America's Silent War On The Houseless

There is a silent war being waged right in front of our eyes. It is happening across America in so-called “red states” and “blue states.” Its casualties have voted for both major parties. The victims range across age, race, gender, sexual identity, class and nation of birth. I don’t have to know where you live to know the general nature, shape, or rhythms it has taken in your city or town. But I will try to describe to you my particular experience of this war as best I can because it is bloodshed, violence, and a breaking of the last shreds of American conscience we may have left. 

America has decided its houseless are no longer afforded the rights or protections of the Constitution, effectively making them no longer citizens. And as a Black trans queer who was houseless during the 90’s and early years of the millennium, this is a terrifying development in a republic already teetering. 

In your town it probably looked like this: your city or town council, mayor, maybe even your governor decided that the best time to test the most progressive policies around camping in public, drug enforcement for everyday users, open container laws, maybe even license plates, car inspections, or emissions tests stops was right  in the middle of a pandemic! 

 You, as a progressive hip and hot queer, who is staying up to date on what's happening in between learning to bake bread, obsessing about polyamory, trying to figure out zoom for work, or how to protect yourself because you were somehow an “essential” worker at Starbucks, probably felt that in wake of the Murder of George Floyd, the conviction for the charge of murder by Derek Chauvin, I mean- Nancy Pelosi taking that knee and all, that your town, city, blip on the map, was headed in the right direction.

Never mind the fact that  almost 60% of Americans say that if they missed more than two pay checks they would be on the streets, and it is estimated that almost 70% of the U.S population will be renting within ten years. 

Then the CDC and the administration decided it was time to start to ease restrictions, maybe there were next to none where you were or still are, but like most of us you stayed to yourself, and you started to go out masked in the park, or downtown for a walk. You are shocked, I mean almost horrified at the size, the ubiquitousness, and the number of houseless encampments just everywhere. Violence, drug use, and another human being's downfall on display for the public, a uniquely American experience. 

Now, in the last few years, your local or state government has vowed to “clean things up” and as you drive back to the office you no longer remember thinking you had escaped, you watch as highway and city sanitation workers run off individual people and families, destroy their tents, homes really, throw all of their possessions into trash cans, and chase these folks into a nether realm of byzantine government systems, abuse, pain, and the eagerly waiting arms of a law enforcement class hell-bent on protecting property over people. 

How do I know the general outlines of your city's houseless crisis? Because it is happening all across the country at a rate I have never witnessed in my short 46 years spinning upon this weird blue ball of earth, on the speck of dirt we call the USA.

I was houseless from 11 years old on and off and at 13 years old after escaping a queerphobic, violent home in the early 90’s, I spent almost two decades living in America’s hidden places, the shadowland of being houseless. I turned 16 in the summer of 1994 on the streets of Boulder CO in my first poly relationship with no language for it and I had my first “queer” kiss the week Matthew Shepard was lynched. I was Black, underage, queer, not yet out as trans, and vulnerable. I squatted in Alphabet City, cruised Daytona, Miami, hung in my “gayborhood” and South Street in Philly, spent years in the Haight and the Castro, was known on Hollywood Blvd, and frequented any other queer, hidden place across the country where young people like us hid from a world that wanted to exploit, destroy, or ignore us. 

After years of trying to “get off the streets” it happened for me the way it does for most people. And unfortunately, it mostly isn't the government systems we had in place. It was mostly people, community, a few folks taking the time to invest in me, combined with those same systems, a lot of luck, and something that had left me as a teen on the streets: The will not to just survive, but to live.

I wrote extensively about this in my second book United States of Grace in 2021, that the amazing thing about my story wasn’t that I survived, or overcame my miserable lot through the sheer force of Black dynamism or excellence, but it was all of you. A seemingly endless chain of little moments, that became a movement in my life filled with trans aunties who gave me a room or a change of clothes at my lowest, overworked drop-in shelter volunteers, radical organizers, people who stopped to talk to me like a human being, people who told me this wasn’t the end of my story, or that I was cute. You. You invited me into your homes and your lives, and eventually with enough nurturing, enough love, enough repetition, I got the message. 

My life mattered. It was worth living for. 

Several books, almost as many degrees, a long career in organizing for Black and queer liberation across the country, a host of friends, a few good enemies, a couple of strange titles, appointments to boards of historical Black justice orgs, and even a divorce,  show how full my life became as a result of everyday americans’ kindness, and the cultural shelter that LGBTQIA+ neighborhoods are for those of us still trying to find our way. 

In San Diego CA, where I currently reside with my two partners, the local mayor has decided to use the “safe camp” model. Forcing people into fenced, hot, patrolled blacktop parking lots hidden from the tourists and most residents. I can tell you as someone who is currently working on a PhD in history, no nation has ever looked proudly back on the times they rounded up any group of people in camps. 

Back to where we started this article: what those local municipalities are failing to share with you is the planned obsolescence in all of these “progressive and kinder” policies towards America's ever-increasing houseless population. That the people, you and me, decided to slash their budgets. None of this is a coincidence. Depleted and already beleaguered police forces were facing real consequences that qualified immunity had previously protected them from, and the experimentation with more “progressive” laws was budget driven, not justice driven. 

Then, Grant’s Pass v Johnson in a 6-3 decision earlier this year, SCOTUS decided that fining and eventually arresting people solely for being houseless was not a violation of the 8th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. They decided that if you can't afford to survive in America, then putting you through the horrors of the prison industrial complex is not cruel and unusual punishment. They decided that the rights of citizens are going to be for sale. They decided an America where someone like me is possible shouldn’t exist. 

Now the gloves are off. America's houseless will no longer be treated like you and me (unless we can't afford our rent). 

On Tuesday mornings in the Historically LGBTQIA+ Hillcrest Neighborhood I hand out coffee, donuts, a pair of socks, and one Newport 100 to whoever wants one. Right under the giant Rainbow Flag and historical landmark. My partner, a lawyer, and I, a former Lutheran priest in makeup, nails done, hair right, with a clergy collar I haven’t worn in years stand there with a couple of dozen donuts donated from the local Donut Star, and coffee we wake up at 5 in the morning to brew and get ready. We call it Coffee and Class Solidarity. 

We do all this because it is illegal for us to give away food in our city. We could be fined, arrested, and eventually face pretty serious consequences for the simple act of giving a neighbor a better morning. We Americans have become a lot of things in the last decade of American life, but what I never expected was for us to abandon our basic humanity towards a stranger on our block. The path this queer disabled Black trans writer took to the American dream could be forever closed in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities and I promise you we will be the lesser for it. I don’t know the large systemic answers to houselessness in America, but I know that mutual aid like I am doing is a start. I know that real opportunities for us LGBTQIA+ citizens of this country to share our power, our solidarity, and our voice are in front of us in our little “gayborhoods” across this country. I know that the power of you sharing a smoke, a moment, or even regularly showing up with a little bit of coffee and a snack can start to build the sort of relationships that saved my life. 

And I like to believe that the America that saved my life is still alive. Maybe you could lend a hand? 

Written in love and liberation:  rev. lenny duncan