“The very first time that it actually sunk in I was terrified,” said Alicia Williams. “I actually said, ‘This is it. This is the bottom. And what am I going to do to get back to the top?’”
At 15-years-old, Williams became homeless after running away from an abusive foster home. She continued school as a straight-A student and competed in school sports until being homeless started causing problems. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, was dirty and had nowhere to go.
Williams was part of the Faces of Homelessness speaker’s bureau for the National Coalition for the Homeless. They shared their personal experiences of homelessness in a presentation on Nov. 16, 2009, in the Glen Dining Hall at Towson University.
After dropping out of school, Williams said she went to the streets sleeping in “Bunk Park,” wrecked cars and old houses.
Williams also said she was fortunate to have not fallen into the hands of predators like prostitution rings. Most people she met on the streets helped her find shelter and were there for support.
“I met a lot of angels in disguise,” Williams said. “Everyone was pretty much positive and they adopted me as a daughter or niece.”
Williams eventually stumbled upon Beans and Bread, an outreach center for the homeless located in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. It was here that she found the help she needed to get back on her feet. She now is living in her own apartment. Williams said she is looking forward to going back to school and starting her life anew.
Another speaker at the event, Penny Callan, shared her experience of being homeless for 11 years. As a child, she had low self esteem and was raped a couple days before her 13th birthday. By the time she was about 25-years-old, she was a single mother of four children and lacked the education and job skills needed to get a decent job.
“Not having the building blocks to be a mother, I lost the kids,” Callan said.
A study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year. This was in 2007, but even then this statistic could have been underestimated due to the amount of homeless that don’t visit shelters or transitional housing.
Callan is still trying to manage stability in her life by volunteering with the coalition and helping others who are struggling in the same situation. She has managed to get back visitation rights to see her kids who are staying with her mother as well.
Homelessness in Baltimore. Photo by Nicole Fallek
These two women, although they struggled, had an advantage over men who were homeless simply because many shelters only take in women and children.
Donald Whitehead, another speaker at the event, told his story of how drug addiction almost ruined his life.
In high school, he was homecoming and prom king, excelled in academics and sports and was voted by his classmates “most likely to succeed.” When “this disease” took over, he was kicked out of school, lost his job, lost his wife and ended up on the streets.
“One thing I remember, I was always lonely, always hungry,” Whitehead said. “Nobody took time to look me in the eye. Many times I just felt invisible.”
After several years being homeless and fighting his addiction, Whitehead had an epiphany. One night he cried out for help and an outreach coordinator, a recovered addict herself, took him to a meeting. Whitehead’s been clean since that day, Aug. 25, 1995.
Today, nine years later, Whitehead has become an advocate for the homeless. He became an outreach worker at the Greater Cincinnati Coaltion for the Homeless, helped increase public education by helping to start Street Vibes, a street newspaper, as well as a public access radio and television show.
Eventually he was elected board president of NCH and is now the Executive Director of the NCH in Washington D.C. He is the youngest, first African-American, first formerly homeless and first recovering addict to hold the position.
His advice for people is to not ignore those on the streets or make them feel invisible.
“Random acts of kindness like handing out socks,” Whitehead said, is a great first start to making a difference.
At the end of Callan’s speech, she said she encourages people to be more aware of how they treat others and educated themselves and others on different forms of abuse.
“Look into the root causes of homelessness such as the health care crisis and living costs,” Callan said. “And be mindful of how you treat others. They may be your guardian angel in disguise.”
[...] Invisible people [...]