When I started working in downtown DC in the early nineties, there was clearly a significant homeless problem. Homeless folk were living all over this area. For a long time, an old couple lived on a couple of benches in the courtyard behind my building.
Then, sometime in the mid to late nineties, most of the homeless disappeared. I don’t know exactly what happened, but there just wasn’t as many of them around.
I noticed yesterday that they’re back in a big way. Near the Metro stops, all along
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In the early 1980s I visited DC and suffered a car breakdown in one of the impoverished neighborhoods near the Capitol. While waiting for a tow, I spent an hour or so watching people warm their hands over burn-barrels in dirt yards, outside homes that were not condemned but close -- windows with zero glass, crooked and knocked-in doors, junked cars everywhere, ragged clothing draped over fenceposts, etc. I was silent and tearful all the way home; my ex assumed I was upset about how our trip came out and it was more than a week before I could find the words to partially explain what I'd really been thinking. Especially since the friend who was with us at the time had been muttering "Geez, how can people live like that? What's wrong with them?"
What, indeed. I still well up, thinking about it.
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