Laura Moulton
Moulton is executive director of Street Books. She lives in Portland.
During the summer of 2011, a man named Ben “Hodge” Hodgson lived on the streets of Portland, and we first met at the Street Books bicycle library I started that summer. He showed up in the shabby coat he always wore, no matter the season, and observed dryly that I had no P.G. Wodehouse in the library – what kind of self-respecting librarian didn’t stock Wodehouse?
Over the years, Hodge has struggled with the mental illness that landed him on the streets in the first place, an experience he writes about in the book we co-authored, “Loaners: The Making of a Street Library.” After three and a half years outside, he got into a housing program for veterans, and Hodge has been in an apartment ever since. He also serves on the board of directors of Street Books, and works as a street librarian, lending books on the same streets where he used to sleep.
Some months after we met, when Hodge still lived outdoors, he gave a tour of Old Town to a group of my students from Lewis & Clark College where I was teaching a “Writing in the City” class. As we circled up to thank him and say goodbye, he surprised us by spontaneously reciting a poem:
He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took him in
The poem is “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham, an Oregonian who served as Poet Laureate of our state from 1923 to 1931. It offers a vision of what might be possible if instead of labeling people and shutting them out, we insist on including and taking them in.
Accompanying Hodge around the city that day rearranged what my students thought they knew about people living outside. One student later shared that he kept thinking about Hodge and what a funny, deep thinker he was. Now when he sees someone walking along with a shopping cart or carrying their earthly possessions in a garbage bag, he wonders, “What if they are just like Hodge?” As funny and as bright and as human?
Of course, they are like Hodge. They may not produce puns as legendary as his, but among the people outside are the doctor who had a breakdown and the waitress who didn’t have health insurance after a cancer diagnosis. They are the kid who aged out of the foster care system, and the person born and raised in Portland, who simply can no longer afford the rent.
In the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, Supreme Court justices declared last month that it is okay to arrest and fine people for living outside, even when they have no other place to go. This latest ruling can be filed alongside the many sit-lie ordinances, camping bans, and, if you live in Grants Pass, the criminalization of a pillow or a blanket. But to focus on crafting laws or ordinances about who gets to use this square of sidewalk or that park bench is to miss the larger, more urgent question, and one we cannot legislate our way out of. The biggest predictor of homelessness in the United States is a lack of affordable housing. Until we have places people can afford to live, we must decide how we treat those of us who have nothing at all.
In a piece for The New Republic, Tracy Rosenthal writes “research shows that criminalization perpetuates rather than discourages homelessness, disqualifying unhoused people from the support they need, including federal housing benefits. A criminal record and credit scores wrecked by civil debt mean fewer employers or landlords willing to give them a chance. In the short term, arrests and sweeps interrupt the efforts of service providers. Unhoused people lose medication, critical documents, survival gear, and fragile support networks, losses that compound the physical and emotional toll of living outdoors.”
In the 14 years Street Books has operated, we have rarely encountered anyone who lives outdoors by choice. It’s why we joined a coalition of community partners to submit an amicus brief to the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, arguing that homelessness is an involuntary state of being, made far worse when treated with arrest and citation. Everyone deserves a safe place to sleep, and we are a better community when we ensure that each person has a place to belong and call home. In the post-Grants Pass era, my hope is that we focus more on how to provide that home rather than look for ways to weaponize the power offered by this ruling.
Some years after I first met Hodge, I received a letter from his niece, Natalie, who had read an article we’d published together. She wrote that during the time Hodge lived outside, her family had no idea whether he was alive or dead. She thanked the Street Books crew for seeing beyond his living situation and recognizing him as the smart, dear person they knew. By then Hodge was our family too. And it wasn’t difficult. We simply drew a circle that took him in.