Midtown Assistance Center Helps James Find His Way Home
By: Tommy Rivers
The sun dips below Marietta Street on Atlanta’s western horizon. James Passers struggles to stand up from his bench outside the Federal Building and then limps away into the dark. Some nights he would wind up in a crummy shelter, hoping no one would steal the shoes off his feet; other nights he just wanders the streets.
James had been homeless for a good ten years. At Midtown we had known him for about three. We had been watching him swiftly deteriorate. We know homelessness is a grinding, exhausting existence and we could see the effects first hand on James as he stumbled past our windows, after a long absence. He was, in fact, a sixty five year old Navy veteran but if you’d seen him you would have thought he was eighty five.
At Midtown Assistance we focus on assisting the working poor through crises so that they can remain in their homes but occasionally we assist homeless people that come to our door, like James.
He rang our bell one day and asked for a snack. He lifted up his pants and showed us his leg, which was swollen and covered with sores. He generally seemed in bad health. It was pretty obvious that he needed medical attention and housing. He needed to get off of the street. Although his snack visit would become the first of many visits, they were by no means consistent. We worried when we didn’t see him for long periods. During his first visit, we gave him a list of medical and housing assistance organizations. Over the course of several years, he became more talkative and we began to learn about his fears and frustrations but until recently he never called any of the numbers on our help lists.
Finally, Jim got in touch with one of the agencies that we had suggested and he was assigned his first case- worker, Sherry. When I spoke with her the other day, she told me that James had received a series of medical treatments which, she said, “contributed to a great improvement in both his physical and emotional well-being.” Sherry went on to say, “I’m not his case-worker anymore. He’s doing so well. He doesn’t need me anymore. His legs have healed and he’s got his own apartment at a retirement center.
They say people get stuck in their ways, sometimes even if it lands them in a rut. Clearly, James had become a creature of his own rut on the street and after a while fatigue and confusion prevented him from getting the help he needed. To add insult to injury, one day security ran him off of his bench, forbidding his return. We could see his bench through our back windows and we knew he had developed a proprietary claim on it. Maybe it gave him a sense of security, false albeit. I remember at one point I thought that he had forgotten what it was like to live a normal life but if he had forgotten, something inside of him must have clicked and maybe he remembered what it once was like to sleep in a soft bed with a roof over his head.