Last winter, Robert contracted pneumonia. He was living outdoors — or “experiencing homelessness” as we delicately say nowadays. He got into the hospital, got a little better and was released.
He got sick again and died. His friends and the fragile social network that supported him held a memorial service in Railroad Park alongside the Russian River.
While we were debating how best to keep poor people from owning a home in Healdsburg and while we were wringing our hands about a high-tech firm taking up all the parking places, Robert died.
Chew on that for a moment while we digress.
Our family owned company publishes four weekly newspapers, and one of them covers west Sonoma County. Last winter, we had gotten into a comfortable pattern of writing about what I called “the homeless outrage of the week” in the little town of Guerneville.
Homelessness is not a simple problem in Guerneville. The population in question ranges from down-on-their-luck folks to severely damaged people who terrify — and occasionally terrorize — locals and visitors. The infrastructure in west county is a joke, held together by the duct tape and baling wire of volunteers and underfunded social services.
We decided to shake things up by publishing a special section on homelessness in our west county paper. We profiled the helpers and the helped, and in the process, changed our own attitudes about the issue. To read the stories, visit www.sonomawest.com and search for “project on homelessness.”
One thing we learned — that I can’t get out of my head — is how many homeless people die. Over about a year-and-a-half, 12 homeless men died in the Guerneville area. Their death certificates read: “pneumonia” or “exposure” or “cardiac arrest,” but in private, the caregivers say that they died from being homeless.
That’s what happened to Robert here in Healdsburg. He died from being homeless.
Homeless people die 20-30 years younger than the rest of the population. That’s one reason we see fewer Vietnam veterans each year who are homeless. Some of them have found housing, but some of them are dead, years before their time.
Robert isn’t an anomaly. A local woman named Patricia died a few years back, also compromised by years sleeping outdoors or in the post office lobby. Right now, those who know believe two of our local homeless people are at high risk of dying this winter of exposure, or pneumonia, or whatever it’s going to be called instead of “homeless.”
Here’s another tidbit we learned from Guerneville. During the four months that the emergency winter shelter was open, no one died.
Can we pull together a shelter here, on an emergency basis? Can we keep vulnerable people inside during the hardest rains, the coldest nights? Can we overcome fears and concerns that it won’t be perfect, that it might be messy, that we might have to drive or walk by it?
Can we save those lives?
Ray Holley is worried. He can be reached at ra*@so********.com.
