But there’s the unspoken: mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, trauma, family dysfunction. Obtaining or maintaining a job or housing is difficult (and out of reach for some). A number of folks I’ve seen just this week are newly released from jail or prison. Their chances for jobs and housing seem to rise and fall with the economy.

I think of the words a homeless friend once said to me, “If we could get a job, we’d have one.” And another, referencing Greensboro’s wealth of free meal sites and dearth of affordable housing, “We appreciate the food. But you can’t cover up with a chicken wing.” True word.

>> Related post: “Urgent needs for our ministry to unsheltered homeless people: Please help!”

“For the love of God people, stop giving money to drunken panhandlers. These panhandlers are alcoholics and drug addicts. The money you give them will only go towards more alcohol and drugs, enabling their disease. With your money, these panhandlers will spend the rest of the day drunk, harassing other people, and interfering with other homeless people who are actually making attempts to get off streets.”

Some of Kevin’s FB friends were offended by his perspective and commented to tell him so. But Kevin told them that he knows what he’s talking about:

“Both of my grandfathers were alcoholics, I became homeless the first time at the age of 21, and have been in and out of homelessness the past 29 years. I have known more drunks and addicts than you’d ever imagine. I’ve witnessed people die from their addictions…”

And he speaks truth:

“There is sympathy for people hurting and struggling. But in your sympathy for them you have to maintain your objectivity. If someone was displaying suicidal tendencies and then they asked to borrow your gun, you wouldn’t really let them have it would you? Caring for, caring about others is more than just giving in to their wants and desires. Alcohol is slowly but surely killing these panhandling drunks, and as much as it alleviates their immediate pain and desires, giving them access to more drink is not doing them any favors.”

I talked to a crack addict the other day who hasn’t let the 100°F heat discourage him from flying a sign. It makes me frustrated. And sad. I love the addicts and alcoholics in my life, but I hate addiction. Everyone has their own path to recovery and I pray for them to find it. But I will not fund addiction. As Kevin says, it’s like handing a loaded gun to someone who’s trying to commit suicide.

“A new study says that drug treatment courts, which state legislators cut funding for in the recent budget, are effective at reducing crime and drug use.

Drug courts also saved an average of nearly $5,700 per participant, resulting in a net benefit of $2 for every $1 spent, according to the study released Tuesday by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C. The Center for Court Innovation in New York and RTI International in the Research Triangle Park assisted with the study.

This year, North Carolina legislators cut $2 million in funding for drug treatment courts across the state…”

>> Continue reading “Study: Drug courts effective in reducing” at News-Record.com.

I’ve seen first-hand the effectiveness of Guilford County’s drug court. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to cut programs that save taxpayer dollars and change lives.

Image adapted from Sean Dreilinger's original

A frequently asked question from visitors to this site:

Can crack cocaine come through breast milk?

And the answer? YES.

 

When a breast-feeding mom uses crack cocaine, she may pass the drug on to her baby through her breast milk, with serious effects:

“Convulsions have been seen both in infants of breast-feeding mothers using cocaine and in infants exposed to passive crack smoke inhalation. Because cocaine and its metabolites can be found in breast milk for up to 60 hours after use, breast-feeding is not recommended.”
~ p. 225, “Drug abuse and withdrawal”, S Schechner, Manual of Neonatal Care, Philadelphia, 2004

Drinking crack-cocaine-tainted breast milk can severely damage a baby, and in some cases, may lead to death. (More here.)

Addicted moms? Get help: Find a treatment program or find an NA meeting.

image source: DEA

“…He had a massive heart attack from the first time he relapsed. He had been clean for so long he couldn’t get enough when he relapsed and it killed him. He was my best friend. I loved him so much…”

This is the nightmare you most fear when you love an addict. It became real for Vickie, who lost her boyfriend Richard on September 20, 2010 to crack cocaine addiction. Vickie calls crack “the devil.” I do, too.

Vickie writes about her boyfriend Richard’s death in a comment on the post, “The 7 Stages of Crack Cocaine Use“. Her comment is heartbreaking to read, but I admire her courage in sharing her experience, and I believe that her words may help others. They’ve definitely had an impact on me.

» Read Vickie’s comment here
» Read “The 7 Stages of Crack Cocaine Use”
» Related: “What You Need To Hear About Crack Cocaine”

Crack Cocaine (image source: DEA)

Addiction develops much more rapidly with cocaine than alcohol, often within a few weeks or months, and especially when smoked as freebase (crack). Thus, the dynamics of cocaine addiction are different from those of alcoholism, including its impact on the individual and the family. Cocaine addiction can be likened to a rapid-onset trauma that stuns its victims, compared with alcoholism, which progressively and insidiously debilitates the drinker over a much longer period. The cocaine-affected family is less likely to show the deeply ingrained systemic aberrations and codependent relationships so commonly seen in alcoholic families.

~ from “Outpatient Treatment of Cocaine and Crack Addiction: A Clinical Perspective,” by Arnold M. Washton and Nannatte Stone-Washton (PDF)

Greensboro police last week stepped up loitering enforcement and effectively cleared the place known as “The Block.” Just like that.

Through a series of 30-minute patrols, officers shooed away the clusters of mostly men who routinely gather at the notorious hangout near the corner of South Elm and Eugene streets.

People who live in the neighborhood see The Block as a blight and a nuisance, if not a danger.

The owners of a nearby convenience store also blame The Block for panhandling, theft and fights on their premises. “If we only call the police once or twice in a day, that’s a lucky day,” the manager of the FastServ at Elm and Eugene, Sun Post, told the News & Record’s Lorraine Ahearn last week.

Ron Surgeon, who once owned a McDonald’s franchise at the same location, voiced similar concerns eight years ago.

What took the city so long?

The groups who congregate there also tend to be clients of the Greensboro Urban Ministry’s soup kitchen and homeless shelter, as well as the HealthServe clinic. Most of them are addicted, unemployed or otherwise down on their luck.

The Block, of course, is only a symptom of other, tougher problems: homelessness, drug abuse (especially crack cocaine) and the state’s failed mental health reform efforts, to name a few.

The opening of a revamped, county-funded substance-abuse treatment center on Wendover Avenue has been helpful but provides very limited bed space for crack addiction.

A planned new homeless day center at Murrow Boulevard and East Washington Street also should help. The county commissioners’ pledge last week of $275,000 to help pay for the project should now allow construction to move forward.

The Block seems to have been around forever. But it drew renewed attention during a recent debate over the placement of artistic benches along a leg of the Downtown Greenway that passes through the area. Residents of the neighboring Warnersville community complained that the benches only made a bad situation worse, attracting more drug use, vagrancy and “lewd acts.”

As the greenway project expands, says one advocate for the homeless, Michele Forrest, expect more harsh realities to be exposed to plainer view. A homeless camp in the Freeman Mill Road area lies in the path of the next leg of the greenway, she says.

As for the benches, they eventually were removed, though some people disputed allegations that they attracted unsavory behavior.

No one disputes the existence or impact of The Block.

Residents have a right to expect to live free of the daily nuisances, and worse, that came with it. But enforcement won’t succeed in the long run without sustained attention to what drives people to street corners in the first place.

Until that happens, they simply will create a new Block somewhere else.

I usually just quote and link, but this time I’m reprinting the entire editorial. Sometimes older N&R links expire, and this a really good editorial, so I want to make sure I have copy of it.

Be sure to click through to the original, though, for the comments.

NOTE: The editorial says: “The groups who congregate there also tend to be clients of the Greensboro Urban Ministry’s soup kitchen and homeless shelter…” This is incorrect. While the guys on the block do eat at Potter’s House (soup kitchen), none of them stay at Weaver House (homeless shelter). Greensboro Urban Ministry has a strict policy that any shelter guest found hanging out on the block gets kicked out. You won’t find shelter guests on the block.

Both articles say the arrest resulted from a joint local and federal investigation. I’m glad to hear it. I posted previously about my frustration with entitlement program fraud, but I never heard about anyone doing anything about it.

I wonder if there will be more arrests? There’s more than one store in this town where you can get cash — 50¢ on the dollar — for food stamps.

For those who might be wondering how I know about food stamp fraud: I’ve learned a lot doing street outreach. This is one of those things that makes me angry, frustrated and sad, all at the same time.

Allen writes in response to the heavily restrictive changes to the city’s panhandling ordinance, which have made it illegal to panhandle almost everywhere downtown, and have limited panhandling throughout the city. Allen talks about why he has mixed feelings about panhandlers.

It’s an open, honest, thought-provoking piece. Worth a read.

P.S. I wonder how my friend Vincent feels about being the poster guy for ending homelessness. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person. Especially one who was on the street for so many years and is now trying to work through his issues and do his recovery. Keep doing the next right thing, my friend. Ignore the spotlight and look straight at the Son. Amen.

“The location of artistic benches, which were removed from the Downtown Greenway on Friday after neighbors complained, looked good on paper but ignored some basic urban topography. Just a stone’s throw from where the benches were removed, amid complaints that they drew drunken and lewd behavior, sits ‘The Block.’ At the southwest corner of Eugene and Lee streets, at the entrance to HealthServe clinic and Greensboro Urban Ministry’s night shelter, this stretch of sidewalk has been a magnet for loitering, drugs and prostitution for 20 years….”

The benches were never the problem, so removing them won’t solve it. The problem on the block is primarily addiction. People drink there, and buy and smoke pot and crack. And where you find crack, you find dealers and prostitutes.

The people hanging on the block are not all homeless. But a lot of them are. The day center is probably not going to solve the problem. You can’t drink and smoke there.  (And the day center opening has been delayed.)

In Lorraine’s article, Greensboro Urban Ministry director Mike Aiken talks about the ten year plan to end homelessness and says that “real steps had been taken to offer services to the chronically homeless for mental health and substance abuse problems.” With all due respect to Mike, who I know and admire greatly, our local services for mental health and substance abuse are lacking. They’re also voluntary. You have to want to go. And even if everybody on the block decided tomorrow that they wanted to go get help, where would we send them? Mental health and substance abuse treatment beds are full and outpatient services often have waiting lists. Some types of treatment are scarce or don’t exist, unless you have private insurance. (None of this is a judgment on our providers. It’s about mental health “reform” and lack of funding.)

The only way I can think of to clean up the block is to do heavy enforcement and stay on it. Right now, there is enforcement, but as soon as the police cars leave, the people come back. In order to clear the block and have it stay cleared, you’d have to keep officers there. We don’t enough officers now. And let’s face it. Even if you clear the block, those folks are going to continue to be addicted. They’re going to go somewhere — to someone else’s neighborhood. I don’t have an answer. That means I need to pray. Maybe God is already giving the answer to someone far wiser and more creative than me. If so, I’m excited to hear it! But I’m looking for a solution that heals, not hurts. I have friends on the block. I don’t want to just sweep them away. I want to see their lives changed.