The Word on the Street

By MATTHEW PUCAK, Senior Technical Journalism Major

Often it is one accident or illness that seems to doom a poverty-stricken person to a life of homelessness.

Too Tall suffers from epilepsy, which forced him out of his job as a cook.

Sally Baker and Red Bone both suffered injuries that left them in pain and unable to work.

All three never expected, or dreamed, of ever being homeless, but they are all now living day-to-day on the streets, sleeping in bushes or abandoned cars, scraping for food and drinking away the pain.

Amy Pezzani is the executive director of the Food Bank for Larimer County, a non-profit organization that shares and distributes food for those in or near poverty, and she sees just how many people in Larimer County are barely able to scrape by every month.

Additionally, she empathizes with their position after being stretched so tight on her own budget that she was on food stamps for a couple of years while paying for her own college education.

“I know that a lot of the people we are serving are doing the best that they can. They are working, or they are retired and they are too old to work, and they are receiving a very fixed income. I understand what it is like to live on that,” she said.

The problems are not just with those that are too old or below the poverty line.
According to a CSU study conducted last year, half of the individuals who use the Food Bank have no health insurance, leaving them open to situations where one accident or illness can push them past their limits and out of their homes.

Pezzani said this is especially troubling for parents.

“If you break your arm, you’ve got all sorts of X-ray expenses, doctor’s expenses. Or your kid does that, or gets sick, or God forbid has to be hospitalized overnight, then the cost is astronomical. It is hard to recover from that.”

The ones that don’t recover are left to their own devices, and they can’t care for themselves.

For the homeless, life becomes a battle, and every day could be your last.

“It’s about survival,” Baker said, and it was just two days following the interview before she was in the ICU, fighting for her life.