AUGUSTA, GA - When I met Chris, he was curled up on the sidewalk at 7th and Reynolds in the loading area of The Augusta Chronicle. A truck was backing up towards him with its alarm going off.

The scene reminded me of Craig Morgan’s “Almost Home:”

The bank sign was flashing 5 below/It was freezing rain and spitting snow/He was curled up behind some garbage cans/I was afraid that he was dead/I gave him a gentle shake.
 

I shook Chris awake. He got up and said, “You got a cigarette? I like a smoke when I first get up.”

Anyone who lives in the country would think this is a scene from the music video for “Almost Home.” But anyone working downtown would walk on by as if they didn’t see him.

I wondered why Chris would sleep on the sidewalk when there are places that are supposed to help.

At Garden City Mission, Lavond Reynolds told me he knew most of the people on the street.

Nearly all of them pass through at one time or another. Garden City allows people to stay for up to 90 days.

They provide more than a meal and a bunk. They help people find employment, housing and Social Security benefits.

Based on my conversations with Chris and others, I had visualized a dirty place with dirty people sleeping on the floor, a place that you only went as a last resort. I could not have been more wrong. Garden City has long lines of bunk beds, 56 in total. While I was looking, someone yelled, “Who needs clean sheets?” then passed them out.

Some of the men were lying down in their bunks reading. Some were listening to whatever was coming through their earphones.

They had no drunks causing trouble because, if you are drinking, you can’t stay there. That’s the reason Chris can’t take advantage of the things that Garden City has to offer.

Chris’s story is that he came here in 1998 to get help at the VA Hospital and try to get on disability. He hadn’t been successful.

He said he was an alcoholic. He earns enough money for alcohol or rent. He buys alcohol.

That is not something I assumed because of his appearance.

“If you give me a thousand dollars,” he told me, “I won’t go rent a room.”

His honesty surprised me.

The day I woke him up, Chris had blood on his shirt. He said he was robbed by two black guys, who got all his money. He didn’t even bother to call the police. “Are you kidding?” Chris said. “The cops aren’t going to do anything.”

I told Chris I was willing to stay one week on the streets with him to learn about being homeless. After a decade living on sidewalks, he wasn’t impressed with the idea of a seven-day stint. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, he said. “It will be like camping out.”

As I was walking off, he added, “If you are going to be homeless, this is a good place to be.”

Reynolds, the assistant director of Garden City Mission, was homeless once himself. In 2003, he found himself without a place to live after being terminated from the Army. He’s still fighting his case, though he’s now a Richmond County teacher.

I ask myself why Lavond got help and Chris hasn’t. They are both ex-military. They became homeless after leaving the Army. One remains homeless and one isn’t. The answer for Chris and many others is alcohol.

Surfer Guy is one of the people I see on the streets. I call him that because he looks like someone that you might see on the beach.

When I asked him why he did not stay at the shelters, he said, “The people there are rude and don’t take a shower.”

Then he pulled a bottle of vodka out of his back pocket and took a drink, then said, “If you are drinking they won’t let you stay. That’s real Christian, ain’t it?”

That’s partly true. He cannot stay at Garden City because he has been drinking. But the part about people being rude and not taking showers appears to be far from the truth.

Lavond showed me the whole place and I was impressed. I don’t think everyone was on their best behavior because I was there. But it was clean and safe.

Most of the homeless I talked to had one thing in common: Like Chris, they have spent time in jail.

One officer who deals with more of the homeless than nearly anyone is Danny McNeal. In response to concerns that police riding in cars were too disconnected from the people they serve, Richmond County has taken some officers, such as McNeal, and put them on bicycles downtown. It’s almost a return to the beat cop.

Officer McNeal doesn’t dress like the officers we see every day. Instead of the usual uniform, McNeal wears shorts and T-shirt along with a bike helmet. At first glance, he blends in with everyone else riding a bike. That chameleon-like capacity, plus the speed with which he can respond to a call, make covering the beat easier than it used to be.

He is aware of the homeless downtown and spends time talking to businesses about the issue. He has made up to 13 arrests a month. Most are for public drunkenness.

“I am aggressive in enforcing the law on my beat and my supervisors back me 100 percent,” McNeal said.

Once he woke a man sleeping on a bench on Broad Street. The man told McNeal that he was on his way to his job in North Augusta. That man told McNeal he made $500 a week but did not see the need to pay for a place to live.

I did meet a few people like McNeal told me about. It would be wrong to overlook them. They have income they do not spend on addictions.

They, like the person he told me about, see no need for what we call home. Maybe we should not even call them homeless. They don’t panhandle or bother people.

What stood out to me more than anything else was this: Where they live, even though it is outside, is clean like we keep our homes. Not like the ones who trash the Confederate monument area where they spend there time begging for money.

The story McNeal told me also shows that everyone we see sleeping on a bench doesn’t represent the true homeless in desperate need of help. It may be that is where they chose to spend their daylight hours, weather permitting. When it doesn’t, there is a place to take them in.

Mercy Ministries is a day center for the homeless in Harrisburg. They have been in the spotlight because some residents don’t want them there. When I arrived at Mercy Ministries, what I saw was an area with chairs and a TV. Some were watching TV, while others had their heads on the table sleeping.

The director told me Mercy Ministries’ mission was to give the homeless a place to go during the day. During times of severe heat and cold, they offer a place that the night shelters don’t. Mercy doesn’t require you to be homeless to be offered a place to stay.

There are various reasons for people to stay in the shelter other than being homeless. The director told me Mercy Ministries isn’t just a place for people to hang out. They provide many other services to help people, homeless or not, get their lives back on track.

At Garden City, for instance, people cannot stay during the day. They are expected to be out looking for work or doing something to improve their situations.

In good weather, it’s easy finding homeless people to talk with. Cigarette Man was someone I saw every time I went out. When I walked up to him, he was picking up butts to smoke.

“They smoke as good as new ones and they’re free,” he said.

His appearance was not that of most homeless people. The thing that stood out were his teeth. They were extremely white and none were missing, though it was not like he had a lot of expensive cosmetic work.

Cigarette Man said he had a reason for not having a place to live. “My dad and I don’t get along.”

Even though he was living on the street, he had a place to go to take a bath and wash his clothes — a friend’s home, was as much as he would say. I got the idea being homeless was an off-and-on thing for him.

While walking with my friend on First Friday one day, we were approached by Alice. For my friend, who lives in rural Georgia, it was not the kind of thing he was accustomed to seeing.

Even for me, it was the first time I’d been approached by a female.

She came up with the usual: “Can you help me with some money to buy a meal?” My friend told her he would buy her a meal at the River Front Pub.

However, since she said she had been barred from there, he went in to pay for her food. I talked to her while we waited.

She told me that she had been living in shelters and on the streets off and on for two years.

During our talk, she asked me for money four times. I realized she wanted money in exchange for talking to me. Each time she asked, I said no but she kept asking.

My friend came out and said, “I can’t wait any longer, but it’s paid for.” He told her she could get it when it was ready.

Alice said, “Can I have the change that’s left over?” As we walked away, my friend said, “I can’t believe people live like that”

One of the homeless who does not panhandle is Mr. Manners. He wears the traditional sportcoat from a second-hand store that marks him with the classic image of homeless men.

He was hesitant to talk to me until I assured him I wouldn’t tell anyone where he was sleeping.

Politely, he asked me if I minded him smoking and lit up a brown cigarette. He told me he has been homeless for five years. All he said was his brother and he had a dispute.

He said that he doesn’t stay in the shelters because he cannot come and go as he pleases.

He earns his money selling newspapers and taking out the trash for local businesses.

When it gets cold, he said, he hopes to be able to buy a good sleeping bag. He said someone tried to get him to go to Serenity, but that was for crazy people. He was one of the only people I talked to who didn’t blame anyone else for his homelessness.

I discovered that when people complain about being homeless, it generally isn’t out of concern. They want money, a cigarette or something for free. However, I believe if they didn’t bother people with their panhandling, the homeless would be virtually invisible.

Atlanta has recently tried to address that problem. According to Georgia Politics Unfiltered, a study commissioned by the Atlanta Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, the top two things people disliked about Atlanta were the traffic and panhandling.

Officer Ronnie Collins, who is also with the local bike patrol, told me that he deals with homeless people every day. His 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift starts on Riverwalk, where panhandlers are known to approach people.

Although there is a law against panhandling, some argue that to arrest people for such a crime would be counterproductive. Richmond County would then be responsible for their housing, food and medical care. And when the panhandlers got out, they’d be back downtown again.

Collins has taken an approach of making himself highly visible. “When most of them see me coming, they get up and move on,” he said.

He also said out of all the people who live in the downtown area, only a few cause trouble because of drunkenness. He is aware that panhandling is bothering people, but unless someone makes a complaint, he says there is little he can do.

Some cities have tried to solve the problem by requiring a panhandling license. The idea is that a few will purchase a license and undercover police would arrest others who are begging for money without one. Of course, that notion steers us back to the fact that it costs taxpayers money to keep the homeless in jail.

Everyone I spoke with from law enforcement, shelters and social services remarked about the number of homeless who suffer from mental problems. One person, who asked not to be identified, told me there are homeless on Augusta’s streets who have been diagnosed with everything from depression to schizophrenia.

“They don’t get the help they need because Serenity hospital is on Mike Padgett Highway,” he said. “A lot of the people don’t go because they can’t get there. Often, they have some type of income, such as Social Security. They seldom panhandle or sleep on a bench and leave trash for someone else to pick up.”

Where they sleep wasn’t even shown to me, for fear their safe place of refuge might be revealed.

They are not at a point where help could be forced on them, as it once was when we packed them into hospitals. At the same time, they are unable to maintain employment and function as we do. Along with the poor Jesus spoke of, they will always be with us.

One person told me there was actually an upside to having the homeless hanging around a business. That person said they provide security. He reasoned that there’s less chance of a break-in with some homeless people there. But most of those I talked to said the opposite.

Some people said they lose business due to homeless people asking for money. Customers see panhandlers and don’t want to be bothered, so they go somewhere else and shop.

Although I only talked to one homeless woman, it doesn’t mean they are not out there. Men and women can’t be placed together in shelters, which creates a great need for women’s facilities.

One of the groups trying to attack that problem is Garden City.

In 2007, they created a special place where they could begin taking in women and children.

They provide a safe bed for the night, breakfast, bus tickets to work, GED classes and free out-of-town bus tickets through the United Way.

All of the shelters and missions that I talked to had one reservation about talking to me.

They were all worried that I would harm the work they were doing.

I told them before I would do that I would not do the story at all.

I spent two months going out and talking to anyone who would give me their time. (There were people who had an opportunity to contribute and if you don’t see them mentioned here, it may be because they never called me back.)

As best I can tell, there are around 500 homeless people in Augusta. There are places to help those 500. Those places are run by people whose life mission is to help the homeless. They don’t do it for the money and often have religious motivations. Some, like Garden City, have rules that people they help must follow and they do demonstrate a success rate of transitioning people through homelessness and getting people back into the mainstream.

Others, however, don’t have the same rules. As they see it, God tells them to feed the hungry as Jesus did. They admit there are some people who will never live like the rest of us — the drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill — and these agencies insist on helping everyone, even those who can’t or won’t help themselves.

As I see it, those among the homeless who want help can get it. There are jobs out there, though maybe not the ones people want, but they are there.

My friend who helped the homeless woman downtown is an ironworker. He says his union was turning work down for lack of skilled workers. If someone has a high school education or GED, they can get into apprentice programs.

The ones he showed me were in walking distance of most missions. For those who don’t have a high school education, Garden City and other places will help people get one.

Help is out there — if people want it. Even I, however, admit that some people will fall between the cracks.

Until now, I would have used the word “homeless” to describe most of the people that we see every day on the streets of downtown or sleeping on a park bench. But now I no longer believe they represent the majority of the true homeless.

There are people who live outside by choice. They could have a roof or they could have drugs or alcohol. Those are the ones who gave me the same sad stories and begged for money.

These are the ones who take advantage of the charity of good people. They are the ones who scare people away from strolling Riverwalk. These are the ones who have discouraged people from living near the core of Augusta.

I have spoken to enough of the homeless to know that money given directly to people on the street takes a very short trip to satisfy that person’s most immediate needs, whether that be food, drink or smoke. In my opinion, money given to people who refuse work is better given directly to people who try to help the true homeless with long-term solutions.

As Chris told me, it’s like camping out, with extended benefits. You can get woken up by the deputy each morning and get a free lunch at noon. Later they can stay overnight at a shelter, have breakfast, then go to a day shelter, watch TV and make the circle. Of course, this is not how all homeless people spend their day. Not everyone abuses the system.

After I spent two months talking to people on the street, I have a better idea of what their needs really are. Chris’ statement about Augusta being a good place to be homeless is not true. Maybe it’s better than most places, because of the mild weather and help available. But it’s not good. Anyone, given a choice, wants four walls and a roof over their head.

I looked hard to find that old man in “Almost Home.” And you know what? I found him — not behind a garbage can covered in snow, but he is here.

Old man you gonna freeze to death/let me drive you to tha mission/He said boy if you’d left me alone by now I’d be fishin'.

In “Almost Home,” he wanted to continue a dream, not accept the help of a kind stranger.

That mirrors the homeless I saw on the street. We give money in hope of a permanent solution to their plight. In reality, it will only get them through the next hour. The homeless that need and want help are seldom seen by people going about their day.

I haven’t seen Chris since that day. I heard some homeless man had been found near The Chronicle suffering from severe medical problems. Maybe Chris is sick, in jail, dead or decided Augusta wasn’t a good place to be homeless after all. Regardless of where he is, I owe him a favor.

After we met, my plan of staying with him a week changed. If I had, I would have only gotten one side of the story. And to be honest, I never liked camping out anyway.