Homeless receive boots, dinner at shelter

SALT LAKE CITY — Michael Gardner may have been standing at the tail end of the queue in front of the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake, but that's no reason to think his life had reached the end of the line.

"A lot of people think if you're going to a place like this, you must be on the bottom," Gardner said. "But it's all how you look at it. The cars going by looking at us think that we've made the wrong choices in life and we're down to our last option. Not true. Things happen you don't plan. Doesn't matter who you are."

Gardner is among what homeless advocates call the I-15 demographic. He's been in Salt Lake for three years by way of Las Vegas by way of Los Angeles. For the first time at the mission, he was treated to a pair of brand new hiking boots as part of the annual holiday dinner.

"When it comes right down to it, a new good pair of shoes can make life look a whole lot brighter," Garder said, bright enough in fact that Salt Lake looks to him like the place to stick around for a while.

"Any normal person would be heading south right now," a man nearby said as he stepped out of line, apparently deciding a new pair of boots wasn't worth delaying his trip out of town.

"Oh, it's not that bad," Gardner said. "A lot of people just feel like if they stay movin' they can stay ahead of their problems. Or they get carried away with one thing or another just trying to get right with the world."

The problem with trying to avoid situations is that no matter how far you go or how hard you try to get away from yourself, "you're always there," a man standing further up the queue said, giving only his street name, Sparky.

He said he's been on both sides of homelessness as a stone mason and business owner who advocated for the poor, who now a recipient of emergency food and the kindnesses of friends, family and strangers. "I don't have a place to stay; these days I'm couch-jumping mostly with friends."

The perspective has given him some insight about homelessness. He's convinced that the homeless population is not only going to continue to grow (local advocates report demand up by 30 to 40 percent compared to a year ago), but that for all the attempts to assist those marginalized by events or their own devices, the government is doing the opposite of helping.

"It's as if society actually wants to keep it going, not find solutions," he said, noting that the first thing he realized after finding himself homeless is "the way things work against the people they're trying to help. It's the definitive Catch-22."