The Daily Grasshopper

Sometime yesterday afternoon, while the rest of us went about our busy lives, Bob Gurney died underneath Interstate 93. According to reports in today’s Boston Globe and Boston Herald, Gurney was a homeless man, well known to shelters in the area, who lived in a shanty underneath the freeway. Outreach workers had tried to get Gurney, 83 years old, off the streets, where temperatures have been below freezing for more than a week. Tonight, the National Weather Service predicts a low of zero degrees, with a wind chill factor of up to 40 below. On the day Gurney died, wind chills of 25 below were reached.

"Homeless man found dead in Boston shack" Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/022/metro/Homeless_man_found_dead_in_Boston_shack+.shtml

"Bitter end: elderly homeless man dies in shanty" Boston Herald
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/cold01222003.htm

Bob Gurney was a veteran, and his story is familiar to those who work with the homeless. Gurney fought in the Korean War, and lived on Shawmut Avenue in Boston for 35 years before rising rents, and an eviction notice, forced him onto the streets. According to those who knew him, Gurney lost his son in the Vietnam War. He drank a lot, they say. One former outreach worker told a Globe reporter that Gurney asked him once, “What sense does it make that I lived and my son died?”

The “survivor guilt” that accompanies many veterans back home can be an overwhelming emotion, one that few are well prepared to deal with. The military puts a premium on toughness, on detachment, and on being able to internalize your emotions. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (http://www.nchv.org/), “a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.” The organization estimates that “conservatively, one out of every four homeless males who are sleeping in a doorway, alley or box in our cities and rural communities has put on a uniform and served our country.” By their estimates, 275,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, and more than one-half-million experience homelessness over the course of a year.

By all accounts, Bob Gurney was tough and proud. As the temperatures dropped, he refused to take shelter at the nearby Pine Street Inn. According to one local outreach worker, who tried to persuade the elderly vet to come in from the cold, “It’s a choice. We are worried about their safety. We also know they have a right to independence.” But these men have more than a right to “independence.” They have a right to clean, warm, safe housing and to treatment and training that will help them become re-integrated into society after serving their country. Every homeless person, veteran or not, is an outrage in a country as wealthy as the United States.

But the plight of homeless vets is particularly shameful. Today, the U.S. government is preparing to spend upwards of $200 billion to wage war in Iraq. This war, among other things, will create an entirely new generation of Bob Gurneys, men who return home to find that their government isn’t as committed to their welfare as they might have hoped. Our landlords and property owners, who put profit above all else, will feel no shame in evicting the Bob Gurneys of the world to make room for wealthier tenants, whoever they may be. And the rest of us will walk by them on the street with our eyes averted, hoping to avoid the unpleasantness of having to interact with them.

Here are the newspapers’ descriptions of the place where Bob Gurney drew his last breath, alone: “The walls and six-foot ceiling of the hut are lined with planks of wood and wool blankets. Scarves and mattresses block the wind. The door is a discarded road sign.” (Boston Globe). The roof is “made of blankets suspended on a web fashioned from a clothesline. The front door of the shanty, which slides aside, is an orange and black highway sign. The floor is covered with a makeshift carpet of discarded fabric.” (Boston Herald). According to one of the men who lived with Gurney in the shanty, “this is our solution to affordable housing.”

An autopsy will be performed on Gurney’s body today, but the results don’t matter. Whether it was the cold, or the alcohol, or the cumulative effects of living without basic necessities and access to health care, Bob Gurney is dead because the nation he served in uniform turned its back on him. Funding for veterans’ programs is consistently slashed as the Pentagon budget bloats beyond any possible justification. According to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council (http://www.nhchc.org/), a mere 15 percent of the Pentagon’s FY03 budget, or $60 billion, “applied over the next ten years, would adequately fund initiatives for health care, housing, and other programs to prevent and end homelessness.”

As you’re reading this, billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to send troops to the Middle East to fight in a war that a majority of Americans don’t feel has been justified. According to some estimates, the Pentagon will need a quarter of a million soldiers in the desert to invade and occupy Iraq quickly. The symmetry is worth contemplating: that’s the same number of ex-soldiers who will spend tonight in the deadly cold streets of the U.S. of A.