(This column first appeared in the October print edition of the Hendersonian.)
How many times have you stopped at a red light and noticed someone standing on the corner holding a cardboard sign? Maybe you looked straight ahead and tried not to make eye contact. Maybe you reached for a few dollars. Or maybe you looked at the person outside your window and thought, “They’re just lazy.” “Don’t give them money; they’ll just buy drugs with it.” “Why don’t they get a job?” “If things are really that bad, why don’t they do something to change?”
Those thoughts may be uncomfortable to admit, but I think they’re more common than we’d like to acknowledge. We see someone for a few seconds from the driver’s seat of our car and, without knowing their name or anything about their story, begin filling in the blanks. Before the light turns green, we can convince ourselves we know how that person got there, why they’re still there and what they should do differently.
As the executive director of Father Bradley Shelter, you might expect me to challenge those assumptions with statistics about homelessness or stories about the women we serve. There will be opportunities for me to share both. But, I think there’s a better place to start: with my own story.
If you met me today, you probably wouldn’t look at me and think homelessness. You may know me as a social worker, a mother, a homeowner, the director of our local women’s shelter or simply someone you’ve seen involved in the Henderson community. What you may not know is that I have experienced homelessness myself. I’ve also experienced substance use disorder and incarceration. There was a period of my life when I needed many of the same resources and second chances that I now spend my career advocating for.
In fact, my daughter and I could have easily been residents of Father Bradley Shelter ourselves. When I came to Henderson in 2017, I wasn’t arriving with a home, a career or a carefully mapped-out plan for my future. I was trying to rebuild my life. Had a few circumstances been different, I could have been the mother arriving at the shelter with her child and everything she owned, needing a safe place to stay while she figured out what came next. That realization isn’t lost on me when I walk through the shelter doors each morning.
Had you met me during that chapter instead of this one, you might have wondered why I couldn’t just stop using drugs, get my life together or make better decisions. Those would not have been entirely unfair questions. I made choices for which I had to accept responsibility, and eventually I had to make very different choices if I wanted a different life. What would have been unfair was assuming that the person I was at my lowest point was the only person I could become.
My life looks very different today. I have an education and professional credentials. I own my home, I’m raising my children and I’ve built a career that means more to me than I could have imagined during those difficult years. In a twist I certainly couldn’t have predicted, I now lead the very organization where my daughter and I could have once needed a bed. My education and professional experience matter, but some of the most valuable knowledge I carry didn’t come from a classroom. It came from lived experience, and I consider that experience priceless.
That experience influences how I see the women who walk through our doors. When I sit across from someone who has lost her housing, is unemployed, has a substance use disorder or simply has no idea what she’s going to do next, I know I’m meeting her during one chapter of her life. Too often, we turn that chapter into an identity. A person experiencing homelessness becomes homeless. A person with a substance use disorder becomes an addict. Someone who has been incarcerated becomes a felon. Once we assign the label, it becomes easier to stop looking for the person underneath it.
My story doesn’t mean I believe choices don’t matter. Quite the opposite. Recovery required me to take responsibility for mine, and much of what we do at Father Bradley Shelter is rooted in accountability. Residents participate in a structured program, work with case managers, seek employment, address barriers and save money toward permanent housing. Compassion and accountability aren’t opposites. People often need both.
I’ve also learned that getting out of homelessness requires far more work than people on the outside may see. Finding employment is harder without transportation. Keeping a job is harder without childcare. Saving enough for an apartment doesn’t guarantee approval when credit, rental history or a criminal background stands in the way. Often, the women we serve aren’t dealing with one barrier; they’re trying to untangle several at once.
That’s why I’m beginning Beyond the Shelter Door. I hope to use this space to talk honestly about homelessness in Henderson- who experiences it, what makes getting out so difficult, what our community is doing well and where additional support and investment are needed. I’ll bring what I’ve learned as a social worker and shelter director, but I’ll also bring something no degree or job title could have given me: the perspective of someone who once needed a hand up herself.
So, the next time you’re sitting at a red light and notice someone holding a cardboard sign on the other side of your windshield, I’m not going to tell you whether to hand them money. I’m simply asking that before we decide someone is lazy, doesn’t want to change or has somehow earned their circumstances, we remember how little of their story we can actually see from where we’re sitting.
After all, if you had seen me only during the hardest chapter of my life, you probably wouldn’t have imagined the life I live today either. And that’s precisely the point: homelessness doesn’t always look like you think.
Kendall Dean is the executive director of the Father Bradley Shelter for Women and Children.
Editor’s note: This article is part of a new initiative to give local nonprofit organizations space in the Hendersonian. Are you a part of a local nonprofit? Contact the Hendersonian to reserve a page to tell us something about it. 270-823-0901 or news@the-hendersonian.com.
