Sue Johnson reacts to a song at My Sister
story by DEBORAH RUDACILLE, photos by FERN SHEN
The hardest part of being homeless is not the cold. Nor is it being harassed by the police, even though “sometimes you can barely walk and they tell you to move on,” says 54-year old Mark Shumann. It’s not even the constant threat of being attacked said Schumann, though he has been robbed and beaten two times, once badly enough that he had to be hospitalized.
The absolute worst thing about being homeless, the former meatcutter says, “is the depression and self-loathing. You beat yourself up more than anyone else can.”
Shuman was part of a group of artists, activists and homeless persons gathered last week at My Sister’s Place on West Franklin Street to talk about those feelings of despair and how art can help heal them.
The temperature in Baltimore that day had plunged below freezing for the first time this year, heralding tough times for Baltimore’s rising homeless population: could singers and poets with stories from the street warm up the room?
“Ending Homelessness through Artistic Expression and Social Action” was the second of a series of events held this month to commemorate Homeless Persons Memorial Day on December 21st, the longest day of the year. The event drew about forty people, many of them dressed for the weather in layers of clothes, knit caps and winter coats that they kept on throughout the hour-and-a-half forum.
Monica Hardy
Attendees nodded in recognition, as poets Joyce Lewis and Robert Harris read their work and talked about their years on the street. “I came to Health Care for the Homeless in 2006,” said the 59-year old Lewis. “I was sick, homeless and addicted to crack cocaine. Sometimes I wonder how in the world I was able to pull through with all the baggage I had.”
She credited staff at the agency with not only helping her put together the documentation she needed to get medical assistance and to overcome her addiction—she’s been clean for three years—but also for introducing her to writing. “I just happened to wander into the writers group one day,” she said “and I started writing poetry. I had so much inside me bottled up that I needed to say.”
As Lewis read her work, Monica Hardy, 57, and homeless for ten years nodded. “I know what that feels like,” she said. “I done slept in a bum park many a day.”
Harris, 38, introduced his poem “She Fights On” by saying “I know what it’s like to be a homeless man but I think it would be even harder to be a woman.”
He talked about his own years as an addict and his resistance to accepting the help of family members even after he got clean. “I wanted to do everything myself,” he said. But when his brother offered to recommend him to his employers, he was able to secure both a job and a home in the building where he works as a maintenance man. “I’ve had my place for almost a year now,” he said to applause and exclamations of “praise God” from the audience.
Robert Harris waits to read his poems at Baltimore's My Sister's Place.
Joyce Hart, unemployed since October 2006 and homeless since March of this year, showed her paintings of flowers and animals and talked about how “art therapy at My Sister’s Place has helped me not feel so overwhelmed” by circumstances. “It also breaks up the monotony of applying for jobs and spending the day trudging from place to place looking for work,” she said. Hart lost her home when she was unable to keep up with both the mortgage and condominium fees on her property. Trained as a pediatrician, she is currently volunteering with the Consumer Protection Division in the Office of the Attorney General.
More and more people homeless in Baltimore
According to the January 2009 census, approximately 3,419 people were homeless in Baltimore City at the start of this year—“twelve percent more than 2007 census,” pointed out Antonia Fasanelli, executive director of The Homeless Persons Representation Project. Fasanelli noted that the true number of homeless Baltimoreans is likely much higher as the census counts only those living on the streets or in shelters, not sleeping on floors and couches in the homes of family and friends. That’s the situation that Sue Johnson, 57, has been in since 2005 and it’s far from pleasant.
Johnson, who began to weep softly when folk singer Caleb Stine played his song, “Doing Time in Baltimore,” said that she is currently sleeping on the floor at her niece’s house—and paying $300 a month for the privilege.
“I used to live near the Perkins projects in East Baltimore,” she said, “but then the rent went up.” She stayed with her daughter and her sister for a while, and she’s also lived in shelters. Right now, she is a client at both Health Care for the Homeless and My Sister’s Place and hopes to move into housing by February. She wishes that she could draw or write about what she’s been through but she has arthritis in both hands and a stroke has left her without much ability to set her thoughts down on paper.
“It’s very sad to me,” she said. “The one thing I got left is patience and that’s getting ready to run out.”
Caleb Stine performs. Peter Bruun, of Art on Purpose, listens.
Mark Schumann spent two years on the streets after losing his last job due to his disability. “I called in sick and they fired me,” he said. Unable to make his rent, he was evicted from his apartment and after staying with friends with a time, he wound up sleeping on the courthouse steps and in church stairways. “They let you sleep there if you get up before they open up in the morning,” he said.
Six months ago, Schumann checked in to the Code Blue shelter on Guilford Avenue. He’s been feeling more optimistic about his future since he began doing advocacy work at Health Care for the Homeless. “I feel like I have a purpose and am doing some good,” he says. Even though he is disabled and gets a monthly SSI check, he wants to work. “I’m thinking of getting trained in something that’s not physical, like computers. I want to get an education,” he says. “I’m not done working.”
He sees people at the shelter doing art all the time, he says, not as part of a class but for simple self-expression. “I just watched a guy doing pencil sketches this morning.”
“Artistic expression is therapeutic,” said Adam Schneider, a caseworker at Health Care for the Homeless. “And words and ideas can inspire change.”
