Inheritance
I’m thankful for this breathtaking article in Esquire by Patrick Fealey, a firsthand account of being homeless in America (and I’m thankful that someone made a GoFundMe page to support him). Part of why I found this article unignorably readable is because my father has battled against the creeping tide of homelessness after a lifetime of financial difficulty.
After a few years of scant contact with my dad, in August of 2024, my mother rang me to tell me that the house he had been squatting in- the same place I spent a chunk of my twenties and a portion of my adolescence- was now due for demolition. The landlord, who knew our family due to how long we’d been living there, had been overall kind to us in his dealings and paid a final kindness when he saw my dad that day. Leaning, beleaguered, on his Mitsubishi in the driveway, my dad appeared unwell when the landlord drove slowly past to check on the house. He’d informed him of the demolition a while ago and was meant to have vacated, but he was squatting there instead. The house was an old build, possibly the oldest house on the street, and stuck out compared to the other residences. I remember this from when I would go for walks in my neighbourhood. He’d wanted to do a knock down rebuild for a while and was putting it off to convenience us and then my dad. He knew he was computer illiterate, old, somewhat physically feeble, and had an odd (to put it compactly) personality, so would struggle to move.
He rang my mother out of concern, who rang my brother and I.
A while before these phone calls, I visited my dad after he’d sent me a characteristically long and difficult to decipher text essentially asking for help to find a new place to live. I didn’t want him to know my address and he doesn’t have much money, so the cost of petrol to drive the round trip to see me seemed a burden he could avoid. It was easier if I went to his house.
At the time he lived with four other people who he sublet the spare rooms to- a straight couple, and a woman who looked to be in her fifties or sixties. The couple had a young child who looked to be about three. He stared in the way that little kids do when there’s a new stranger around. When I waved to him he shyly hid behind the kitchen counter.
This was the second time I had visited the house since leaving it and it looked slightly better off. The time before that he was living on his own in a four bedroom with a sizeable backyard. It was surprising to us that he’d decided to stay when he could have stood to downsize and saved some money. He lacked the ability to take care of it himself and the filth had piled up. He had been using the beds he wasn’t sleeping on as storage as well as the kitchen table and counters. I had to push stuff around with my feet as I walked around to avoid tripping, and navigate a path through. I could see the build up of dust and grime on various surfaces, which made a small tide of revulsion rise in my stomach. I did not want to sit on his couch. I’d visited that time in an effort to interview him for a personal project I was working on, and I couldn’t bear to speak to him inside. We went into the backyard. When I needed to pee, I chose to squat in the long grass in a secluded part of the large yard instead of using the bathroom.
When I’d asked him my interview questions he started off on his characteristic rambling that swiftly dissolved into near nonsense as he touched on whatever other topics floated into his mind. He rambled, meandered, from topic to topic, essentially monologuing. Sustained intellectual focus seemed difficult to him, so it is in turn difficult to follow his words. I reminded him why I was recording him and what it would be used for- he latched onto what I was saying momentarily, then seemingly disregarded it the moment I finished speaking. This is characteristic of what I know about him, but I still managed to be bothered by it. The thoughts and feelings of others, especially if those others were women and the negative thoughts and feelings were due to his actions, seemed to mostly be amusing to him if not irrelevant. Years ago I recall him loudly commenting on the bum of a female shop assistant as she bent at the waist to retrieve something from a drawer. She, the store manager, whipped around angrily and told him he wasn’t allowed in there anymore. He laughed as though she had told him a funny joke. A nearby shop assistant, a guy around my age at the time, gave him a look. She didn’t get that it’s a joke my dad had said, gesturing to her as though she couldn’t hear them. Hoping for some male camaraderie.
…Well it’s not much of a joke he’d replied, face flat. He shook his head slightly. It gave me a bit of hope, to see a man do that.
When we got back into his car with his purchase of transmission fluid, I let out a stream of swear words at him about what a misogynistic pig I believed he was. Is that so? he said, giggling. I fell into fuming silence. I reminded myself to give up on any hope of betterment at my hand in this arena. You can’t truly change anyone without the assistance of their own will.
But the more recent time at his house some of the clutter had been cleared thanks to what my father referred to as tenants, but my mild clean freak tendencies were still screaming internally at me. The couple and woman were all missing teeth of varied amounts, and the house had a distinctive dirty odour that I’d never smelled before and haven’t experienced since that I can only describe as burnt metal. I learned that dad had found the older woman living under the awning of a Woolworths and the young couple after he’d posted an ad for tenants in a free local newspaper. I learned that not much rent was being paid by the couple, who were also borrowing his car for free. They didn’t fill it up very much either by his account. “Why don’t you try to get the money from them?” I asked. “Did you have them sign some paperwork? You could go down that route,”
“It’s fine. They pay by cleaning the place up and making food” he replied.
When I visited they left fairly swiftly for some errand. I said hello and waved but got no recognition in return. The older lady had a clear dislike for them and carried what appeared to be a screwdriver with a sharpened end in her pocket, then took it in her hand when they passed by her to get to the front door. She told me she had a daughter around my age. She was friendly and smiley to me, visibly shy about her dental situation. She told me she had a daughter about my age who also “dressed all fancy” as I was. I was wearing a white shirt with buttons and black Doc Martens.
I showed him how to download the correct app to look at places to live. I showed him how to use some websites on his laptop, an old Chromebook I used for university that I then gave to him to use after I got an upgrade. I demonstrated each step, then asked him to copy what I’d just done. He seemed confused but told me he understood and was able to slowly copy my actions with prompts. As I walked out the front door, the older tenant followed me. We watched as the young couple piled themselves and their young child into my dads car. They drove off. As they passed us outside their clothes had that same metallic smell. I kept my face still. I lifted my fingers in a little wave to the woman. “Good luck out there” I said as I walked to my car. I was feeling full of the tremulous privilege of avoiding a lifestyle that resulted in missing teeth and living in filth with people who either hated or took advantage of you. I presumed I wouldn’t see any of them ever again, and this remained true for the people that weren’t my father.
We were told he didn’t seem well and this was a considerable understatement. He wasn’t at all, and he and his surroundings looked as expected. He was in the driver's seat of his car. The door was unlocked and I opened it to speak to him. His car was full of what looked like junk to us but we knew he’d see it as valuable because that’s the mentality of hoarders, or of this hoarder. He was unshaven and couldn’t speak. When I opened the door I smelled urine and realised he’d soiled himself.
“Hey dad, it’s me. Can you hear me?” I said, slow and clear. The voice I used for upset children and anxious animals. His pupils were the size of pinheads. His eyes roved over me, mouth opening but unable to form a response. I rang emergency services and waited on the line for a dispatcher to find an ambulance. I scanned over the junk in his car to see if I’d see anything of real value- drivers licence, birth certificate, medication etc. I found some things but they were minimal, buried under what looked like old towels, a large jug of water and an album of photographs.
I hadn’t willingly stepped into the house he used to inhabit for what felt like a long time. Now the place looked very different. It was mostly emptied, prepped for demolition. A small mountain of furniture and so on piled on the nature strip. I wandered around and looked at what I could of the empty house. In the garage my brother found the semi crushed body of a rat. I took a quick walk through the house as the dispatcher located an ambulance for me. The front bedroom windows had been broken and the screen door had been nearly removed from its hinges. The place was empty apart from some small toiletry items in one of the bathrooms. The burnt metallic smell was gone.
The dispatcher asked me to watch his chest very closely when I told her he’d lost consciousness during the call. I pushed past the neighbour who had made his way to his driveway. He’d stopped his motorised wheelchair directly in front of his car door, blocking my view. His concerned silent gawking seemed like a gigantic waste of time and space in the moment. “Tell me each time his chest rises” she’d said, so we can figure out his heart rate. I reached to wipe a bit of vomit off his chin with his jumper.
“Rise. Rise. Rise” I heard myself say. It felt like I’d been saying it for a while before the paramedics arrived, but in truth it couldn’t have been that long.
The paramedics were two calm young women, one of whom asked my brother to help our gangly father into a stretcher. He bent at the knees and pulled his arm over his shoulder and they got him on slowly. The paramedics used the voice that you use with crazy people and kids when they’re distracted and you need them to understand something. They needed to take his top layers off and he couldn’t move so I did it for him, one of the paramedics propping his torso up with the adjustable end of the stretcher. “Does he take anything? Drugs, alcohol?” one of them said, in a practised non judgemental tone.
“No. He’s never done any of that stuff. He doesn’t drink very much either, from what I remember” I said. She nodded silently, busy with loading him onto the equipment.
When he was loaded into the ambulance we heard them charge and then zap him with what I can only describe as medical jumper cables. Another neighbour came into our driveway. “Is he okay?” she asked.
“He’s in an ambulance, so no,” I replied. My brother gave me a look. I wasn’t being helpful. But why would you see someone being loaded into an ambulance and have questions as to whether or not they were okay? The answer is clear.
Before we left to meet the doctors at the hospital we were instructed to search for anything that would give clues to his medication or any ID documents. We emptied the contents of his car onto the driveway in an effort to find things but we found nothing. No license, passport, no bills with his name or address on them.
He was in hospital for around two months. Unconscious for half that time and in ICU for some of it, being watched by an individual nurse. He lost seven kilograms in three weeks due to being on nothing but a drip for that long. His body at first couldn’t expel excess fluid which was a problem, and resulted in his hands and ankles memorably blowing up to the point they looked like hams. He stayed in the hospital until he was in a stable condition. Then he was moved to a facility that works on rehabilitating people in order to gain back some physical mobility and independence. While this was all happening my brother and I were told of his assigned social worker, whose job was to get him housed in appropriate accommodations. She was competent, swift at responding to email, kindly and very clearly not a stranger to these sets of circumstances. We barely had to do any advocating on his part to get him appropriately housed.
In the last phase of his medical treatment he was transported to an outpatient clinic designed for physical rehabilitation. At this stage he had most all of his function returned, minus his existing arthritis and some other relatively minor health issues that occur with age. His main goal was to get moving independently, which he eventually managed to do. The personality I was familiar with never went away.
This whole process- from the ambulance to the permanent housing- cost us zero dollars thanks to Medicare, so I’m thankful for that too.
Before this experience I tended to pay a mild level of attention to homeless people I ran into, but this has since magnified. If I’m carrying some amount of cash and encounter someone unhoused, it’s clear to me that they could use my petty change far better than I ever would because the necessity of it is more urgent in their life than it is mine. No amount of money I give a homeless person is a waste. I think I’ll die believing this.
My dads housing, which is also heavily subsidised, is shared accommodation in a facility with nurses that are qualified to dispense medication and provide personal care. Most of the residents are around his age or older- people with significant disabilities, former addicts etc. It’s located in a suburb not too far away from where I live.
I’ve visited this facility twice. It’s large, quiet and organised. It’s on an unassuming street in a residential area, on a single floor building with a simple layout. From the outside it looks a little like a small medical clinic, but is residential on the inside. Most of the people that live there are quiet and seemingly keep to themselves, although I haven’t visited much. Everyone has their own room and there’s a shared living area. The nurses, who I chatted to briefly, seemed diligent and kind. The place smelled mildly of cleaning products and cigarette smoke from people smoking just outside the rear door. The large backyard area had a simple garden and some outdoor seating. He told me he spent a lot of time sitting out there reading when the weather was nice. Apart from the staff I was the youngest person there by a few decades. I kept getting stared at by the other residents because of this, I think. I stuck out. I don’t think they’re used to getting visitors. We don’t look as if we’re related either.
Once his case was closed with the outpatient clinic the doctor on his case rang me as his next of kin to brief me before officially closing his file. She used the word “remarkable” to describe his recovery from his near death experience. If a person is homeless, that is the most significant health problem they can have.
Toward the end of 2024, I rang my dad on his birthday; my version of a gift. He’d come to enjoy his new home then- the nurses took him out to lunch as they do for each of the residents on their birthday. He’d initially complained of a lack of freedom, but not having to worry about meals, housing and general home upkeep works for him. He’s reportedly treated well, and it’s better than where he was. His story, though, is one among millions. Each person I see sleeping rough now carries a piece of the same narrative, a reminder of the fragility of our given circumstances and the broad systemic failures that leave individuals behind who don’t have the benefit of their own support network.
I’ve been trying to finish writing this for a while, but couldn’t find the right type of end to it. All this happened months ago and I wanted to share it all then. I injured my knee just recently thanks to partying too hard for New Years, so I’ve been on crutches. I can’t go to the beach or dance- I would otherwise be doing a great deal of that around this time of year but now I’m forced to be with my own thoughts either indoors or in my car. I tried taking a walk (hobble?) but it was too laborious for me to get any enjoyment out of it.
Then, after a physiotherapist appointment, I sat in my car in the parking lot of the clinic and couldn’t stop thinking about what the old place looked like now. I drove there just to see it and parked across the street. The front and garage door had been replaced and the front lawn had been mowed. It’s a long term investment property which means a new family is renting it now. I looked up the address online and found the listing and looked at the photos. Since my dad left the place the landlord had finally gotten on with the renovations he had mentioned he’d wanted to do for years. New flooring, new carpet, new counter tops, spruced up outdoor area. The inside looked nearly foreign. I clicked through some more photos and found listing images that were taken when we lived there; I recognised a bread box in the kitchen that my brother made for a school project and the ugly couches we got for free thanks to my mothers job. That got a bigger reaction from me. I didn’t like living there for the most part, but I’m glad another family is getting enjoyment from the same place now.