August 2011 Editor's Note

I was walking to my car near the greyhound station on 19th and Curtis when he stopped me. He muttered something about being cast out and did I have 50 cents. I didn’t, but I made a firm stop to hear him out—not the turn-your-head-over-your-shoulder-and-say-no-as-you-walk-past routine. I think he liked that, so he walked with me for a bit. 

It was cloudy and cool and I welcomed the strange company. He chattered on relentlessly. Something about getting anchored in hell; some strange mixed metaphor about getting married. Beneath a patchy beard I noticed a pinky-wide smooth patch of skin that ran horizontally across the left side of his throat, right down to his Adam’s apple. A thought raced through my brain before I could stop it. The thought was that he must have spent some time doing that. It wasn’t a nice, neat cut. It was wide, like he worked at idet with a plastic knife or something, desperately trying to cut something out.

I don’t know if he noticed me notice this about him, but a minute or so later in his stream of consciousness monologue, he just out of the blue said, “See, this is where I tried to kill myself because I hear voices.” A short pause, then he continued his monologue. 

A month ago I would have assumed he had schizophrenia, but just as we were parting a different thought started to take shape in my brain. Speculation. The way you inevitably start to build a story for the people you meet, filling in the empty spaces to make a cleaner, or at least more complete, picture. This thought taking shape went back to an issue that Street Roots (the Portland, Oregon street paper) wrote about in June, and that we’re exploring again in this edition of the Denver VOICE—Traumatic Brain Injury. 

Nick Patton, the person interviewed for their story, had a severe brain injury. He was homeless, and for years was passed off as schizophrenic. He heard voices and was given anti-psychotic medication to no avail. Only after several years did a doctor discover that small seizures, stemming from an old traumatic blow to the head, were causing the hallucinatory effects. He is now being treated with anti-seizure medication that is helping to control the voices and hallucinations.

Researchers and caseworkers are beginning to see brain injury as a more prevalent diagnosis for many homeless individuals. On the extreme end, one study in Ontario said 98 percent of homeless participants had experience traumatic brain injuries. Several other studies (cited at length in “Getting Ahead of Homelessness” on page 7) demonstrated significant correlation as well. 

While well short of preventing homelessness, being aware of this potential diagnosis can create a clearer picture of what people are going through. Brain injuries can cause victims to appear drunk, drugged or mentally unstable. They can cause people to become irrationally aggressive or loud. The things that generally make up negative stereotypes of homelessness might really be symptoms of a severe injury, and if we can start to identify those symptoms, we might be able to help people recover. 

Like Nick Patton, the man I met the other day might not be “crazy.” I can’t say and personally can’t do much about his individual case, but as a community of homeless service providers, we should coordinate our efforts and improve our ability to identify these cases. The evidence for how pervasive brain injuries are among the homeless is irrefutable, and we’ll have far better outcomes for the people we serve if we’re treating the right problems.

Editor's Note

By Tim Covi

Photograph by Adrian DiUbaldo

Our first thematic issue of the year, this month’s paper examines a heavy topic: hate. Our writers look at hate crimes against the homeless, hate and Christian churches, and in an interview with author and activist Derrick Jensen, we look at why hate is so prevalent in our culture. It’s this last topic that I want to reflect on for a minute. 

One of my strongest memories of hate consists of guns, grenades and a yarmulke. In my mind, these things didn’t go together exactly, but there they were, standing on a hillside, pugnacious and bellicose. I was a green journalist only two years out of college and had a lot to learn about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a lot to learn about people. 

It was my first time in Israel and Palestine, and I guess at the time I was standing somewhere in between the two. There was Israel on the left, just a few minutes away. And there was Palestine under my feet, commonly called the Palestinian Territories.

And then there was the settlement, the in between. Mounds of dirt had been plowed up into a massive pile blocking what was once a road. Barbed wire fencing stretched across the path. A man who was armed like Rambo came zigzagging down the opposite side of the barbed wire fence until he was just a few feet away. His accessories consisted of an assault rifle slung over his arm, a handgun in a hip holster, a radio perched on his shoulder and a grenade clipped to a sash across his chest. It was the grenade that got me. “What the hell is he going to do with the grenade,” I thought to myself, “This guy is crazy.”

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Stuck to the Streets for Healthcare

By Tim Covi

Here’s a story. I recently sat down with a man who is homeless, expecting to talk a bit about life—how he landed on the street and what his hopes, goals and plans were.

The reasons people are homeless are as myriad as their personalities. I’ve heard stories of complete crap luck, stories of personal triumph, stories of one bad decision after the next. I’ve heard stories of people becoming homeless because of healthcare problems, because the costs drove someone out of house and home. But what I had never heard was someone remaining homeless because of health insurance—being held hostage in this state of homelessness for fear that, if they find a fulltime job, they might not be able to afford health procedures that are covered by indigent care, and that their health situation could worsen, causing them to be unable to work and to become homeless again. This was a disturbing new twist that left this already-cynical editor slack-jawed.

Then after a minute I realized there was nothing to really be surprised about—just disappointed in the way we provide care in our country. And I’d like to share that disappointment with you in hopes that when healthcare policy is discussed, you’ll think about this gentleman and the crazy trap he’s ensnared in. Stay homeless and get surgery, or find a job and gamble on the cost of surgery. There’s a lot more to look into; it’s never that black and white, and down the road I hope to make this the subject of a more complex article than can be written here.

Here’s the story. For the most part it’s a lot like thousands of other stories from the past few years. Guss (not his real name) became homeless after he lost his job.

He looked for work and lived off of savings for several months, but eventually couldn’t afford his house any longer and had to short sell it.

He relocated to Colorado hoping to find a slightly better situation. “The homeless system in Las Vegas was violent,” he said. “No sense of civility at all. It was just, literally people snaggin’ food from each other. I decided that I liked Denver, so I got some bus money together and came here.”

He was in an accident two years ago. He received a settlement at the time, but within the past year other injuries started to surface that were related to the initial trauma. He needs knee replacement surgery, a piece of bone removed from his neck and minor wrist surgeries. He said he’s up to five small surgeries and one major one.

Having worked as an office manager and lived a middle class life, the jobs he would like to get, the jobs he’s been applying for, are middle class jobs making a decent income, but not so large that he would be able to afford $250,000 in surgeries—the estimate he gave for all his needed procedures—without stellar health coverage.

In his current condition, if he gets one of these jobs he might not be able to work long before needing surgery, and at that point he wouldn’t be guaranteed affordable healthcare. So his options sound like: suffer through homelessness and hope to get surgery within a year through indigent care or a similar program (bad), get a good paying job and hope to afford healthcare (risky), get a mediocre job and hope the bills don’t put you back on the street (risky and bad). Is there a right course of action here? How have we created a system where working people can fall into medical bankruptcy, and where someone who is homeless can’t make a good choice about their future?

Editor’s Note

By Tim Covi
2010 was another record-breaking year for the VOICE, and we want to thank everyone who helped us along the way. In August we were in the red, struggling to find the funds to keep our vendors in papers and our papers in print. I guess all conflict comes with resolution; non-profit management is no exception. Thanks to our avid fans, loyal readers and the hard work of our benefactors, we managed to pull out of the red and we’re back in the black as of mid-December. We have turned a corner, but we have a lot of hard work ahead.

A particular thanks goes to two Denver businesses that helped us immensely by generously hosting fundraisers for us. The law firm Ridley, McGreevy, Winocur & Weisz held their annual Parade of Lights holiday party in our honor, raising nearly $1,000 in an evening for the paper. Shortly after, Marlowe’s closed their restaurant for an evening and hosted a year-end celebration for us with an amazing spread of food and wine. They raised $14,000 for us that night!

Our annual budget is $300,000, and with that money our vendors collectively earn $360,000 or more each year. We put more money into the community than it costs us to operate.

In 2010, our vendors broke their sales records yet again. With your help, we distributed nearly 16,700 papers in September, our highest sales yet. Vendors report earning an average of $2 per paper, so in September you helped put more than $33,000 directly into the hands of the poorest members of our community.

We’ve also continued to sharpen our journalism throughout the year, providing you a combination of intelligent local journalism and literary journalism from around the globe. Our reports included direct coverage of the worst oil spill in history from renowned photojournalist Zoriah Miller, as well as coverage of critical regional and local issues. We were lucky to bring on a few more talented local freelance reporters, giving us the ability to bring you more Colorado news more frequently.

In 2011, we’re going to build on the foundation you have helped to fund. We’re becoming even more locally focused, and plan to create a “community page,” a section of the paper dedicated to exploring your local community. From significant organizations to individuals working to improve our city and state, the community page will educate readers about what’s happening and how you can be involved.

Once again, we’re grateful for all of your support and to your commitment while we’ve grown and gone through changes. Please help our vendors stay in business throughout 2011 by continuing to buy a paper each month. Your support is a crucial part of helping people work their way out of homelessness. 

Editor's Note

By Tim Covi

A couple of months back the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) held its annual conference in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the conference was “Global Collaboration, Real Solutions.” Although the conference largely focused on how street papers could collaborate more, the theme made me think about an initiative that the INSP has been working on for some time—getting world governments, large and small, to fully embrace street papers.

“All of our 108 members are social enterprises,” says Serge Lareault, chairperson of the INSP, “providing employment and consequently transforming the lives of many thousands of disadvantaged people across the globe. Simultaneously we engage millions of readers in issues that are too important to be ignored.” The nature of street papers makes them a great asset to any community.

Reflecting on it, I’m amazed that in the U.S. street papers haven’t been included as an element of 10-year-plans to end homelessness, if not embraced by local governments. These plans, which have been created with varying degrees of success in more than 300 communities in the U.S., outline methods to dramatically reduce homelessness and alleviate its impact on the entire community.

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