Duty to Rescue

'Duty to rescue' is a concept in tort law describing a circumstance in which a party can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party in peril.

[dutytorescue]

Fred and Chewy; One of the worst jobs that I have as an outreach worker is telling people that their friends have died. Someone is already traumatized by life, their daily existence and what they often perceive to be some inexcusable failure. Then I (and so many others) have to go and hand them a bowl full of hurt; in a parking lot. Fred’s best friend died last week and unlike me, he couldn’t go behind a closed door and cry it out. He and Chewy get to do that on a street corner or in a tent in the hundred degree heat.

[dutytorescue]

Mitchell moved into his apartment the latter part of 2017. He did well by himself, held onto his friends on the street but walked away from the dumb stuff that would’ve cost him his apartment. Apparently the dream for him came with some self-imposed conditions. He still drank but it wasn’t the same as before. The last time I saw him he winked at me and said: “Let’s you and me get in the car and go to Memphis.” We both laughed and I threatened to call his bluff.

Mitchell was found in his apartment last Wednesday by some friends who missed him. They knocked and when he didn’t answer they asked management to do a wellness check.

[dutytorescue]

George inherited a couple of okra plants, volunteers, at his new place. He was looking past me in this photo to see them because in his words “I never been no farmer Susan, how am I supposed to know what okra looks like?”

(Buckle up friend, I’m about to turn you into one. LOL)

[dutytorescue]

This is Paul. Like many of the un-housed people I know, Paul is a full on miracle. When I met him I didn't believe he'd live six months and there was a day one July, on the porch of an abandoned Jack in the Box, I didn't think he'd live six hours. Then a kind stranger in a parking garage offered him a job. This in turn, restored his self-respect and he's alive today because of that. Not because he "pulled himself up by his bootstraps" but because someone, knowing it might not be perfect, gave him a chance.

[dutytorescue]

Should’ve posted this on Valentine’s Day. My friend Gene is super creative.

[dutytorescue]

This is Rex and Roscoe. I finally got them into an apartment a couple of weeks ago (after two years of being homeless). The wait was excruciating and almost sent Rex over the edge. We applied for the apartment several months back (September I think it was) before the cold set in. Rex was living in his truck and by Christmas he had given up. We had a long talk late one night after another of my guys had taken his own life and I asked Rex to hold on a little longer, to have faith, and to not leave us. He said he’d see what he could do. A few days later the call came and we moved him in. It isn’t the solution to Rex’s problems but those can’t be possibly be addressed without a safe place for him to rest his head.

[dutytorescue]

Note from your outreach worker:

Dear Jim,

I signed your name sixteen times today. On a blank screen. I gave your permission for everything. Including photos and resuscitation. I froze briefly when the guy asked me what to do if they found you unconscious. I tried to put myself in your brain. Sadly, I landed in my own, and of course there was Joe, the last homeless man I knew whose life was ended mercilessly because the system failed him.

Joe, smiling at me from his truck window, saying: “Don’t worry honey, I’ll be alright. Love you.”

That’s the last thing he said to me. If I had called 911 like I wanted to, he’d be alive right now but for what? So he could sit in his truck homeless and heartbroken, with shit all over himself?  Yeah. That.

That in mind, I told them to resuscitate you if possible. You can thank me later if/when you are ever sleeping on the church steps again. Being bullied by a security guard. Who works at a church. It’s important to have friends willing to return you to your own misery.

Love your outreach worker and friend, Susan

[dutytorescue]

I was standing on the interstate entrance ramp talking to you on the phone. It was extremely loud  and I thought you were crying. I still think you were but I’ve not seen you cry in person before so maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Part of my  job is to let you cry if you need to so I called you back once I was in the car and you sounded even a little more unhinged. Because she assaulted you and kept you awake all night long, again.

This is why you missed our appointment to get your birth certificate and apply at the apartment. You know the world doesn’t know how hard it is for men and women who are living in abusive or mentally unsound relationships. I try to keep you on the phone until you can breathe. We will reschedule. I’ll tell the property manager you had a “conflict”

[dutytorescue]

On freezing cold days, it’s pretty easy to find the folks I work with. Assuming they have the gear they need to get warm in the first place, they’re never very far from it.

Jesse had a car and a job at Vanderbilt. Things weren’t perfect but he was on his way to something better when COVID-19 appeared on the scene. Now this lovely human, a veteran by the way, sleeps under a picnic table while city officials sit around conference tables talking about strategies to make him (and others like him) leave. Not ways to get him into permanent housing or ways to help him - just ways to make it more uncomfortable. Thankfully, there are other city officials actually helping at the moment, because of a pandemic. That’s what it took to get help.

[dutytorescue]

Dear Food Stamp Office lady who never answers the phone or returns calls:

My name is Susan and I work with a lady named Heather. Despite my attempts to reach you, you cut off Heather’s food stamps on December 31, because she didn’t fill out and return some form you needed to prove that she is still hungry.

Heather sleeps on a moldy mattress, in an abandoned car wash. She is still hungry. Please return my phone call so I can spend thirty minutes convincing you that I am who I say I am and that Heather is hungry so we can get some food in her body before another week goes by. Thank you and have a great new year.

[dutytorescue]

Remembering Greg, a kind and wonderful soul, who never met a stranger, always had a great story and never failed to entertain, with or without his saxophone.

[missmentelle]

Health insurance is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client who can’t afford to see me.  Housing is a mental health issue. I can’t use therapy to help a client whose depression and anxiety come directly from sleeping in the streets.  Food insecurity is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client who isn’t taking their medication because their pills say “take with food” and they have nothing to eat. Healthcare is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client whose “depression” is actually a thyroid condition they can’t afford to get treated.  Wages are a mental health issue. I can’t help a client whose anxiety comes from the fact that they are one missed shift away from not being able to make rent.

Child care is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client who works 80 hours per week to afford daycare, and doesn’t have the time or energy left to come see me. 

Drug policing is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client who ended up in prison because they got caught self-medicating with illegal substances. 

Police brutality is a mental health issue. I can’t help a client whose ‘anxiety’ is a very real and justified fear of ending up as a hashtag. 

If you’re going to make a stand for improving mental health, you have to understand that addressing mental health goes way beyond hiring more therapists and talking about mental health on social media. If we’re really serious about tackling this mental health problem as a country, it means rolling up our sleeves and taking down the barriers that prevent people from getting the help they need - even if those people are different than us, lead different lives, and make choices we don’t agree with.  We aren’t “fixing” mental health unless we’re fixing it for everybody. 

[dutytorescue]

Getting into a thirty day drug/alcohol treatment program isn’t easy for people with little or no money, even with insurance. You have to show up as a walk-in for an assessment first. This involves getting to the facility at 5:30 in the morning, waiting two hours, paying five dollars cash, filling out an excessive amount of paperwork and answering that many more questions. It can be grueling for someone who’s hands are shaking. On a good day, in all the process takes about four hours. Then they say: “You’re approved (or not) and we’ll call you when we get a bed.” This second wait takes approximately 3-4 weeks which, if you are homeless, sleeping rough, feels like a year.

This is my friend Billy on the front end of that morning. He was in a great mood for someone who woke up on a concrete slab just ten minutes ago, was handed a cup of coffee, and driven two miles away (to another piece of concrete) at the rehab center. He knew I was coming but he was sound asleep.

It was wonderful driving through Nashville at that time of the morning and I love hanging out with him when he’s sober. Before anyone else arrived we drank coffee and listened to the birds sing in the dark, cool morning air. 

Later, I got to listen as Billy recited his drug history, beginning with his first beer at the dinner table; age 9. That part was sad but never fails to offer insight as to how he got to be here and how much of it was a roll of the dice.

[dutytorescue]

Jail Mail. Sealed with a hug. 

This inmate went to court one morning on a trespassing charge and the court realized it forgot to pick him up on a failure to appear charge from FIVE YEARS EARLIER. So.. they kept him in jail sixty days to flatten out a sentence for a crime he had no recollection of.

[dutytorescue]

[dutytorescue]

Wayne’s old tent, given to him out of the back of a truck, in a pouring rain by an off duty Metro Police Officer.

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Making the bed. This gentleman (approaching seventy years old) spent three seasons living outdoors. He got an apartment two weeks ago.