Where Do You Turn When Nothing is Left? Garnett Snell

by Karen St. John-Vincent

It’s six or seven o’clock in the morning on any given day in your week.  You don’t worry much about oversleeping because the alarm you set the night before will continue to wake you in precise intervals every time you hit the snooze button.  Eventually, you fall out of bed and, even though there is snow outside your window, your house is comfortably warm.  You take a long, hot shower and, now fully awake, dress in freshly dry-cleaned or laundered clothes.   In your kitchen, you grab a glass of juice, perhaps a slice of toast or bagel before heading out the door.  Your coat is warm, your gloves without holes and with the morning paper tucked neatly under your arm, you head for your car or the bus ready for another day at the office.

Now, imagine that instead of that alarm clock, you rely on the first light of the day or the first light of the overhead fixture turned on by someone in a shelter to tell you it’s time to go.  You’re awake all right but there is non-cozy warmth, no long, hot shower.  If you are fortunate enough there is a bathroom sink in a shelter or maybe a restroom in a gas station.  Your clothes for the day are already on your back and they are warm enough because you have learned to dress in many layers.  There are holes in your gloves but you wear more than one pair to compensate.  You are accustomed to the bitter cold of winter.  At best you have a cup of coffee and are on your way by bus or by foot to stand in line outside an agency where you may be given the opportunity to work that day or maybe not.

Garnett Snell knows what it’s like to be homeless and to try to work at the same time. Born in Cleveland some 32 years ago, Snell has been on the streets since leaving home at the age of thirteen.  For him every day is a matter of survival.

“It’s like going to school...what I was missing at home, I learned out here on the streets.”

For the homeless, second only to survival, is securing employment that will enable them to change their status.  The dilemma is twofold in that employers do not want to hire people who cannot give them an address and a home phone number yet without employment, a homeless person has little hope of getting off the streets and into a place of their own.

Snell recounts an unpleasant run-in with a prospective employer.  “This one time, I took my stuff with me to an interview.  And the guy said 'are you homeless? So I told him 'yes, I am.' So the guy says ‘get out!’ just tells me to get out.”

The difficulty involved in securing employment with private companies leads many of the homeless who do work to the temporary agencies such as Manpower and Minute Men.  Generally, they pay    Snell is mainly a machinist but has worked also at Jacobs Field concessions over the summer months cooking, cleaning and serving food.  And of course, he has had his share of experiences with the temporary agencies.

“They are crooks. Believe me.  I’ve worked for them since 1977.  I know about this.  The agency gets ten, twelve, thirteen dollars [per] hour and we don’t see half of that money.  Then they go and tax us to death.  They get the full benefit of the contract and we get minimum wage.  They need to make minimum wage about eight dollars [per] hour.  Bottom line — minimum wage is bullshit. Ain’t nobody survives on minimum wage.”

Which brings us to the second dilemma.  Securing housing and getting off the streets permanently.  Snell expresses his frustration with the continual battle to come up with enough money to get off the streets.

“It’s so hard to get that security deposit and first and last month’s rent.  I don’t believe in all that.  That’s too much money to spend on a shack.”

And so the struggle for Snell continues as it does for many other homeless people trying to work their way off the streets and to a better life.

“I’m street educated but not enough to compete with the world.  I got my street knowledge but it’s not going to take me nowhere.  I’m very intelligent.  Why should I waste the rest of my life out here?”

Snell longs to go back to school and finish his education.  It is his dream to someday own his own construction company and a scrap yard and compete with the “big boys.”

In this presidential election year, Snell offers advice for those in public office, "Come on out here and live on the streets for 24 hours.  Seriously. I’d like the President to come on out here with all his bodyguards and all that.  Just forget about everything else.  And become homeless for 24 hours.  And I guarantee you, he wouldn’t like it.”

Despite his circumstances, one cannot help but be struck by his sense of hope for the future.

“I have family and I have friends.  We help each other. We look out for each other.  I’ve helped people get off the streets.  I help people as much as I can because eventually my blessing will come and I’ll be off the streets for good.”