I see the fences are going up around the I-55 underpass at Canton Mart Road. I assume they’ll match the ones at Adkins Boulevard, and that construction will begin at Northside Drive next. It’s my understanding that many business owners around these areas welcome the fences in the hopes that they will put a stop to the vagrancy in the area. There’s definitely a trash problem around them that is frustrating to many of us. In a May 18th Northside Sun article titled ‘MDOT to Fence Canton Mart Plus Northside Drive I-55 Underpasses,’ it was noted that some business owners near the Adkins underpass had asked the city for permission to clean the area up, but were told they could not authorize that. So, not everyone was clamoring for cages.
I get it. I mean — I kind of get it. There’s a lot of trash. It blows all down the road. It’s upsetting to see people sleeping on the concrete wrapped in rags. My youngest daughter had so many questions the first time she noticed someone with a sign. She wanted to know why they need money, why they don’t have somewhere to live, what do they do if they don’t get enough money for food, what do they do when it’s really cold, why can’t we let them live with us, can we give them enough money to buy a house, where are their families, why can’t they live with their families?
I know I didn’t answer her questions satisfactorily — because she still asks them. But I don’t know how to explain this to a child when I don’t fully understand it either — much less know what the solutions are. People panhandling make us all uncomfortable. Do I give them money? Should I not encourage this? Are they dangerous? What if they really are just hungry? We all know the high levels of addiction and mental illness that are associated with homelessness — but we aren’t all social workers who can parse out the nuance in those associations. We’re just folks driving to work or taking kids to school or headed to the grocery when we are slapped in the face with the faces of destitution and desperation and asked to decide if we should give someone money or go buy them food or stare straight ahead and hope they don’t make eye contact. We just wanted to pick up some eggs and milk — not tackle the conundrum of poverty and our responsibility when it’s standing beside our car asking for help. It’s a lot to consider while simply driving from one thing on our daily to-do list to the next. It’s uncomfortable. It’s awkward. It would be easier if they weren’t there.
And yet — they are. Even if we fence off their shade in the heat of summer and their wind break in the cold of January, they still exist. Telling them where they can and can’t go might remove them from our sight line at a stop light, but they and their conundrums will still be walking around, looking for help. Because these are people. They’re somebody’s daughter, someone’s son. Maybe a missing mother or a forgotten father.
There’s the tall, white man with the thick, salt and pepper mustache and goatee, glasses and a hat who’s often at Northside and County Line frontage. And the older black man with a full, gray-streaked afro who has the dancing gait of a small-town preacher pacing past the pulpit and a deep, gravelly voice that I’m sure could sing. There’s the strawberry blonde woman with a long ponytail who stands still and stoically stares out above the cars, her expression is pleasant — never eager or invasive, she never lets the slightest look of disappointment or frustration or anger cross her face when the light turns and no one has waved her over. She smiles as she thanks you, not making eye contact as she quickly returns to the curb.
Recently, there’s another woman who looks to be in her 60s, or maybe her 40s for all I know — I would imagine the circumstances of a life that lands one on the corner asking for money ages you faster than most. She talks the whole time she’s out there. ‘Thank you, God bless you, have a nice day, God bless you, you have a good day ma’am.’ She waves, too, and smiles — my God how she smiles without ceasing. Squinting in the sun, one hand holding her sign and the other waving at every car and talking to every driver taking a sudden interest in their phone or the radio dials, studying the color of the traffic light — willing it to turn green as she blesses them through the window glass too thin to completely block the sound of her voice.
I don’t know these people. I don’t know what hard and complicated things twisted the paths of their lives, turning their feet to the corner of I-55 Frontage Road and Northside Drive. I don’t know what it would take to change that for them. I don’t know what is the ‘right’ thing to do when they are outside my window. Sometimes I give them money, sometimes I give them food and water, sometimes I stare straight ahead, and every time I feel uncomfortable. I wonder what landed them here. I wonder what they really need to reach the lives they deserve.
I wonder what they think about all of us while they’re standing there. I ask myself, ‘Are they really just hungry? Do they want the money for drugs? If I give her money that she uses for drugs will it be my money that buys her an overdose? If I give her money that she uses for drugs will it be my money that keeps her from having to sell some of her soul and her body instead? What if my gift of a granola bar and bottle of water is the kindness he needs to make it one more day? What if my avoidance of his gaze is the breaking point — the last dismissal of his dignity that tips him over the edge from desperation to despair?’ I can’t answer any of these questions, but I’m pretty sure that the day I wish for a fence to make me stop having to wonder about them will be the day I smother something in my soul.
The fences around the Adkins underpass cost around $84,000. The winning bid for the Canton Mart and Northside fences was $246,807. It was decided that it is worth $330,807 to keep the underpasses free of trash and the people who bring it there. The fences won’t fix the panhandling. They can’t place them on the road and all one needs is a curb to stand on. Sure, they’ll keep people from sleeping under the bridge; they’ll stop the garbage from piling up under there. But is that worth $330,807? The fences at Adkins are ugly. Not that an interstate underpass is beautiful to start with but the tall, black, metal grates are decidedly worse to look at than the open, concrete space. So, does this mean we have decided we would rather look at the ugly fences than the unsightly products of poverty? I guess enough people would answer ‘yes’ to that question for the project to have passed muster. But what has our $330,807 really bought us? Less difficult questions from seven-year-olds? A more delightful drive to work? A stop light’s worth of time to check our phones without having to pretend we don’t see the lady waving or hear her, ‘God bless you, ma’am, God bless you,’?
I wonder what Stewpot could do with $330,807? Or Gateway, or Operation Shoestring, or Grace House, or all the other organizations of people trying to help end homelessness by addressing the actual causes of it and building relationships with the people actually experiencing it. From my limited experience with non-profits that work to house people and provide the support they need to thrive—they would make $330,807 do the work of $3,000,000 through a combination of carefully considered disbursement, a knowledge that it still won’t be enough without massive systemic change so they better make every dime count, and magic. They would change lives with it. They would get folks off the street and on their feet in ways that would make those changes permanent. These fences will remove some garbage and guilt from our sight lines, but won’t change anyone’s life or address or outlook.
I am not pretending to know the secret to ending homelessness or addiction or how best to support those with the mental health issues that land them on the streets. I have zero public health or social services expertise and I have no answers for any of this. But I do know that these fences mean we have failed. We have failed the people they are meant to keep out and drive away. We are saying that we are at such a loss as to how to help them that we have opted to block them from our sight rather than invest the time, energy, and money required to address the root causes of their problems and effect actual change in their lives. Out of sight, out of mind — right?
Except they’re still there, somewhere — needing help and deserving the dignity we all enjoy. I can’t scoop them all up and fix their lives for them like my daughter wishes I would do. I can’t stop the construction of the fences or block the message they send of, ‘We have failed you, now go somewhere else.’ But, because of the fences, I know we are failing and I know we have to try harder. So, I will keep supporting the people and groups who are trying harder than the fences and the next check I send to Stewpot or Grace House will have ‘Because of the fences’ in the memo.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
