The Shell Parade

Asheville has a homeless problem, and I have a sweet tooth.

While we generally refer to it as a “homeless” problem, it is more than just a lack of low-cost housing. Based on my few interactions with some of these folks, I conclude that a good part of the problem is undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. And while I have no data to back up my opinion, I would guess that drugs are contributing factors to some of the mental issues.

How to treat the mentally ill? We used to have hospitals for that purpose, but many are closed down now. In Georgia, there was a mental institution in Milledgeville that once housed about 12,000 patients but now serves around 200. Its 2,000-acre campus has shrunk, and many of its buildings are no longer in use. It stopped accepting new patients in 2010. Soon, I suspect, it will go the way of Dorothea Dix (Mental) Hospital in Raleigh. Opened in 1856, Dorothea Dix Hospital shut its doors in 2012. It is now Raleigh’s largest park.

Our mental institutions are not surviving for a variety of reasons. I have never seen the inside of one (despite the urging of various friends and relatives), but if the portrayals in the movies are anywhere near to the truth, these are miserable places. Think of the insulin shock treatment scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind, or just about any scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I certainly would not want to be there voluntarily. And involuntary commitments to mental institutions became much more difficult to achieve in part due to several US Supreme Court rulings.

Three Supreme Court rulings stand out: O’Connor v. Donaldson (1975); Addington v. Texas (1979); and Olmstead v. L.C. (1999). These decisions made involuntary commitment a much more difficult process. Specifically in the Addington case, the burden of proof for involuntary commitment was raised from “preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing evidence”. The Georgia case of Olmstead v. L.C. used the Americans with Disabilities Act as a basis for requiring community care, where appropriate, as opposed to institutionalization.

Budget priorities also played a role in the death of our mental institutions. A $3.5 - $4 billion shortfall in North Carolina’s 2010 budget almost guaranteed the end of Dorothea Dix Hospital. Advocates for the mentally ill are earnest, but they need bigger megaphones.

Thus many mentally ill people end up on the streets as part of the homeless population. This does not mean that all those folks on the street corners asking for money are mentally ill: some of those folks are wearing pretty expensive tennis shoes, trainers, or whatever tennis shoes are called today. They may have read the Sherlock Holmes short story about The Man with the Twisted Lip. But many need help managing their mental illnesses.

A fellow I know, a very successful businessman, once took his management team to Asheville as a reward for a very good year. They stayed in the Grove Park Inn and availed themselves of the best restaurants that Asheville has to offer. He told me that he would never do that again. He saw no reason why he should have to step over a homeless person sleeping at the entrance of a restaurant in which he was going to drop several hundred dollars.

The city fathers (or, in this case, mothers) have taken a few steps to improve the situation. The homeless person has a constitutional right to stand on a street corner and ask for money. The city mothers did not infringe on that right. They have, however, made it illegal for a driver to give money to a homeless person from their car. I do see fewer homeless people on the street corners, but they have not disappeared. Some are risking serious injury by standing in the streets in between traffic. The real solution to the problem is institutionalization, but the city mothers do not have that kind of authority nor that kind of cash.

The street corner panhandlers generally disappear after dark. But I know where to find them after dark. Just check your local Shell station.

A quick DuckDuckGo search turns up 18 Shell stations in the metro Asheville area. There is one about a mile from my house, with a convenience store and an excellent candy aisle. As I may have mentioned, I have a terrible sweet tooth, and I try to keep a variety of sweets on hand. I buy them at the local Ingles, a mile and a half from my house. But then there are nights, such as occurred this past week, when the sugar craving hits, I am out of snacks, and the Ingles on Tunnel Road has closed. When that happens, the Shell station gets a visit from me. And it is always an interesting sight to behold.

The homeless are there, of course, asking for money. Folks getting off work stop for gasoline, smokes, and beer. The prostitutes stop by for a little pick-me-up between clients. Teenage boys who shouldn’t be out are there, as well as teenage girls who shouldn’t be with those teenage boys. A mother-daughter combo stopped by the other night, both in cowboy boots, both in short skirts that did not flatter them.

I have worked nights before, and my problem was always boredom in the middle of the night. The poor cashier behind the counter had no time to be bored. Every time I stop there, be it night or late night, there is a line. It is quite the parade.

It would be nice to think that, sooner or later, we will figure out how to serve those with mental issues. When we figure that out, let me know, and I will take you to them after dark.