What constitutes being homeless?

Being homeless is hard term to define. To many, it is not having enough food, or enough money to heat your home. To other is it physically living on the street, begging for money or food day in and day out. It is different for everyone and can be confusing try to classify what it means to be homeless. People most often think of them as those people who live on the street. who's clothes are ragged and dirty, and they haven't showed in many days. It is important to understand that is not always the case.

On our run tuesday night, this question was brought up. As we were finishing up handing out sandwiches and making our last stop in the pit, there were two women there. Usually there is a large group of younger adults, but tonight the pit was quiet. We stopped and offered them their sandwiches and talked with them for a little while. As we were about to leave, we asked them if they would like any blankets and they said yes. They then asked us if we had any down pillows. It was hard to tell if they were joking or not, so we went along with it. We started talking more and they asked for fitted sheets to her bed because she had never had fitted sheets before. It was strange for all of us to have requests such as these. We didn't know whether or not it was really needed. We discussed in our small group what we think it meant to be homeless and we all had different opinions. I believe that even if you have a home, you can still be homeless in a sense because you dont have the money to pay for heat or food, which I think are essential to life. So I ask you, what does "homeless" mean to you?

Overall, the night was great. The group going by the tannery ran into a man in a wheelchair. In their conversation with him, he was saying he was mostly blind. Yet, he was pointing out all the things he could see on the group, like the scarf was red, or she was wearing glasses. The thing that stood out to them the most was what he said about snow. As a child, he loved to play in the snow and he really wanted it to snow 8 feet with the upcoming storm. Winter is his favorite time and it reminds him of his childhood. He said that "everything would be good if it snowed this weekend". It was nice to hear that even in their situation when you think snow and cold would be the worst thing, he was extremely excited because it meant that he was going to be truly happy. 

-Meryl :)