Man Evicted From Chicago Drawbridge

[Perry Winkle]

Ok this isn't all that current but I thought it was interesting and relevent during the Holiday Season.

Via William Gibson's site:

Originally Posted by CBS 2 Chicago

Anyone who thinks it is impossible to find an affordable place on one of the city's priciest streets -- Lake Shore Drive -- should talk to Richard Dorsay.

For three or four years that's where the homeless man lived. Actually, he lived under Lake Shore Drive, in a wooden shack built into the beams and girders of the drawbridge that crosses the Chicago River.

On Sunday, Dorsay was evicted from his home after another man arrested in suburban Streamwood told police about him.

The reason it was linked on Gibson's blog is that this kind of 'interstitial living' plays a significant role in a couple of his novels.

They leave a lot out of that story. Wonder why the guy was homeless? Is he a schizophrenic or an alkie? Schizophrenics are a truely disturbing segment of the homeless problem in the US today. Many refuse to take their medications and instead roam our city's streets like feral animals. I feel sorry for them. Its not like they can sit around and make good, rational judgements with all that noise coming in from their fillings in their teeth and the messages from God and the devil and the angels. They can be really scarey when in the full blown throes of paranoid psychosis and sweet as lambs a day later. What difficult lives they lead, and they can be very threatening to the rest of us. You'd think we'd come up with a better answer for them than to have them live under bridges, though. I knew one schizophrenic who did comply with his medications, and he was one of the kindest people I have ever met - always trying to help out folks he met on the streets or in the clinic. This got him into trouble often, because the predators would take complete advantage of him. He was also extremely delusional and used to tell me the most incredible stories. Poor man!

The social services system in this country is so bizarre. It heavily favors women who have children with no father around. Many of these women honestly DO need the help. The Dad may have deserted the family or maybe was abusive and the woman has no job skills. Such women and their children really do need assistance, and I don't begrudge them it for a moment. Then there are those who are obviously playing the system. They have kids just to stay on the benefits. These people sour the picture for everyone else.

Single people with disabilities can get really hit hard. If they had low paying jobs which didn't provide private disability insurance, they're just plain out of luck. SSI pays $579.00/month. Some states will supplement this, but many, including Colorado, don't. No one can live on that sum of money. They have to have a housing voucher to make it. Good luck! The US is busily bombing homes then awarding lucrative contracts to W's cronies to rebuild them in Iraq, but forget about our own people back here in the US of A.

The Iraqi's have Halliburten; we have HUD. Guess who gets the home and the first two guesses don't count. What's THAT all about? Why is Abdul so much more deserving than Joe? At least Joe paid taxes before becoming old and/or disabled. Abdul sure as hell didn't and is probably out aiming a sniper's rifle at one of our soldiers right now.

The housing voucher program is being dismantled. Colorado alone will lose 2,000 vouchers by 2010. Where are folks going to go? That bridge in Chicago is out. Where?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well, he wasn't stupid.

Inside, authorities found a home more elaborate than the usual warrens other homeless people have created in the city's nooks and crannies. Dorsay had tapped into the bridge's electricity to power a television, microwave, space heater and PlayStation video game system. There he could relax and, on occasions, turn on a Chicago Bears game, invite friends over and pop open some beers.

Whenever he left, he would pop his head out of the hole to look for traffic. Then he would climb out and go about his routine of panhandling or searching for items to sell at junk yards. He also collects a welfare check.

He also apparently had an alternative.

Dorsay's father came by the police station Sunday to take him to his home in Burr Ridge.

Which is why I wonder if he wasn't a schizophrenic, Bruce. An alkie wouldn't have had the agility to leap in and out of there through traffic like this guy did. Schizophrenics will often devise very elaborate living situations for themselves. The one I knew used to wander the alleys and go dumpster diving for stereo equipment. His entire two rooms that he lived in was a maze of electronic devices, cleverly cobbled together. The Dad may not have been able to handle the son's schizophrenic outburts, so that's why his son wasn't with him. I'm just guessing, here. There could be many other reasons for the man's story.

[wolf]

Perhaps it's clever, but he's still squatting, and should have been redirected to a shelter long ago. I suspect the only reason that the police did anything was the report of a gun. Illinois, Chicago particularly, is funny about guns.

Given the TV and the Playstation, I seriously doubt that he was schizophrenic.

[Brett's Honey]

This was back in 1987-88 and things may have changed, but......back then it was so easy for a single homeless man to get food stamps in Colorado Springs with just a finding address (like a tent by a creek). They could then walk two blocks and sell them for fifty cents on the dollar to a woman whose father owned a restaurant. Then to the liquor store they went...... For food, there was homeless shelter meals, and while there, you could go to a shower room, throw down your dirty clothes, shower, and put on some donated clean ones. My Dad did that there for two years. He rode freight trains to his brothers in OKC and would come to visit every few months.
In OK, you're pretty much always had to be a single mother with kids deprived of support (or at least pretend you are) to get any assistance.

(End note - Dad died on a street in CO Springs from "heart failure" in 1988 at age 48. A very handsome intelligent man who let alcohol take over..the great thing was a nurse in CO Springs who knew she'd seen him before spent three days going through previous admission records, found his identity and called me before life support was taken off. Great person, that nurse.....)

Edited to say: Dad always did love the outdoors and wasn't dirty! He bitched a lot about the folks not keeping the shelters, showers, etc. clean and being more appreciative of them....had to add that after I read my post!
I know some homeless are not that way at all by choice, but I know that some are....

[Trilby]

Most of the homeless around Dayton are indeed mentally ill. The mental illness is usually compounded by substance abuse. It's a very tricky situation and very sad, Esp. with the freezing cold and ice everywhere. A homeless woman with a five year-old boy begged the security guard at the downtown library branch to take her kid home with him the other (freezing) night. Gads. I've got it so good--how dare I bitch about anything?

Originally Posted by Brett's Honey

This was back in 1987-88 and things may have changed, but......back then it was so easy for a single homeless man to get food stamps in Colorado Springs with just a finding address (like a tent by a creek). They could then walk two blocks and sell them for fifty cents on the dollar to a woman whose father owned a restaurant. Then to the liquor store they went...... For food, there was homeless shelter meals, and while there, you could go to a shower room, throw down your dirty clothes, shower, and put on some donated clean ones.

Colorado Springs has changed since your Dad's day. I suspect that even back then it wasn't as easy to get food stamps as he may have made it sound. Colorado's social programs are among the most miserly in the nation. No able bodied single man can get food stamps here these days. Anyone who has the ability to work is given an emergency one time only amount of food stamps (actually food money on their Qwest card), and sent down to work at Goodwill, there after.

You cannot actually sell "foodstamps" since what people get these days is a dollar amount that will only work toward food purchases on an electronic debit style card. Someone with a Qwest card could give it to someone else to buy food with for whatever sum of money in exchange, but the transaction would not be an easy one. I, personally, have never witnessed a single man pull out a Qwest card at a supermarket here. It is always either a mother with her children or a disabled person.

All other assistance is through privately funded charities and they have been overwhelmed by the increase in needy applicants since Colorado has cut its assistance programs to quite literally nothing. There is a soup kitchen downtown that serves one meal a day to the homeless. Various churches and other groups will give out a weekly box of food to those who pass the scrutiny of their screening programs. Ecumenical Social Ministries downtown does still provide hot showers. They will also provide some clothing. Winter shoes and boots are hard to get, however.

I personally witnessed a volunteer at ESM send a schizophrenic boy from Denver, whom someone had dropped off in Colorado Springs, back out onto the street to spend the night, rather than give him a bus pass home to Denver.

The homeless shelter in Colorado Springs is a deadly place, renowned for knifings and rapes. Many homeless people prefer to brave the subfreezing temperatures of a Colorado winter night than brave the shelter.

If a homeless person in this town can come up with the price of a cup of coffee and is able to sit quietly and not disturb anyone, their best bet on a winter night is to go to the Denny's downtown on Bijou Street. The $1.50 or so for coffee will allow them to sit in one of the back booths until daylight.

[wolf]

People who can support a $1000/day crack or heroin habit have no excuse for being homeless.

Originally Posted by wolf

People who can support a $1000/day crack or heroin habit have no excuse for being homeless.

Whaddya mean? The poor things have no money left over for anything else!

PS Do people actually have habits that expensive? Wouldn't they OD or something after the first $500 worth?

[Griff]

He was there 3 or 4 years. Don't they have adverse posession out there? He made improvements...

[wolf]

Originally Posted by marichiko

PS Do people actually have habits that expensive?

Yes, they do.

$500/day is a lot more typical, but the range usually runs between $200 and $2000 for serious users.

Not all of them pay cash. That's why they're called crack whores.

You can't overdose on cocaine, in the strict medical sense of the word. You can do so much cocaine that your heart just says "What the FUCK??" and chooses not to work any more.

With heroin, it kind of depends ... on the strength of the cut, mainly. Sometimes the product is cut so many times that you have to shoot more to get high from it. Also, you develop a tolerance for heroin, so you need more and more just to keep yourself from having withdrawal symptoms between shots.

[Happy Monkey]

What's the strict medical sense of "overdose"?

[wolf]

An overdose is taking too much of anything. Technically this does include taking more than the recommended dosage of something. In that sense I regularly "overdose" on Ibuprofen ... because I take 600-800 mg at a time and the reccommended OTC dosage is 400 mg. This is actually a bit misleading, because the real level of overdose for Ibuprofen is (scratches head) 2400 mg/day? But, I don't take it every day, and prescription dosage for ibuprofen is usually 600 mg.

To die of an overdose, it has to be the action of the substance itself ... you die from too much heroin because you have too much heroin in your system. Same for alcohol. It's more like poisoning.

You die from crack because your heart explodes.

[Happy Monkey]

But doesn't your heart explode because there's too much crack in your system?