Homeless and Invisible

George Michael Warren Sr., 18, is going on his ninth month of living in the Independent Living Program House. It is the longest period he has spent living anywhere since he was 12.

Until he was 17, Warren bounced around a lot, sometimes staying with his mother, sometimes his aunt, sometimes his friends—and he’s gone through three periods of living on the streets, or squatting in vacant houses.

Warren was born in Prince Georges Hospital in Landover, Maryland, six miles from where he lives now. The Independent Living Program House is part of the Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a comprehensive program for runaway and homeless youth which operates one of three youth shelters in Washington, D.C. SBY received attention last November when Public Enemy hosted a benefit concert for the organization. “Most of the kids we serve are from D.C. and the suburbs of Maryland,” says Debbie Shore, executive director and founder of SBY. “We serve the D.C. Community, which is in enormously deep poverty, and we work with families [who] come from what is associated [with that poverty].”

“I ran away for the first time because my father threatened that if I made another bad grade, he'd kick me out,” Warren says. After that, he went to live with his mother, but she kicked him out during his 16th birthday party. “I got into a big fight with my mom's boyfriend. I had gotten mad because someone stole all my CDs from the party. He said I was being dramatic. He took a bat out on me and called the police. I didn't stay there again.”

In 2005, one-third of the homeless people in D.C. were children, according to SBY. And in 2007, almost ten percent of the total population in D.C. was homeless. Nationwide over one million youth between 12 and 17 become homeless each year. A large portion of these children return to their families, but a smaller portion—about 50,000—remain on the streets or go into shelters, according to Nan Roman, president and CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“Unlike homelessness overall, which is driven by the mismatch of housing cost and income, youth homelessness comes from family issues,” says Roman, “The kids leave home due to abuse and neglect.”

Warren was homeless for the first time at 14, for a month. The second time he was 16 and out on the streets for a few days. The third and most recent time he was without shelter for a week before seeking the aid of Youthwork. While he was homeless, His mother would let him stow his belongings in a closet at her house, and sometimes shower during the day, while her boyfriend wasn't home. But he always had to leave again.

“[My mom] knew what was going on,” says Warren, who now has a 10-month-old son. “She was worried because she didn't always know where I was staying. Now, she knows I am here, and she feels fine. She has her own life to worry about.”

One large problem uniquely affecting youth homelessness is its invisibility. Young people, no matter how desperate, often have stigmas about panhandling and sleeping in the streets. “Homeless youth do all that they can to not be part of chronic homeless life,” Shore says. “They will couch surf forever, and if they stay on the street, they do not make themselves known—some of them go to school. Young people do not want to attach the connotation of homelessness to themselves.”

Warren says he never panhandled because it’s “embarrassing.” Instead he would stay at friend's houses for anywhere from two weeks to six months, but he always had to move on. It's at those times he would end up on the street.

“It was frustrating,” he remembers. “It was getting cold. My cousin's baby's father would give me food sometimes, or my aunt would feed me.” Asked what he did when there was no food, Warren says, “I don't really remember what I did. I think sometimes I just didn't eat.”

Waren eventually told his brother to drop him off at the Sasha Bruce House, which he had heard about through friends. “I stayed there for a month and a half,” Warren says. “I was really bad at times; I cussed at the staff. But I appreciated them for letting me stay there.”

Warren considered going into Job Corps, a free education and training program that helps young people learn a career, earn a high school diploma or GED, and find and keep a good job. But the locations are outside of D.C., and now that he has a child, he doesn't want to leave. “I always wanted to be a young father,” he says. “My father is in his 50s and has a six-year-old. That's no way to do it. Sometimes I regret having a son; it costs a lot. All my money goes to him and the mother. I got them almost $600 worth of gifts at Christmas. She didn't get me anything. I didn't get any presents at Christmas, even from my mom.”

Warren now attends YouthBuild, an educational program that works with SBY, where he is in the process of earning his GED and learning carpentry. He says his past is now completely behind him: “What happened then doesn't affect me—it just doesn't. In five years, I'd like to be working, have my own place, [and] be living with my son.”

Homeless children very often come from homes rife with poverty and domestic violence, and, according to John Fairbank, co-director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, those problems can plague them well into adulthood. “If you add homelessness to [their situations], the adversities accumulate and increase the likelihood that the youth will struggle with mental health issues like depression, substance abuse, high-risk behaviors, emotional control, post traumatic stress disorder, isolation, and even psychosis.”

ILP life skills coordinator George Montgomery says the maximum stay at the ILP House is 18 months, enough time for the children to get on their feet and get some education on reproductive health, finances, and career planning. Montgomery also does his best to show the youths something their more well off counterparts may take for granted: love. “A lot of their problems have to do with a lack of love,” says Montgomery, an ex-con himself. “They have a tendency to look for it in all the wrong places. [At Sasha Bruce] we continue to love them until they don't want it.”

Lisa Gillespie is a former staff writer for Campus Progress as well as the Managing Editor & New Media Director at Street Sense. She graduated from the University of North Carolina–Asheville.

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