In the past fifteen years, two and a half million low-cost housing units have been

eliminated, and the federal housing programs have been cut seventy percent. Small

wonder people are living on the streets. Governments are balancing budgets on the backs

of the poor."

The statistics flowed forth with no effort whatsoever. This was his life and his profession.

As a lawyer trained to keep meticulous notes, I fought the compulsion to rip open my

briefcase and begin scribbling. I just listened.

"These people have minimum-wage jobs, so private housing is not even considered. They

don't even dream about it. And their earned income has not kept pace with housing costs.

So they fall farther and farther behind, and at the same time assistance programs take

more and more hits. Get this: Only fourteen percent of disabled homeless people receive

disability benefits. Fourteen percent! You'll see a lot of these cases."

We squealed to a stop at a red light, his car partially blocking the intersection. Horns

erupted all around us. I slid lower in the seat, waiting for another collision. Mordecai

hadn't the slightest clue that his car was impeding rush-hour traffic. He stared blanldy

ahead, in another world.

"The frightening part of homelessness is what you don't see on the street. About half of

all poor people spend seventy percent of their income trying to keep the housing they

have. HUD says they should spend a third. There are tens of thousands of people in this

city who are clinging to their roofs; one missed paycheck, one unexpected hospital visit,

one unseen emergency, and they lose their housing."

"Where do they go?"

"They rarely go straight to the shelters. At first, they'll go to their families, then friends.

The strain is enormous because their families and friends also have subsidized housing,

and their leases restrict the number of people who can live in one unit. They're forced to

Violate their leases, which can lead to eviction. They move around, sometimes they leave

a kid with this sister and a kid with that friend. Things go from bad to worse. A lot of

homeless people are afraid of the shelters, and they are desperate to avoid them."

He paused long enough to drink his coffee. "Why?" I asked.

"Not all shelters are good. There have been assaults, robberies, even rapes."

And this was where I was expected to spend the rest of my legal career. "I forgot my

gun," I said.

"You'll be okay. There are hundreds of pro bono volunteers in this city. I've never heard

of one getting hurt."

"That's good to hear." We were moving again, somewhat safer.

"About half of the people have some type of substance abuse problem, like your pal

DeVon Hardy. It's very common."

"What can you do for them?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. There are a few programs left, but it's hard to find a bed. We were

successful in placing Hardy in a recovery unit for veterans, but he walked away. The

addict decides when he wants to get sober."

"What's the drug of choice?"

"Alcohol. It's the most affordable. A lot of crack because it's cheap too. You'll see

everything, but the designer drugs are too expensive."

"What will my first five cases be?"

"Anxious, aren't you?"

"Yeah, and I don't have a clue."

"Relax. The work is not complicated; it takes patience. You'll see a person who's not

getting benefits, probably food stamps. A divorce. Someone with a complaint against a

landlord. An employment dispute. You're guaranteed a criminal case."

"What type of criminal case?"

"Small stuff. The trend in urban America is to criminalize homelessness. The big cities

have passed all sorts of laws designed to persecute those who live on the streets. Can't

beg, can't sleep on a bench, can't camp under a bridge, can't store personal items in a

public park, can't sit on a sidewalk, can't eat in public. Many of these have been struck

down by the courts. Abraham has done some beautiful work convincing federal judges

that these bad laws infringe on First Amendment rights. So the cities selectively enforce

general laws, such as loitering and public drunkenness. They target the homeless. Some

guy with a nice suit gets drunk in a bar and pees in an alley, no big deal. A homeless guy

pees in the same alley, and he's arrested for urinating in public. Sweeps are common."

"Sweeps?"

"Yes. They'll target one area of the city, shovel up all the homeless, dump them

somewhere else. Atlanta did it before the Olympics--couldn't have all those poor people

begging and sleeping on park benches with the world watching--so they sent in the S.S.

troops and eliminated the problem. Then the city bragged about how pretty everything

looked."

"Where did they put them?"

"They damned sure didn't take them to shelters because they don't have any. They simply

moved them around; dumped them in other parts of the city like manure." A quick sip of

coffee as he adjusted the heater--no hands on the wheel for five seconds. "Remember,

Michael, everybody has to be somewhere. These people have no alternatives. If you're hungry, you beg for food. If you're tired, then you sleep wherever you can find a spot. If

you're homeless, you have to live somewhere."

"Do they arrest them?"

"Every day, and it's stupid public policy. Take a guy living on the streets, in and out of

shelters, working somewhere for minimum wage, trying his best to step up and become

self-sufficient. Then he gets arrested for sleeping under a bridge. He doesn't want to be

sleeping under a bridge, but everybody's got to sleep somewhere. He's guilty because the

city council, in its brilliance, has made it a crime to be homeless. He has to pay thirty

bucks just to get out of jail, and another thirty for his fine. Sixty bucks out of a very

shallow pocket. So the guy gets kicked down another notch. He's been arrested,

humiliated, fined, punished, and he's supposed to see the error of his ways and go find a

home. Get off the damned streets. It's happening in most of our cities."

"Wouldn't he be better off in jail?"

"Have you been to jail lately?"

"No,"

"Don't go. Cops are not trained to deal with the homeless, especially the mentally ill and

the addicts. The jails are overcrowded. The criminal justice system is a nightmare to

begin with, and persecuting the homeless only clogs it more. And here's the asinine part:

It costs twenty-five percent more per day to keep a person in jail than to provide shelter,

food, transportation, and counseling services. These, of course, would have a long-term

benefit. These, of course, would make more sense. Twenty-five percent. And that doesn't

include the costs of arrests and processing. Most of the cities are broke anyway,

especially D.C.--that's why they're closing shelters, remember--yet they waste money by

making criminals out of the homeless."

"Seems ripe for litigation," I said, though he needed no prompting.

"We're suing like crazy. Advocates all over the country are attacking these laws. Damned

cities are spending more on legal fees than on building shelters for the homeless. You

gotta love this country. New York, richest city in the world, can't house its people, so

they sleep on the streets and panhandle on Fifth Avenue, and this upsets the sensitive

New Yorkers, so they elect Rudy WhatsHisFace who promises to clean up the streets,

and he gets his blue ribbon city council to outlaw homelessness, just like that--can't beg,

can't sit on the sidewalk, can't be homeless--and they cut budgets like hell, close shelters

and cut assistance, and at the same time they spend a bloody fortune paying New York

lawyers to defend them for trying to eliminate poor people."

"How bad is Washington?"

"Not as bad as New York, but not much better, I'm afraid." We were in a part of town I

would not have driven through in broad daylight in an armored vehicle two weeks ago.

The storefronts were laden with black iron bars; the apartment buildings were tall, lifeless

structures with laundry hanging over the railings. Each was gray-bricked, each stamped

with the architectural blandness of hurried federal money.

"Washington is a black city," he continued, "with a large welfare class. It attracts a lot of

people who want change, a lot of activists and radicals. People like you."

"I'm hardly an activist or a radical."

"It's Monday morning. Think of where you've been every Monday morning for the past

seven years."

"At my desk."

"A very nice desk."

"Yes."

"In your elegantly appointed office."

"Yes."

He offered me a large grin, and said, "You are now a radical."

And with that, orientation ended.

* * *

Ahead on the right was a group of heavily clad men, huddled over a portable butane

burner on a street corner. We turned beside them, and parked at the curb. The building

was once a department store, many years in the past. A hand-painted sign read: Samaritan

House.

"It's a private shelter," Mordecai said. "Ninety beds, decent food, funded by a coalition of

churches in Arlington. We've been coming here for six years."

A van from a food bank was parked by the door; volunteers unloaded boxes of vegetables

and fruit. Mordecai spoke to an elderly gentleman who worked the door, and we were

allowed inside.

"I'll give you a quick tour," Mordecai said. I stayed close to him as we walked through

the main floor. It was a maze of short hallways, each lined with small square rooms made

of unpainted Sheetrock. Each room had a door, with a lock. One was open. Mordecai

looked inside and said, "Good morning."

A tiny man with wild eyes sat on the edge of a cot, looking at us but saying nothing.

"This is a good room," Mordecai said to me. "It has privacy, a nice bed, room to store

things, and electricity." He flipped a switch by the door and the bulb of a small lamp went

out. The room was darker for a second, then he flipped the switch again. The wild eyes

never moved.

There was no ceiling for the room; the aging panels of the old store were thirty feet above.

"What about a bathroom?" I asked.

"They're in the back. Few shelters provide individual baths. Have a nice day," he said to

the resident, who nodded.

Radios were on, some with music, some with news talk. People were moving about. It

was Monday morning; they had jobs and places to be.

"Is it hard to get a room here?" I asked, certain of the answer.

"Nearly impossible. There's a waiting list a mile long, and the shelter can screen who gets

in."

"How long do they stay here?"

"It varies. Three months is probably a good average. This is one of the nicer shelters, so

they're safe here. As soon as they get stable, the shelter starts trying to relocate them into

affordable housing."

He introduced me to a young woman in black combat boots who ran the place. "Our new

lawyer," was my description. She welcomed me to the shelter. They talked about a client

who'd disappeared, and I drifted along the hallway until I found the family section. I

heard a baby cry and walked to an open door. The room was slightly larger, and divided

into cubicles. A stout woman of no more than twenty-five was sitting in a chair, naked

from the waist up, breast-feeding an infant, thoroughly unfazed by my gawking ten feet

away. Two small children were tumbling over a bed. Rap came from a radio.

With her right hand, the woman cupped her unused breast and offered it to me. I bolted

down the hall and found Mordecai.

Clients awaited us. Our office was in a comer of the dining hall, near the kitchen. Our

desk was a folding table we borrowed from the cook. Mordecai unlocked a file cabinet in

the corner, and we were in business. Six people sat in a row of chairs along the wall.

"Who's first?" he announced, and a woman came forward with her chair. She sat across

from her lawyers, both ready with pen and legal pad, one a seasoned veteran of street law,

the other clueless.

Her name was Waylene, age twenty-seven, two children, no husband. "Half will come

from the shelter," Mordecai said to me as we took notes. "The other half come from the

streets."

"We take anybody?"

"Anybody who's homeless."

Waylene's problem was not complicated. She had worked in a fast-food restaurant before

quitting for some reason Mordecai deemed irrelevant, and she was owed her last two

paychecks. Because she had no permanent address, the employer had sent the checks to

the wrong place. The checks had disappeared; the employer was unconcerned.

"Where will you be staying next week?" Mordecai asked her.

She wasn't sure. Maybe here, maybe there. She was looking for a job, and if she found

one, then other events might occur, and she could possibly move in with so and so. Or get

a place of her own.

"I'll get your money, and I'll have the checks sent to my office." He handed her a business

card. "Phone me at this number in a week." She took the card, thanked us, and hurried

away. "Call the taco place, identify yourself as her attorney, be nice at first, then raise

hell if they don't cooperate. If necessary, stop by and pick up the checks yourself."