Part 4
Louisville, Kentucky has a reputation for taking care of the homeless. And if you didn’t mind the panhandling, you could maybe see this for the good thing it was. I-64 and I-65 crossed in the heart of downtown, a stone’s throw from the Ohio River, and they brought people with them. Just like its public transportation busses, Louisville was greedy. It kept people.
Hector knew a young punker named Fitzroy who had only set foot three times in his whole life outside the city limits, and two of those were to go to shows in Cincinatti. Fitz used to say Kentucky’s founding fathers knew what they were doing: tobacco, bourbon, horse racing, and prime weed. They knew how to keep you coming back. Thomas Jefferson didn’t strike Hector as much of a marijuana smoker, but it could not be said the man didn’t have vision.
Either way, the unattached drifted like silt through the murky waters of the Ohio until they clambered their way up its banks and into the city. Better that than get swept out to sea entirely. Otherwise the Ohio would spew its guts out into the Mississippi, and then it was just a straight shot to the Gulf of Mexico. One had to grow roots to stand against the carving, eroding waters, and Louisville opened its arms to those who wished to do so.
The systems had been in place for years. James Graham Brown had donated so much money to the city he practically owned it – what you give, you get – and a lot of that money filtered its way into metro grants for shelters. Different ones had different rules. Some you could stroll into rip-roaring drunk. Others would only take you sober. They didn’t bother with promises they couldn’t deliver. They were shelter: in a primal, animalistic sense (if you could ignore the minimal heating and air conditioning).
Only no one in the country could figure out how to keep social workers for these people. The national turnover rate for social work was humbling, which would have been a step up for Kentucky.
The shelters then, too, were greedy.
Hector knew a young punker named Fitzroy who had only set foot three times in his whole life outside the city limits, and two of those were to go to shows in Cincinatti. Fitz used to say Kentucky’s founding fathers knew what they were doing: tobacco, bourbon, horse racing, and prime weed. They knew how to keep you coming back. Thomas Jefferson didn’t strike Hector as much of a marijuana smoker, but it could not be said the man didn’t have vision.
Either way, the unattached drifted like silt through the murky waters of the Ohio until they clambered their way up its banks and into the city. Better that than get swept out to sea entirely. Otherwise the Ohio would spew its guts out into the Mississippi, and then it was just a straight shot to the Gulf of Mexico. One had to grow roots to stand against the carving, eroding waters, and Louisville opened its arms to those who wished to do so.
The systems had been in place for years. James Graham Brown had donated so much money to the city he practically owned it – what you give, you get – and a lot of that money filtered its way into metro grants for shelters. Different ones had different rules. Some you could stroll into rip-roaring drunk. Others would only take you sober. They didn’t bother with promises they couldn’t deliver. They were shelter: in a primal, animalistic sense (if you could ignore the minimal heating and air conditioning).
Only no one in the country could figure out how to keep social workers for these people. The national turnover rate for social work was humbling, which would have been a step up for Kentucky.
The shelters then, too, were greedy.
posted by Ghostwind at 4/07/2006 03:27:00 AM
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