The Real Face Of Homelessness

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Likewise in Dallas, where the problem continues to worsen, the homeless complain of cops delivering wake-up calls from their car loudspeakers by blaring "Wake up, crackheads!" and handing out vagrancy tickets. "It doesn't make you want to go and rejoin society," says Gary Jones, 36, a laid-off welder. "What's lower than writing a man a ticket for sleeping on the street? If he had somewhere else to go, don't you think he'd be there?"

Neither cracking down on vagrancy nor Bush's plan to end chronic homelessness is going to help the growing number of families without housing. David and Gina Christian and their four children have avoided the streets by staying in a 600-sq.-ft. apartment at the Interfaith House in Dallas, which provides three months' housing to 100 needy families each year. David, 34, lost his job fixing rental cars in Austin after Sept. 11 when the tourism industry fell apart. Gina, 36, wasn't making enough as a nursing-home temp to cover the family's expenses. The Christians hocked everything they owned--their TV, the kids' PlayStation, Dad's tools--to follow David's old boss to a new job in Dallas. When that business fell apart too, David sold the tires from their two cars to pay for their nightly meals of rice and beans. "I was reduced to begging. I felt degraded, like I was less than human," Gina says. "When I was a child growing up in Watts, there was a 10-month period where we were homeless. I didn't want that for my family." Interfaith has found David an $8-an-hour job as a mechanic at a Texaco station, and now that the Christians are not paying rent, they are able to save a little money. But time at Interfaith is running out. The program already broke its own rule by letting the family back for a second stay.

Given that so many are without a home but have temporary shelter, the real policy debate is no longer about whether society is responsible for keeping people out of the cold--we have agreed it is--but whether it is obligated to give them somewhere permanent to live. By fighting to end chronic homelessness, the Bush Administration argues that we need to give houses to those who are incapable of providing for themselves. The others will have to weather the storm in a shelter, if it can be built fast enough. --Reported by Simon Crittle and Jyoti Thottam/New York, Laura A. Locke/San Francisco, Deborah Edler Brown and Margot Roosevelt/Los Angeles, Tim Padgett/Miami, Melissa August/Washington, Adam Pitluk/Dallas, Greg Land/Atlanta and Matt Baron/Chicago