On a hot summer day, Cindy Jones, her boyfriend Peter, and their two dogs, Hercules and Mudders, were awoken from their sleep to the sound of bulldozers. However, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill construction. Instead, City of Fresno crews were arriving to remove their tented encampment under the highway where they lived. Given only ten minutes’ notice, Cindy and Peter raced to pack their worldly possessions and leave with them in their arms—heading in the direction of…nowhere. Cindy was introduced to meth at age eleven by her mother’s addict “friends,” and has since led a life of spiraling misery and regret.
Cindy is a homeless meth addict, and she’s also my cousin.
While the Cal student population was experiencing the highs and lows of ESPN College Gameday in early October, I traveled home to spend the entirety of my weekend in Fresno with Cindy and her community of personae non-gratae. This credence shared amongst themselves has only grown since August, after a homeless ordinance recently passed by the Fresno City Council this August, criminalizing those seeking refuge on public property.
In the recent six-three Supreme Court decision of the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson case, municipalities nationwide were granted the authority to arrest those homeless, even if they have nowhere to go. Prior to this decision, there was less autonomy for local governments to penalize transients, so when the highest court in the land made its decision, Fresno’s government swiftly took action. In a press conference outlining how it would operate, Mayor Jerry Dyer explained “The ordinance gives us the ability to physically take custody of a person if they choose not to accept services or shelter. We want to help people, but in order to help people, sometimes there has to be some tough love, and that’s what we’re trying to incorporate here.”
There is not enough room in the shelters, so even if every single homeless person wanted to seek shelter, they wouldn’t all be given that shelter. The Fresno Madera Continuum of Care’s “Point in Time” census measured 4,500 homeless people in Fresno and Madera counties, which includes those unsheltered and those in temporary or permanent housing. That is the highest number of homeless people in Fresno since 2014, according to The Fresno Bee, and it is only rising. The Fresno Housing Authority, in partnership with the City of Fresno, has only been able to provide 3,814 year-round beds—emergency, transitional, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive—for all to utilize. However, Laura Moreno, Chairperson for The Fresno-Madera Continuum of Care, told The Fresno Bee, “I’m absolutely sure we’re missing people.” She describes that because of the nomadic nature of these unhoused people, it can be difficult to obtain a perfect report. “We have to get people down the embankments” of highways, roads, and streams “because for them, it’s dangerous to be out in the open.”
That danger is ever present for those in a narrow, secluded nook of West Fresno, where a canal bank and railroad track run parallel and “Misfit Island” is located; this is where a group of seven longtime friends live—if live is the right term.
James, Brenna, Cindy (my cousin), Peter, Raven, Joey and Patrick make up the residents of Misfit Island. They live in weathered, dirty tents, alongside a makeshift outhouse fashioned from an orange Home Depot bucket with an old shower curtain to give the residents a semblance of privacy. Their 15 or so flea-ridden dogs walk in and out of the tents, bringing dirt, foxtail weeds, and feces onto stained bedding. The camp kitchen consists of an ice chest that sometimes has ice, and sometimes does not, so their food is largely non-perishable, and certainly not what one would consider to be healthy. The heat on this September week was well over 100 degrees, as the nearby human waste sits stagnant, and the smells that entrap the complex are incomprehensible but can only be attributed to the perfect storm of trash thrown into the canal-turned-dumpster. At night, field rats from a nearby farm come into the camp looking for food, invading the ramshackle tents. Although my cousin and I live less than a mile away from one another, our lives are worlds apart.
I grew up in Fresno’s Old Fig Garden neighborhood, a historical part of Fresno that barred Black people from purchasing homes through racist housing covenants and is now occupied by the city’s richest residents. My family lives in a larger-than-normal house, my father and mother are an ER doctor and business owner, respectively, and I have been raised with every resource at my disposal: tennis lessons at my backyard court or local country club, educational support, and frequent family trips. I admit, I have lived a privileged life.
Abandoning all preconceived notions of what defines a “homeless person” is critical to actually experiencing the phenomenon up close and personal. I wanted to see how they survive, the roots of their existence on the streets, and how to better understand how to contribute to solving this challenging crisis of homelessness that plagues a colossal amount of citizens across California. To achieve this understanding takes a great deal of composed doggedness and unyielding empathy. The societal dogma regarding homeless people is that they are lazy, that they are criminals, and that they are drug addicts. This characterization fails to delve deep into the institutional problems that cause the phenomenon. Every single person I encountered and interviewed that weekend in October came from a similar background most overlooked by society: trauma.
Brenna was born to a drug-dealer dad (street name: Dope Man) who died young, and a drug-addicted mom who would constantly beat her. “She would call me Bad Blood,” Brenna confided in me while holding back tears. Because of the culmination of negligent and abusive parents, combined with accessibility to drugs, Brenna naturally drifted to methamphetamines as a coping mechanism at age 12. Since then the drug has controlled her life and thrust her onto the streets. She found a community with the infamous “Fresno Bulldog” gang, telling me that “if you’re not tough [on the streets] you will get eaten”. As a mom of two elementary-aged children who live with relatives, I asked her if she would get off drugs to be present in their lives. In a croaked voice, she muttered, “I miss my kids, but addiction is hard. It feels good not having to feel the pain.”
Patrick was born in Oakland, California. He worked his first job with UC Berkeley Dining cleaning dishes in the dining hall, but moved to Fresno when he was young. He lived a quiet life with his family until his third child’s mother got addicted to drugs while pregnant. When Child Protective Services (CPS) took custody of the boy, he fell into a pit of depression. However, things got worse when Patrick was charged with domestic violence. Although he beat the case, the stresses of his life became too much. Patrick succumbed to the pull of heroin and meth as a way to deal with the blows. He has tried going to rehab three times, but the drugs became a remedy to get away from reality—a reality too agonizing for him to return.
I spent my Saturday with Cindy’s boyfriend Peter. He works hard to provide not only for their relationship but for the well-being of the camp. Fashioning a trailer to his bike, he rides 50 miles a day, every day, collecting cans and bottles from Fresno gas stations for money for bags of ice, human and dog food, and anything else Cindy should need. “They think we’re all out here trying to steal or rob for money; they generalize us,” Peter told me while we biked on the Highway 99 overpass. He continued by saying that it is hard to get a job because he has no front teeth, so he just keeps on recycling. Every night at eight o’clock, he bikes to the AM/PM gas station and retrieves the chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, and other delicacies recently thrown in the trash, rides back to the camp, and hands them out to the hungry residents.
And finally my cousin, Cindy. At the height of her mom’s addiction, while my father was in medical school, my parents begged my auntie to let them adopt Cindy. If she had agreed, Cindy would have been my older sister. She would have received a great education; she would have traveled the world; she would have lived a pain-free life. But my aunt couldn’t stand the thought of giving up her child and refused to let her go. While my siblings and I were growing up, my parents shielded us from her, thinking it was better that we didn’t see a once-innocent girl in constant meth-induced manias. I never really got to see her apart from holidays, so I never got to know the true Cindy until this weekend.
I found out for the first time that I have another cousin. Unbeknownst to me my entire life, Cindy informed me that she has a half-sister, put up for adoption at a young age. Her half-sister’s dad, who was white, was extremely racist towards Cindy, a black woman, so my aunt gave up her sibling thinking it would give Cindy a respite from the racism. My mother showed me her Facebook page. Linette Wilkins lives an idyllic life: college-educated, recently married to a man from a wealthy Atherton family, friends abounding. The dichotomy between this stranger and Cindy is striking. In the dark of the Fresno night, with Cindy’s tears illuminated by the nearby fire, she admitted, “I would die for the chance to meet her someday, but not like this.”
Instead of demonizing those born with two strikes against them, we as a society need to work to do all we can to lift up and humanize homeless people, not treat them as second-class. The Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) cites a more equitable, proven method of lifting homeless people out of their situation. In the ‘90s, the federal approach to battle the “modern era of homelessness” of the 1980s, when back-to-back recessions, sustained inflation, cuts for HUD, and deinstitutionalization for those with mental illnesses occurred, was called the “Treatment First” model. Those unhoused would first be treated for their mental and substance issues before being guaranteed permanent housing to go to. They would be put in packed emergency shelters, given the approved treatment of the day (improved in theory), and put in permanent housing. If at any time a relapse occurred, they would be blacklisted from housing options.
Columbia University professor and Pathways to Housing founder Sam Tsemberis and his colleagues experimented with the “Housing First” model. They put unhoused people in scattered housing across the city without forcing them to get treatment or rehabilitation afterward. It was a massive success. Since embraced by the Bush Administration, nationwide homelessness across the country fell by 30% from 2005 to 2007. Continued by Obama, Trump, and now the Biden Administration, it has been the guiding light for federal homelessness programs.
The City of Fresno is exercising a treatment option of a bygone era. This punitive ultimatum of treatment or jail overlooks entirely a proven method of eliminating homelessness embraced on a national level. It also completely ignores the population of homeless people who don’t experience any mental health or substance abuse issues—those who just need a place to stay. We need more abundant permanent housing to put these people first and then explore the treatment options, no strings attached.
Misfit Island is the term most commonly used to identify the place in which my cousin and her friends reside, but it is not the sole moniker. “The Spot”, “The Transitional”, and “The Darkside” have all been used to reference this place. After packing up my tent and belongings and readying myself to leave, I sat in my car before driving off and reflected that not one person called it “home.” Because Misfit Island is not home to them, it wouldn’t be to anyone, but I’m hopeful that someday Cindy can find a safe and peaceful place to call “home.”
Author’s Note: Names have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals involved
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