I am uncomfortable.

I am uncomfortable when I take a long walk at 5:30 AM on the Fourth of July because my neighbors ended their all night party on the roof of their house and I could not sleep.  I pass at least a dozen mattresses labeled “free” that were left behind when OSU students moved out and then see three different men sleeping on the cement benches downtown.

I am uncomfortable when a series of individuals, mostly with shopping carts and bike trailers, cruise by the dumpster across the way every day to see what has been left neatly beside the container to be taken away. I am more uncomfortable when I see someone digging through an over stuffed dumpster for a perfectly fine toaster.

I am uncomfortable when, while searching for a lost cat at six AM, I find a group of people just waking up in the breezeway of Saint Mary’s church. They have not seen her, they tell me, but will keep an eye out.  Or I pass by the Lutheran church on the corner on my way home from a late night meeting in January and hear a boombox softly playing next to a mound on their bench.

I am uncomfortable when we march through the streets of Portland to protest the election and pass by tents set up under the bridge. I have a raincoat and plan to go out for an expensive dinner later that evening.

I am uncomfortable that I have students who cannot do their reading at night because they are sleeping on the lobby floor at the family shelter.

I am uncomfortable that success in advanced high school  classes is often tied to income levels.

I am uncomfortable when I am walking downtown on Sunday morning and we pass an older man talking loudly. He is swearing and repeating all of the phrases I have heard recently about the behavior of the homeless men in Central Park. Is he on the phone or talking to himself?

I am uncomfortable because I know, as does Ma in The Grapes of Wrath, that  “If you're in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help—the only ones.” I ask for help with my car at working class bars and from tow truck drivers. Ex police officers always stop.

I am uncomfortable when people say things that, if we replaced “homeless” with “African-American,” they would be clearly racist.

I am uncomfortable when my county—Benton County, Oregon—is called out as having some of the worst income inequality in the country. And it is not because the students skew the data.

I am very uncomfortable when we, as a community, continue to argue about where to put the Men’s Shelter, year after year. We can do better.

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I have never been homeless. I have never been unsafe, or hungry, or cold for an extended period of time.  However, I have:

·         Lived in a camper in a campground for a winter while my parents really struggled to make ends meet.

·         Doubled up with my cousins for about ten months when we moved abruptly out of our house. I loved it. I had brothers and a sister.  I am not sure my parents did.

·         Couch surfed one month in college while waiting for an apartment to open up.

·         Placed all of my things in storage and lived in my van while looking for housing in Portland.

·         Lived in the van while traveling for months at a time. One spring, I did not go inside a house for a month and a half.

·         Been so broke I did not quite have money for rent.