By a thread

There are a lot of people in this city who are one paycheck away from being on the streets. 

I think we all know this intuitively, but I get to see it play out in real time on my block. Every month or so, newly homeless people arrive. Usually I see their stuff on the sidewalk in boxes or under bushes on a lot down the street. People appear reluctant to part with things when they become homeless. I see a lot of clothes, shoes, bills. Once a box full of VHS tapes. 

Becoming homeless appears to be a brutal process. One good rain turns their clothes and papers into trash. I have cleaned up many piles of moldy clothes. 

Also, the other, more experienced homeless frequently rob the newly homeless of anything of value. Phones, cash, cards. One evening we saw Ernie walking down the street. Ernie does odd jobs and stays busy. He also likes to drink, and is sometimes hard for me to understand. 

"There's a naked woman down there," he said.

"Where?"

"There. They robbed her." he pointed off into the dark at the end of the street. 

Soon we saw a woman, with a dress but no top, carrying her belongings in stages down the street. 

She alternated between carrying boxes and a backpack, and a cage containing two cats. She picked up the cage and carried it, put it down, then went back for the boxes. My wife gave her a shirt.

We saw her for the next few days, then she disappeared. 

Where she went, we have no idea.

Last week I had to clean up two tent campsites on our lot, and someone came to me today to tell me about a fresh one. I went down to look at it. There was a small tent with bags of stuff, a lawn chair, and a shiny glass garden ornament stuck in the ground. A lot of people try to stay away from the drugs and crime and violence in tent city, but we can't let them stay on our lot. The neighbors are completely against it, and if we let it happen pretty soon there would be a third tent camp in the neighborhood.

We try to break it to them gently but firmly and tell them they've got to move on the next day. Mostly they're quiet.

Sometimes the newly homeless have a hard time figuring out what to do and where to go, and we'll see them behind houses, walking up alleyways, or in the bushes. Some seem disoriented. 

One young man told us he had walked to Lafayette from New Iberia, about ten or fifteen miles. We chatted briefly, and other than his long trek, he seemed normal.

That night as we were walking the dog, she began to growl at something in the dark near our house. When she ran into the dark, the young man from earlier popped up. He had been lying under a bush. We told him he had to find somewhere else, and went inside. 

Around one in the morning, someone started leaning on the doorbell. I looked in the camera, and couldn't see anyone. I went to the front door, and pulled the blinds aside to look through the panes of glass. The young man was crouched down, with his hand on the doorknob. 

"What are you doing," I asked him. 

When I did that, he tried the door, which was locked, thankfully. I told him bluntly to get off our property, and he went. The next morning I was telling the neighbor across the street about the whole thing. 

"Oh yeah, that guy? I had to chase him off my back steps with an axe," he said. 

Apparently he had tried my neighbor first. 

Never saw him again.