RICH: The homeless

Published 8:00 am Sunday, March 23, 2025

It was many winters ago in Washington, D.C., that I saw my first homeless person. He was lying over a warm vent atop the Metro train. Behind him, across the street, the Washington Monument stood gloriously bathed in light.

In the November evening’s bitter cold, I stopped and, puzzled, stared for a moment. He seemed peacefully asleep. I looked over at the beauty of the tribute to our first president then back to the man whose home was a city sidewalk with an aluminum trash can nearby. 

I was dressed warmly in a long, double-breasted navy coat with a red wool scarf wrapped around my neck, wearing a beautiful pair of deep brown lambskin leather gloves that someone had gifted Mama. They were too tight for her hands so she gave them to me. I still have them and they’re still as pretty now as then.

Back in those days, most of the cities in America were practically crime-free so it was like London is today — safe for a young woman to wander the streets at night. As I moved past him, I thought, “How does a man wind up like that?”

I was freshly out of college and had been in D.C. less than two weeks. I was working at the newspaper, USA Today, in those impressive, first years of its founding. I lived in Foggy Bottom so I often walked to the Kennedy Center for a movie or two blocks over to Georgetown for a burger at Hamburger Hamlet. I was a country girl who knew only a world of kindness where folks were neighborly and what little we had, we shared.

I slowly walked past the man but looked back over my shoulder, as we all do when viewing again something we’ve never seen before. “I’d move to Florida,” I told myself. “At least, I’d be warm.”

That was the first, but far from the last, of the homeless people I would encounter. New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. Atlanta. San Francisco. As the years passed, the numbers grew. L.A. is practically one, big, tent city where people, who can afford housing, are fleeing to other states, primarily to Texas while Hollywood stars are heading for Nashville.

Many times since that cold night in D.C., I’ve wondered, “How do people become homeless? What are their stories?”

It was late fall and I was down at Mama’s house, sitting on the porch steps, talking to a friend who had stopped by to pick a couple of my latest books, when a car pulled into the driveway and parked behind his.

“I wonder who that is?” he said. He’s former military so always wary. 

I shrugged. “Probably Jehovah Witnesses.”

Two men approached, both a bit scruffy. From the corner of my eye, I saw my friend stiffen and knew he was strategizing on how quickly he could get to the gun in his car.

“Hey,” said the older man. “Do you know who owns that double-wide up there?”

“I do,” I replied. It’s one of my more glamorous possessions. A woman, who lived there for 15 years had moved out months earlier and I was planning to tear it down.

“I’ve been tryin’ to find out for weeks. It rented?”

“I shook my head.

“Would’cha rent it?”

“It’s not in very good condition,” I replied.

“Ma’am, it’s better than where we’re livin’ now. I guarantee you that.”

My friend was watching, ready to jump in and save me. 

“Where’s that?” I asked.

He threw his thumb over his shoulder. 

“In that car. In the Walmart parkin’ lot.”

He explained that he, his wife, and two sons came to be homeless when their former landlord tripled their rent. “How much would you take?” 

I named an extremely low price. Tears filled his eyes and his son’s shoulders collapsed with relief.

“I knowed my prayers would be answered.”

And, now I know how some people come to be homeless.

—Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of the Stella Bankwell mysteries. Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter.