JUST GET A JOB? JUST GET CLEAN? IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE

Tacoma's plan to eliminate homeless encampments seems so
straightforward: Get people out of squalid camps and into housing
with supportive services.

Who, after all, would not be eager to move up from a freezing,
filthy, dangerous camp?

To those living in the mainstream, it's a no-brainer.

To those interviewed this week for the 2008 Pierce County Homeless
Survey, it's a complex question of habit, hope, grief, guilt,
addiction, opportunity and timing.

Meet Mike Wahl.

At midmorning Thursday, Mike, 34, was sitting on a fallen tree,
sipping from a tall, cheap can of Olde English malt liquor. The spot,
along Tacoma Rail tracks inside the city, has been living room,
bedroom, kitchen and bathroom to heroin users for years. It's illegal
to live there now, though a woman was doing so, huddled in a pup
tent rigged out of blue tarps and heated by a candle.

No one is living in the tidy tent at the edge of camp. The person who
owns it is storing his stuff there while he couch surfs with friends.
That man, Mike said, keeps the tent "just in case."

Mike, who has followed the news on encampments and the proposed
Alcohol Impact Area, moved his tent to Swan Creek Park, just outside
the city. Pierce County does not have an encampment program like Tacoma's.

He'd answered the 2008 Homeless Survey earlier, at breakfast at a
meal site. Then he'd gotten his methadone and panhandled money for
the Olde English. He wanted to talk about being homeless in Pierce
County.

He'd grown up lucky, with a good family, a good eduction and,
eventually, a good job. Then he'd trashed his leg in a street bike
crash. While his leg was bring rebuilt, he got addicted to heavy-duty
prescription painkillers.

When he couldn't get them anymore, he started shooting
heroin.

He'd lost everything by then, and panhandled to make drug money. He
needed $25 worth of heroin to get up in the morning, another $25 to
make it past noon, another to get though the evening and another to
sleep on.

Without drugs, he couldn't move.

"You will lie in your tent and literally puke and crap yourself
because you can't get up," he said.

He mustered the strength and benefits to get into the methadone
program, he said, and he's sticking with it. Methadone is addicting,
too, he said, but it doesn't get you high.

He'd like to gradually reduce his dosage and rebuild his life. But
it's complicated in so many ways.

"It's hard to get a job when you're living in a tent," he
said.

After five years in the camps, he's used to the elements. Friends
invited him to stay with them, but he could not sleep indoors.
Instead, he pitched a tent in their backyard.

Mike cries like a child when he talks about how he's disappointed his
family.

He tried once, and failed, to get into one of the city and county
Housing First programs aimed at getting chronically homeless people
into stable housing first, following up with the treatment and help
they need. Some of the programs serve people with mental illness.
Some don't.

Beyond Housing First, some agencies require residents to be clean and
sober.

It can get confusing, Mike said.

During his last interview, he gave the answers he thought the service
worker wanted to hear.

"I kind of lied. I told them I didn't have mental issues," he said.
"They told me they couldn't give me an apartment because I didn't
have mental health issues."

He got himself into this mess, he said, and at most levels he wants
to get out.

But at this point, that would mean, once again, leaving
everything.

"I've been living this lifestyle so long, it seems normal," he said.
"Yeah. It's depressing. That's why we drink. It keeps us warm. And it
keeps us from thinking about being homeless. It numbs you."