June 14, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mt. Airy man knows what it’s like to be homeless
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

This is how Eric Wilden looks most of the time — when he is not “homeless.”

It was March, and for most of us, the hint of spring in the air did little to soften the chill wind that sliced through us as we climbed into our cars or waited as SEPTA rolled down the Avenue.

Walking down Germantown Avenue, my feet shuffled through a dusting of snow or skidded over ice. I held my jacket tight around my neck so not a sliver of chill would come in contact with my goose-pimpled skin. But eventually I reached a semi-heated bus, or my car’s heater kicked into gear, and I’d arrive at work, home, a local store, a warm café to drink a hot beverage or cuddle under a blanket for the night.

The prospect of not having a warm home or office to retreat to did not cross my mind, even as I hastened past those who suffered from the fate of not having one. When a hand reached out for change, I tightened the clutch on my purse and said I didn’t have any, sedating a nagging consciousness with the assumption that they would probably use it for drugs anyway.

Eric Wilden knows what it is like when you walk by.

Wilden has sat by the side of the road with his hand out, requesting change for a bus ride or cup of coffee. Not because he was forced to, but because, for a week, he chose to.

He was living in Colorado in 2003, a Buddhism graduate student at Naropa University. Wilden, who has spent his life moving from activist role to activist role, wanted to help the homeless and felt that a true understanding of their experiences was necessary for helping them.

Josh Weinstein, Fleet Maull (coordinator of the Colorado street retreat) and Corey Golden were “homeless” people in Colorado with Mt. Airy activist Eric Wilden.

“I didn’t feel like I could advocate for something I didn’t fully understand and had never experienced,” Wilden said, sitting comfortably on Chestnut Hill Coffee Company’s second floor. “I’m still not sure I know.”

Wilden, who now lives in Mt. Airy and works as development director at Neighborhood Interfaith Movement, hooked up with Peacemaker Community, USA, which is based in Boulder, Colo., whose leader, Fleet Maull, was organizing a summer street retreat.

The concept of a street retreat was created by Bernie Glassman, an abbot of Zen communities in New York and Los Angeles and co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Interfaith Assembly of Peacemaker Village.

During a street retreat, a group of people literally live on the streets of a major city, in Wilden’s case, Denver, for about a week in an effort to understand the suffering of the homeless better.

Participants leave all belongings behind, wearing only the clothes on their back. Sometimes they are allowed to carry blankets, depending on the season.

Each day, they traverse the streets, interacting with other homeless, learning their stories, their challenges, their fears. They walk into shelters, sometimes staying overnight.

One guy, Jesus, attended their reflections and shared his story with the group. His family moved to Denver from Mexico, but he was unable to get a job, didn’t want to burden his family so instead lived on the streets.

All participants in the retreat were honest about their motives. They didn’t pose as homeless, though they appeared to be so as not to seem pretentious. And they were usually welcomed to share the food and space of shelters.

Some of the church-run shelters provided a sermon with the food, said Wilden.

“As long as we didn’t mind listening to fire and brimstone sermons and how we were sinners, we could be fed.” But what baffled him was the one preacher who insisted they put others before themselves. “It was really bizarre.”

The group met twice a day to reflect on the day and talk about their experiences.

In a written reflection on the trip, Wilden described the four-day, three-night as less of a retreat and more of a “plunge.”

“Far from an escape from the trials and tribulations of ‘normal’ life, the practice of the street retreat is a ‘plunge,’ the intentional placement of ourselves into a completely groundless situation in which anything could happen,” he wrote.

Begging for money was the most difficult part of the experience. A street retreat requires everyone participating to beg for the bus fare home — which for Wilden at the time was $3.75.

“I just remember feeling invisible, and then realizing I wanted to be,” Wilden said. “In four days, I lost my dignity. And that, times 1,000, is what they are experiencing everyday.”

But the most important thing Wilden said he learned on the trip was the opposite of what he expected. He joined the retreat seeking a better understanding of homelessness and the needs of the homeless, but instead he learned that in his position, he was unlikely to ever fully understand their situation.

“It’s important to clarify that I did not experience the reality of being homeless,” Wilden said. “I only know what it felt like to me to have to ask for money and have people tell me to get a job, or they ran past me, or just stared blankly.”

Also, the people he encountered during the retreat make up only a small portion of the homeless population in most cities.

In a study released in February, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that one-third of those seeking emergency shelter or transitional housing between February and April, 2005, were families with children without a home, reported USA Today.

Locally, in Mt. Airy, Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (or NPIHN) is doing its own part in helping local families that find themselves without proper housing to attain affordable housing.

NPIHN, which operates from the same building as NIM, offers temporary housing to families struggling with regaining a foothold after facing a loss of home. Rachel Falkove, NPIHN’s executive director, said over the past five years, these families have, nationwide, been growing each year by about 20 percent. In Philly, about half, or 1,400, of the city’s homeless are families, mostly single mothers with children, but also those with single fathers and two-parent households.

“It’s a reflection of the poor economy, coupled with generations of children living in poor households,” she said. “Many of the families find themselves living paycheck to paycheck, and with one bad decision or catastrophe, everything falls apart.”

The families are housed by local churches — NPIHN works with about 30 congregations and two seminaries in the Northwest — for two-week increments for as long as they need.

On average a family stays in the program for about five months before they find proper housing, but it depends on whether they have a job, their flexibility and the neighborhood they relocate to. The program helps 14 to 22 families per year, depending on how quickly they find housing.

These families in the NPIHN program are not the homeless you will see cuddled under blankets on the streets of Philly. Many of them have jobs, but without a cushion of savings and proper benefits, one event can put a family out on the street.

“They are invisible,” she said, “because despite the fact there are so many of them, very few are on the streets. They are doubled, tripled, quadrupled in homes of family members until their welcome wears out.”