The Thin Red Line

I read an article from the front page of yahoo yesterday that talked about how more and more Americans are dispossessed by the economic crisis, finding themselves on the other side of the thin red line between the reasonably comfortable lifestyle we take for granted and the despair we never thought possible:

For people who cannot afford rent, a car is the last rung of dignity and sanity above the despair of the streets. A home on wheels is a classic American affair, from the wagon train to the RV. Now, for some formerly upwardly mobile Americans, the economic storm has turned the backseat or the rear of the van into the bedroom. "We found six people sleeping in their cars on an overnight police ride-along in December," says John Edmund, chief of staff to Long Beach councilman Dee Andrews. "One was a widow living in a four-door sedan. She and her husband had been Air Force veterans. She did not know about the agencies that could help her. I had tears in my eyes afterwards."

"Cars are the new homeless shelters," says Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) Partners, the largest provider of services for the homeless in Los Angeles County, which had nearly 50,000 people homeless in 2009. Of these, experts estimate that up to 10% live in vehicles - even though doing so is illegal in most of the county. A similar situation is true for many other regions across the nation, especially in the Sun Belt. A woman lives in her BMW in Marina Del Rey, a swank L.A. address on the coast. PATH outreach workers Jorge Guzman and Tomasz Babiszkiewicz say she was an executive recruiter until the Great Recession. "She was self-employed for 36 years," says Guzman. "Now she sits in the car with a blanket and reads. She has not told her daughter."

Back in the eighties I lived in my car for a while. It was a beige Mazda GLC with a brown stripe on the side. I slept behind schoolyards and at rest stops and in K Mart parking lots. I had a job at the Nike Air Sole plant, making about 8.30 an hour. I couldn't get the money together for an apartment and didn't want to tell anyone. Once a week or so cops would come by and roust me. I slept with a baseball bat and once they tapped on the window with their guns drawn. It was a narrow-barrelled black aluminum bat and I guess they thought it was a barrel of a rifle. I showered at the gym and slept in my clothes with a red checked flannel blanket and gloves and a stocking cap. After a few months the car broke down and I created a shelter out of cardboard in a thicket on Swan Island. By then I was making 8.50 an hour picking orders at the office supply warehouse for Boise Cascade. A friend of mine sensed I was in trouble and got me a job at the garbage company, and a few months later I got an apartment. I'd been homeless for a year, part of it living with friends, part of it out of my gym bag or a plastic sack.

Nobody means for that to happen to them. Unless you've been through it you have no idea how quickly your life can spiral out of control. A couple of quick unexpected events, and the safety net you thought you had disappears from under your feet. Before he was discredited by his own series of bad decisions John Edwards used to say on the campaign trail that most Americans are one medical bill or one car repair away from personal economic disaster, from homelessness or living with their relatives.

Our lives are way more uncertain than we think. Even for good people, people who have done everything right. Relationships crumble and jobs get outsourced to someplace far away. Cars break down. Investments fail. Homes get foreclosed. The handsome, strong husband gets sent to a place where reason and law have no say, where the rule of law is replaced by the rule of the Kashkolnikov and C-4 and suicidal fanaticism. He has a beautiful baby boy and a little girl on the way. He should be on the deck grilling hamburgers and on the rug playing with their Legos. Instead the Rush Limbaughs and Glen Becks of the world have him half a world away, defending their comfortable life.

Ask the people of Haiti how quickly a comfortable life can be shaken to rubble. Believe me, it doesn't take an earthquake. Just ten unexpected minutes, or a piece of paper with a letterhead you never hoped to see, and you are shaken to the core. At that moment you feel like you have no core at all, just an empty place where your soul cries out like the silence of the lambs.