There’s not much you can do when a homeless guy starts regularly
sleeping (and occasionally jerking off) on the couch on your front
porch. Except maybe get rid of the couch.
That’s the lesson learned recently by five housemates on SE 47th,
between Hawthorne and Division. Their education began Saturday evening,
May 24, when a disheveled-looking guy with shoulder-length dreadlocks,
smelling of piss, came walking past.
“He came up to us on the couch on our front porch and asked if we
had a cigarette,” says housemate Josh Kalberg. “I told him we’d just
thrown out the ashtray, so he said would we mind if he dug through our
trash to find one, and just went right ahead and did it.”
After rooting through the amused housemates’ trash, the man
disappeared, but returned that night to sleep on the couch. The next
day, the housemates called the cops, but were told they would have to
catch the man in the act, before the cops could do anything about his
behavior. That night, sure enough, he was back, so the housemates
dialed 911. A cop arrived and walked the man to the end of the block.
Within 10 minutes, he was back on the couch, and back again the next
night.
By Tuesday, the housemates were no longer amused.
“I could hear him snoring three houses down the street,” says Liz
Bartholomew, another housemate who was returning to the house late that
night, pushing her bike up the sidewalk. “He was wearing ripped
jeans—basically ass-less chaps, because he wasn’t wearing any
underwear,” Bartholomew continues.
“It was pretty frightening. I’m not an aggressive person at all, but
I was out there threatening him with my U-lock, trying to get him to
leave.”
Bartholomew dialed 911 again, but the dispatcher wasn’t quite so
patient this time. Meanwhile, the man was making himself extremely
comfortable on the couch outside.
“He was masturbating on our couch, and the dispatcher was getting
short with me, saying I needed to call the non-emergency line about
this,” Bartholomew says.
Eventually a cop came, after the housemates had called the cops four
times, and they say he was arrested for criminal trespass in the second
degree.
“They told us they knew who he was,” says another housemate, Jaymee
Cuti. “That he had some mental problems, that he was a creature of
habit, and that he’d probably be back in the morning.”
The next morning, the man was indeed back, to take a healthy shit in
the housemates’ neighbor’s front yard.
“I feel like there’s very little the cops could do,” says Cuti. “If
he doesn’t respond to repeated arrests, what is he going to
respond to?
“I want to be compassionate,” Cuti continues. “But I feel like if
I’m complacent I’m complicit. I feel like he needs a caseworker, and
admittance to a residential facility.”
Cuti says she even thought about turning on the water hose to deter
the man from sleeping, but that it seemed cruel. In the end, the
housemates removed the couch last Wednesday, June 4.
“It’s just a symptom of the root of the problem not being fixed,”
says another housemate, Charlotte Engler. “It seems like there should
be help for crazy people. They need to be helped, not just
removed.”
Fortunately for the housemates, the man started sleeping last
Wednesday night on the porch of Michael Rude’s house, next door. His
porch doesn’t have a couch.
“It’s actually kind of ironic, because we just got rid of it last
week,” says Rude.
Uggh. I know exactly who this guy is, and his name. He’s always wandering around Hawthorne in the area of the Bagdad theater… bumping into people, walking in circles, etc.
My sense is that he probably has been offered treatment in some form, and has completely rejected it or totally ignored it… and since he’s not violent to himself or others, there is absolutely nothing you can do.
I can be pretty sure the water hose trick isn’t gonna work. Try to get a restraining order. That’s really the only thing I can think of. I believe that, if you can demonstrate that you feel like you’re in immediate danger, one can be issued the same day. And then if he comes within a block, that’s an automatic police response and jail for him.
Maybe he’ll have a temporary moment of clarity and accepts treatment at some point.
Why should he respond to a restraining order, or any number of calls to the cops? He wants a safe place to sleep, and they would give it to him.
Although it is anti-intuitive, perhaps the best course of action would be to find a better place for him to sleep. To create an enemy of anyone is to deal with a situation of enmity. To offer compassion is likely to create an ally.
Steve K