the price of a good night's sleep

Each night in our community, hundreds of young people find themselves abandoned to the streets. In most cases these youth lack any semblance of family, having come from the foster care system, dysfunctional families, or parents that are themselves homeless; they have been cut off from supportive institutions, such as schools and faith communities; and add to this the fact that a majority are struggling with mental illness or emotional trauma from abuse. 

These teens find themselves stripped of even the most basic of human needs, scavenging for food, going without medical care, and sleeping on the streets. But this last circumstance glosses over the reality a bit; simply stating that a teenager is homeless doesn't really get to the lived experience. What exactly, then, do we mean when we say that they must sleep on the streets? Where in fact, do they lay their heads?



There are, of course, the homeless shelters.

The largest of these is located close to Sacred Heart and can sleep up to 250 people. However, on any given night in our community there are more than 7000 men, women, and children without humane housing. This means that every night there are people turned away from shelters. What's more, because shelters can sometimes be rough places, many individuals with no place else to turn still find a bed at a shelter too great a risk.

So where do these most vulnerable youth go to rest?

For some, the answer is abandoned houses. For others, it is sleeping on the roof of the San Jose State Event Center, in the stairwells of public parking structures, along the Guadalupe River, in back yards, along railroad tracks, or beneath freeway on-ramps. For others, it is a night spent on the bus or in a car. But in all these places there is danger: there are others who would come to rob or harass, security guards and police to disturb, ticket, or arrest, and the hostility of the elements.

For all these reasons--in an effort to find some few hours of safety and security--others find a choice more extreme.

Some of our community's daughters--starting in their early teens--find themselves so afraid, so desperate for a safe place to close their eyes and sleep at night, that they take to prostitution. This is nothing like the picture that the media would give us, or Hollywood, or even some scholars. 

For these girls it is an ugly, shameful, desperate, and violent path, but it is one that is taken each night in an effort to raise the $65 it costs for a motel room.


-Todd Madigan