I was homeless for a year on March
2nd after leaving Laurawood Arms, a USDA/HUD apartment complex in Soldotna,
Alaska for senior and disabled people where I had been mobbed for several years
by a retired cop who is associated with the DPS, along with his wife. Then they
went after the new staff when they left and manipulated the son into place who
had a burglary conviction and massive issues so he was not able to function in
his job. It was psycho-city and they organized elderly women, many with
dementia to participate in their bullying. There were other issues like smoking
in the apartments. The place was just nuts. I stayed for years trying to get
the problems fixed, a governor's staff and several agencies allowed the
problems but one agency was manipulated by the cop and his sick family. So my
homelessness for over a year now was forced by them, the management company and
the owners of the property. Just like all agencies the USDA is corrupt as hell
no matter what division you are dealing with and the laws have been written so
the corporations are in charge, so they claimed helplessness while offices in
other states said they were supposed to be giving the bastards fines.
I was at Brother Francis Shelter in
Anchorage Alaska since the first part of March until last fall when I was run
out of Anchorage and will tell that story soon. I worked to facilitate changes,
wrote probably over 200 grievances, reported the problems to agencies and
people who worked with the homeless in Anchorage, spoke to a reporter, went to the
mayor's office and spoke to his staff often, was harassed by housekeeping and
just one of the security guards for the evil crime of brushing my teeth in the
ground floor bathroom of city hall after being told I was welcome there (the
mayor's staff did say I could use their bathroom on the 8th floor, but I was
pissed by then), spoke at the Anchorage Assembly about bullying staff at BFS
(only allowed three minutes), wrote blog posts about the problems, left often
hysterical messages for the administrative staff at Catholic Social Services
and was pretty much just ignored by the two Lisas in charge, tried to see the
Archbishop about the problems, his secretary prevented it, confronted any
priest I saw in Anchorage about the problems and got pooh-pooh-ed from all but
one of them.
The most courageous thing I did was
stand up to the staff at the shelter because a couple of them were absolutely
brutal. There was a supervisor who is probably a psychopath left to torture
people and I became his main target. He made me stand in the entryway every day
for a while. He began to verbally bully me every day when I came in and then
did not like what I had to say to him, so torture was employed. I have ME/cfs
with POTS and became ill and fell. Then he told the staff at Providence
Hospital lies that affected my health care. The worst part is the staff at that
hospital believed this lying uneducated ass of a bully and joined in with
medical bullying (along with ignorance about ME/cfs of course). There is much
more to the Providence Hospital story and one about Regional Hospital too,
homeless people are treated horribly in emergency rooms and it is no different
where I am right now. The staff stupidly documented what this monster who I
shall call Little Horsey said in my medical records, LOL for those who know his
real name. He engineered all kinds of crap, had a co-bully that he trained to
harm people, did things to mentally ill people to get an excuse to throw
homeless people out at night for behavior problems, practiced massive favoritism
and they both treated women horribly. The system was set up to treat women as
second class citizens and probably still is. Women are second class citizens at
a large number of co-ed shelters.
Now I am in another city where the
conditions are not good, property is stolen by both staff and other homeless
people, they bully as well, but it got better. Someone may have launched some
rants here and there. I wonder who that could be? There are cliques of bullies here
who have been let run wild, the food is unhealthy, the healthcare is horrible
and on and on.
The incompetent clinic that
misdiagnosed me twice within ten minutes of my seeing their goofy little doctor
has just given me a letter firing me as a patient, that was after I went in and
ranted about a mentally ill woman who was covered in dirt wandering about the
city and told them I had given up after several months of trying to get health
care from them. It is like someone saying, I quit and the boss saying, no you
can't quit, you're fired. They told me to go to an emergency room for health
care, yes they did do that. I had already gone to an ER and told them I could
not get health care from that clinic, the ER staff refused me health care and
then as if I had never told them about the problems with the clinic told me
they would help me find primary care giving me an instruction sheet to go to
that clinic. Just die homeless person, just die, we don’t care, go to the
clinic of incompetence and just die. Oh but the clinic of incompetence does not
like the patient who knows what is going on or advocates for the mentally ill,
no they don’t. They have one real nurse who is being paid by a separate agency
that I love though, he's a real nurse and as altruistic as all get out. I was
so sick last winter I'm pretty sure from some of the symptoms I had a viral
sepsis and after all ME/cfs is probably post-sepsis syndrome. I have had
influenza twice due to the conditions I live in and the poor hygiene and
manners of many of the homeless people.
Being
Homeless Causes Massive Trauma and Many of Us Already Had PTSD and Other Trauma
Illnesses
SAMHSA is trying to teach services and agencies to design their systems
in a way that helps prevent more trauma and so staff is Trauma Informed.
Most people would be surprised to find out how hard it is to get counseling for
trauma/PTSD, but even more surprised to know that much of the behavioral health
services rather than help traumatized people cause more trauma. The services
for low income people, Native people and the homeless are substandard and cause
massive trauma. A person is traumatized, seeks counseling, is traumatized by
the staff and the system, they try again and again, more trauma, then they
become suicidal. Often the person is blamed for not being compliant or not
trying hard enough, but they have PTSD (fight or flight) and are using flight
to avoid the abuse of the staff and system. This is one reason for the
increased suicide, I know from experience both personally and from patients at
a bush hospital with incompetent behavioral health and massive bullying of many
types.
They don't torture me at the shelter
anymore, but certainly did when I first got there, the first night I was left
outside in the freezing cold and my property was in danger like I have no
rights and I don’t matter. Many things have changed, someone actually did listen,
the executive director is gone and so is the president of the board, but no one
actually tells me about anything due to lack of respect.
It's still a very unpleasant
situation and there is ongoing bullying from people who are emotionally
juveniles and not supervised. Everyday someone puts stuff on my plastic bins or
around them, yesterday they stuffed a bunch of plastic bags next to it. I got
frost bite last winter because there are only three overflow beds for the floor
for women (two rooms for men, see what I mean) and if you aren't one of the
three on the list you stay outside all night or go on over to the mission's
shelter for women which is nick-named Jesus Jail. That means being first at the
gate to get in where we never know the exact time they will open. I waited as
long as two hours in the freezing cold and had hypothermia several times. They
don't care and did not open early, but they did open early for a Super Bowl
Party which of course I expressed my opinion about and asked if there was going
to be an Iditarod Party, the operations manager said, "What's that?' Hehe.
My files for my cases with FOIA
request results that took years to get, lots of work over the same period of
time and evidence, all of it for one case were stolen and thrown away by the
staff. My personal papers and personal property were also inside my almost new
suitcase. I also had two cameras stolen from a locked cupboard, not my
expensive one thankfully, it's safe in Alaska. They then gave the police who I
called to report their theft a load of BS and tried to blame me for it. It was
locked in storage where I had no access. Surprise just like some crimes
committed against me in Alaska the police here declare the crime a "civil
matter" because crimes against the homeless are not considered real
crimes.
I worked with the homeless on the
streets years ago, along with prostitutes and elderly people living in horrible
conditions in old crappy buildings, so just like my experience with the corrupt
and dangerous prisons in Alaska being wrongfully imprisoned after having worked
in them my perspective is from both sides. My research tells me the problems
are the same almost everywhere and the systems are derived from the federal
government. The whole system needs to be gutted and redone. Simply putting
people in an appropriate type of housing for their situation would stop much of
the re-traumatization so people can begin to heal and have some kind of a life.
What kind of a country treats people
this way? We need Bernie Sanders to make humane changes by organizing the
people to march and stand up for those who are being abused which will force
the law makers to do their jobs. There has been almost no affordable housing
built in the last three decades.
Bernie Sanders on use of empty houses for the Homeless.
Bernie on increase in homelessness and his work to increasing the political voice for the working class and poor.
Lauren Steiner from Los Angeles for Bernie discusses Bernie and homelessness.
Bernie Sanders video about the poverty, the working poor, universal health care and homelessness due to the oligarchy in the United States. Bernie Sanders visited people living in bad conditions in public housing in New York. He prefers to help people with the wealth of this country rather than start false wars and destroy another country along with killing and maiming their people. So do I.
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