they seem. Let’s talk about what supportive housing looks like to someone like me, someone who hates Teddy Bears. As usual I may exaggerate here and there, for the sport of it.

I got into supportive housing because I was homeless and have PTSD. That’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for those of you who never heard of wars, but I didn’t get mine from Vietnam, I got mine from my parents. The Teddy Bear bastards.

Theory was, an agency would provide permanent housing and also support tailored to my specific needs as one whose emotional wiring has been whacked. They would have professionals on staff for me, who understood me. So, at least, was it presented to me at the time I was offered the place.

I may have missed something in the fine print. After all I was homeless and I just wanted off the street.

However, looking back, I really think the best support I got was help leaving, just this past month.

For example, how is it supportive for someone who has PTSD to subject him to three room invasions per month?

To start, we had one monthly inspection. Because we’re all psychos, you see, we had to be forced to majorly clean our rooms once a month, instead of every Spring and Fall like normal people do. OK, I could see that if we really were all psychos, but guess what? PTSD doesn’t impair your ability to clean. It impairs your ability to tolerate room invasions.

Old time fans of Real Change might remember that Dr. Wes here once dabbled in the graphic arts. This ended roughly 1998, around about the time I moved the art supplies into my room. I set up an easel, laying down old newspapers to protect the floor. The room invaders cried, “Clutter! Awwwk!” Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978. The easel had to be put away, the paints had to be put away, every month.

That and the woman upstairs screamed all night, and once even threw a chair through her unopened window, bringing glass and chair past my window to crash 3 stories below me, while I had flashbacks of Mommy screaming and torturing me. I complained for 2 years about the effect her disability was having on mine. She was finally evicted when staff decided she was too much for them to handle. I didn’t want her gone, I just wanted a quieter room, away from hers. So I could paint between inspections.

Then bed bugs invaded America, and we got an extra invasion per month because we had to be protected from bed bugs. Who’s the real bug in this room, I would ask.

Then we failed one annual inspection by Seattle Housing Authority, done by a retiring inspector who’d gone postal, and it was decided that to prevent that recurring the number of room inspections should increase by another 12, because by now they were just looking for ways to push my buttons?

I’m all for Housing First and supportive housing. But, can these agencies never learn that different people have different needs?

Yearend Snarkoff

Why, Thank You, Brutus (Brutia?) "On Whose Kitchen Floor I Have Sometimes Slept" Freeman! I believe I DO look good in red!

Those were the sorts of snarky remarks I was issuing after Anitra Sweet Thing volunteered me, myself from head to toe, to be the new Real Change Board Secretary. "He takes good notes," she said. And I bleed quite well, also.

I'm actually beginning to enjoy the new role. It's easier on the rest of the board, what with me concentrating on writing and not able to inject witty Wesisms as often as before. I sense their relief, and their relief washes over me as a balm. Also, I am now motivated to increase my typing speed to 15 or 20 words per minute. In the past I could only bring myself up to 11 words per minute, which was my thinking speed. Now I have to match pace with my fellow board members' rattling-forth speed.

Plus, I am less dispensable, because I'm doing what nobody else wants to do. On the down side, it has been a fond dream of mine to be dispensed.

Speaking of what nobody wants, this column is being written four days earlier than usual, and the next one will have to be written a whole week earlier than usual, just because the Editor God Adam "Hyla" expects to take a holiday during the holidays. So everyone, Adam included, has to work twice as fast now, in order to not work at all later. So next week, because of this, Adam is really seriously going to need a vacation. This scenario makes sense to him.

Consequently there is no way either this column or the next can be topical. The next will be so not topical, it might as well consist of 666 words in the defense of solipsism. I've decided to spend my 666 words this time whining about random trivialities that spring to mind. You'll have noticed that I've already begun.

This past month I've whined about poverty, terrorism, genocide, and political corruption. It's high time I whined about things that don't matter.

Bed bugs, for instance. The general consensus in the medical profession seems to be that bed bugs don't spread disease. Not even HIV! So why does the management of my subsidized apartment building insist on examining my mattress every month, even though I haven't ever seen a bedbug in my bed, and have never complained about these nonexistent bugs in my bed? Because they have money to waste paying people to look at my mattress for the fun of it? The state ultimately pays for this, calling it a health issue, but I can't get dental coverage?

[Above: Ugly, but mostly harmless.]

I'm going to whine about the abuse of sirens. I've voiced complaints in the past about the escalation of siren noise levels in response to increased soundproofing of cars. I've tried to get people to understand how dangerous the increased noise is. It creates an atmosphere of emergency all the time that poisons us all emotionally, puts us all on artificial high alert, causes the so-inclined to go off the deep end and act out violently, which in turn creates an excuse for more sirens and convinces people they were right all along in being frightened.

But, really, the other day I witnessed an officer driving a police cruiser down 3rd Avenue at Columbia Street turning on the siren to shoo a pigeon out of the way. Then, later that week, I saw a Medic One vehicle approach Fire Station 10, pull past it, do a careful U-turn, and neatly parallel park next to the station, all with the siren on, so that the occupants could then saunter out laughing. It's bad enough that sirens have got too loud in general. Now we have to bear them being used to warn pigeons away and to lengthen coffee breaks.

Next week I'll continue by whining about things that haven't happened yet. Look out! Inflation! Higher taxes! Fewer services!