Editor’s note: Today marks our fifth annual “State Of Homelessness” edition. This joint project involving nine Northern California Medianews Group newspapers began following a conference call among the editors in 2021.
The worst was the woman who wailed. I never saw her, only heard her cries, usually very early in the morning. So at least once a week, I made coffee with her sobbing in my kitchen.
She sounded so close because she was in a tunnel underneath the road just outside my house, a long concrete chamber with great acoustics that sent any noise – music, yelling, pounding and, yes, wailing – straight into my home like a concert I never wanted to attend. Especially not hers, which were always full of songs so miserable they clawed back open my worst trauma, bending me in pain right next to her.
Even worse were the duets with a man. He spoke too softly to hear, but I knew his words were cruel because they always made her cry louder. And imagining the awful things she was hearing was somehow worse than listening to the very audible fights between the much louder couples throwing “b–ch” and “c–t” between plenty of “f-yous” and all manner of nasty things at each other, pulling me into their volatile relationships to absorb all the trauma they inflicted on each other.
Like the couple fighting in the creek bed just past our backyard fence. While outside enjoying the sun after work, we heard the most horrible screaming, so primal it didn’t sound human at first. Then it sounded like a child, running away from an angry parent. And when it was clear the person yelling was being hit, we looked over the fence to see a woman on her knees, her face covered in blood because a man was pummeling her. We yelled at the man to stop and said we were calling the police, but by the time officers arrived the couple was gone.
And for trying to help that woman, we were punished. Soon after, one tire from every one of our cars was punctured. The trauma was escalating – no longer just emotional, it was becoming physical.
So the next time I saw city of Ukiah crews cleaning out the creek, I walked outside to ask why they couldn’t close off the tunnel with a gate like the one on a pipe further down the creek. “Wouldn’t that save you guys from having to keep coming down here and cleaning it out?” No, that would block the fish. “What if you just put it up when the water stopped?” No, he said. Talk to my boss.
So I did. And he said no to the gate as well, but for different reasons, including, “What if someone got stuck in there?”
In my 15 years covering the city of Ukiah, I’ve sat through countless Planning Commission meetings where it was decided exactly how a development, business or residential, had to make sure they did not adversely affect a nearby waterway by degrading wildlife habitat with pollution or vegetation removal. Yet every day, I watched far more egregious violations occurring in the creek just outside my living room window: Frequent campfires and a constant stream of litter such as batteries, human waste, used needles, buckets of mystery fluids, plastic bags, plastic wrappers, plastic cups, plastic straws, and sometimes even sleeping bags, tents and air mattresses.
For every reason I gave city, county and state officials as to why people should be kept out of that tunnel, I was given at least two for why it wasn’t possible. So instead of stopping the trauma caused to the environment, the wildlife, the people inside and outside of the tunnel, the city crews tasked with cleaning the tunnel, again and again, the police officers tasking with clearing out the people, again and again, and the people pulled out of their resting place with much of their stuff discarded, again and again, the cycle was just allowed to repeat. Again and again.
So I stopped asking for change, because it was clear that having people living in the creek tunnel was just another part of the house I would have to accept, like how when there were ripe berries on the trees over our driveway, the birds pooped them out all over my car.
Then the barefoot man rang my doorbell.
Everything about that afternoon was wrong. I wasn’t taking the dog to the park that night because one of our cats was injured, and I was tending to the wound on his neck when the doorbell rang. Usually I ask who is there before I open the door. Usually I put on my sweatshirt to cover my tank top. But flustered by my injured cat, and thinking it was the neighbor again asking about her missing cat, I opened the door.
And immediately saw the head of a man pressed against the side of the house, as I realized afterward that he knew I wouldn’t be able to see him if I was looking straight out, and he was likely hoping I would step outside to investigate.
But I didn’t, because luckily I had opened the door at an angle, so I saw his face right away, his crazy eyes rolling first to mine as he said, “Hi,” with a creepy smile before looking down my shirt. I slammed the door, then peeked out the window half a minute later to see him, barefoot and wearing only tattered shorts and a t-shirt, climbing back down into the tunnel under the road.
I’m not naming that man, even though I am well aware of both it and his long criminal record full of violent felonies and prison time, because he was not arrested that day he rang my doorbell. Which I soon discovered was not done on a whim. Because along the creek bed near one of our patios, so it would only be seen by us, was fresh red graffiti that told me he had been watching us and our house, and knew I was home alone that day when he rang the doorbell just minutes after my husband drove off with the dog.
Luckily, we had a very strong screen door that is always locked, so the man never got inside. But when I saw that he was living in the creek, I decided to call the police, because I knew I would never feel safe in my home again with him just outside. This wasn’t someone who stole a package or harmed our cars; this was someone who wanted to harm me.
And I’m not saying homelessness is to blame for the trauma that man caused me. But I do blame the ineffectual, and frankly inhumane, treatment of homelessness, which has been allowed to metastasize into an ever-expanding wound that just oozes more and more trauma into not just the tunnel outside my house, but thousands of more such tunnels across the city, the county, the state and the country.
Whenever we told people of the constant chaos swirling just outside our house, they usually asked “why don’t you just move?” And I would think, but usually not say, “Why, so someone else can live next to the creek?”
Because I used to think that the idea of us moving as being the solution was just further proof of why that tunnel exists, and why there will always be someone living in it – because most people think that homelessness is someone else’s problem to “fix.” And until it is “fixed,” they don’t want to hear about it, and they definitely don’t want to see it right outside their house.
But now I think that response to “just move” might actually be the right one. Maybe the solution is to have everyone who lives next to such a tunnel move out so that someone else can experience the trauma firsthand. Because once you live next to the trauma, you will want it – no, need it – to end.
The trauma of homelessness hasn’t been ended so far, we’re told, because it’s a complicated issue, with no easy solution. Just as every human being is unique, so are the circumstances that caused them to live in a tunnel under the road, and so unraveling their route to homeless requires a unique set of tools. Except that no one can agree on what tools should be used, or for who, or for how long.
So I suggest that a good place to start is by clearing out all the places where we’ve allowed the trauma to hide, like the tunnel outside my house. There is no productive reason for allowing these tunnels to exist, as they only serve to give the problem a dark, moist place to fester and multiply in.
Just as the best way to heal a wound is to give it air and light, the best way to begin to heal the trauma of homelessness is to clean out all the pockets where it is being allowed to hide from those who might be able to end it. Because once it is fully out in the open for all to see and hear, maybe then the people with enough money, enough power and enough influence to actually change things, will finally be forced to decide that enough is enough.
Hence then, the article about the trauma of homelessness affects us all or at least it should was published today ( ) and is available on Ukiah Daily Journal ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The trauma of homelessness affects us all. Or at least it should. )
Also on site :
- U.S. government is spending $88 billion a month in interest on national debt—equal to spending on defense and education combined
- Goldfish Is Offering Fans Free Crackers for Tax Day—Here’s How To Claim Yours
- John Travolta Gushes Over Daughter Ella Bleu As She Flaunts Strong Family Genes in Rare Red Carpet Photos