Twelve-year street woman finds “purpose” as a blogger
( * LICENSE RENEWAL OF 2 YEARS AGO, SHOWS RESULTS OF EXTREME STRESS)
BY CRAIG SMITH, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE REVIEW
csmith@tribweb.comTRIBUNE-REVIEW
Published Thursday, November 26, 2009
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_655041.html
Everyday comforts come in small increments for Dawn Naret.
A couple of minutes in a vibrating chair at the drug store to jump-start her circulation after a night of sleeping on a Squirrel Hill sidewalk. The fur-lined boots that a stranger gave her to ward off the winter chill.
“You learn to appreciate simple things. A fabulous gift, to me, would be a hot cup of coffee,” said Naret, 61, who has lived on the streets off and on for more than a decade.
Naret became homeless in 1997, when she was evicted from an apartment in Pittsburgh after she lost her nursing job and couldn’t pay the rent. It was devastating, she said.
“I was a nurse all my life. … I sold my car to pay the rent,” said Naret, who went from nursing to waiting tables in a restaurant.
Naret said she tried to find work in Wheeling, W.Va., before moving in with her cousin in Lancaster.
Her unemployment money ran out and she returned to Pittsburgh. She began selling items at flea markets to try raising rent money.
“Things were not going well,” Naret said.
Life since hasn’t been easy.
“I’m terrified. Every time I go to sleep, I lay my life in the hands of God,” said Naret, who claims she has been accosted by drunks and others during the middle of the night.
In God’s hands
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
One among hundreds
Naret’s world consists of about three blocks in Squirrel Hill — the Carnegie Library, coffee shops and restaurants along Forbes and Murray avenues. When the weather turns chilly, she will wear up to four layers of clothing to try fending off the cold. Her feet bear the marks of frostbite.
Naret said she doesn’t want pity. She won’t give up the organic basil-herb cigarettes that she rolls by hand, even though she suffers from chronic-obstructive pulmonary disease and can’t stand without wheezing.
“I’ve been a smoker all my life,” she said.
Naret said she receives $860 a month in Social Security benefits. Although she accepts money from people in the neighborhood, she said she does not panhandle.
Naret is among the estimated 2,029 people who were counted in May as homeless in Allegheny County. More than 560 of them are children — with an average age of 8 — according to the county Department of Human Services.
The homeless figure is up from the last year’s count of 2,011 for the same period but down from January’s number of 2,242 because people leave shelters in warmer weather, officials said. The average length of stay in a county shelter can range from 30 days to 60 days, said Ed Haberchak, supervisor of hunger and housing services.
With a population of about 1.2 million, Allegheny County has 12 year-round shelters and a severe-weather emergency shelter open from Nov. 15 through March 15, “if” temperatures drop “below 25 degrees”. Three other shelters aren’t directly paid for by the county, Haberchak said.
In comparison, Pinellas County, Fla. — with a population of about 1 million and where Clearwater is the county seat — reported 6,235 homeless people this year, an estimated 2,000 of whom were unsheltered. In King County, Wash. — in which Seattle is the seat — 2,827 of that county’s 1.8 million residents are homeless this year, up from 2,631 last year.
Her small world
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
Those who know Naret describe her as intelligent, neat — even elegant. A prolific blogger, Naret spends many days using computers at Carnegie Library in Squirrel Hill, where she writes on 20 blogs.
“I am a disabled lady, living in the street,” she wrote in one blog. “Being homeless, I have no bed to sleep in at night. Sleep only comes in naps, sitting in my chair.”
On another, she wrote: “I am waiting for a chance to lie down and at least have a place to die. There is not much hope of healing.”
Libraries with computers have become a magnet for some people who are homeless, said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor and nationally recognized expert on homelessness.
“They can access information on jobs and housing, and connect with family members and other supports. The most common path out of homelessness is through family and friends, and the Internet is one of the primary vehicles our society has for connecting us,” Culhane said.
Naret’s blog topics range from government corruption, to war, to health care and politics.
Her “Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Latte”,
http://www.sparealatte.blogspot.com
blog includes jokes, prayers and newspaper articles.
She has a “Sub Atomic Quantum Humor”,
http://www.subatomicquantumhumor.blogspot.com
blog for science buffs.
“She considers herself a bit of an Internet rabble-rouser. Her goal is to be heard,” said Mark Russell, a Carnegie librarian at Squirrel Hill.
‘Rabble-rouser’
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
“I feel more comfortable doing something constructive with my time. I don’t date. I don’t drink. I’ve been celibate for 15 years,” said Naret.
She said she fell in love once.
“I followed him like a puppy,” she said about her husband of 10 years, Jeff Naret, who moved to Florida after their divorce in 1984 or 1985.
Naret doesn’t said she doesn’t know what went wrong in her marriage. Jeff Naret declined to comment for this story.
“Everything seemed to be fine,” she said.
Multiple factors
One of her challenges, she said on a day in which she started unpacking warmer clothing for the approaching winter, is to change people’s perception about the homeless.
“Not all homeless (people) are alcoholics, drug-users or prostitutes,” she said. “Some are honorable workers who got shafted on the job. … There are many degreed professionals who are out here in the system.”
Homelessness results from a complex set of circumstances that often forces people to choose between food, shelter, and other basic needs, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.
“A lot of people think folks have made their bed and they need to lie in it. That’s not the case. … Nobody would want to make the choice to live outside,” said Mac McMahon, director of Homeless Assistance Programs at Community Human Services Corp.
McMahon said he has known a lawyer and a doctor who were homeless.
The problem is not limited to urban areas.
“One of the things we constantly deal with … is that programs are developed around urban settings. One size does not fit all,” said Barry Denk, director of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
There are fewer shelters in rural areas, for example, and people are more likely to live in cars, according to the Rural Assistance Center, part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Rural Initiative.
Many homeless people live in a state of conflict, said Paul Friday, chief of clinical psychology at UPMC Shadyside.
“Do they like being that way? No. Are they coping and surviving? Yes,” he said.
Setting own course
Naret spent last Thanksgiving with a Squirrel Hill family who took her in for a day — and plans to do the same today.
Despite the sometimes punishing weather and her medical condition, Naret said she shies away from doctors and homeless shelters.
“I don’t want to be evaluated. I know where those things go,” said Naret, who acknowledges she had “a horrible experience at a shelter.” She won’t discuss it.
She has relatives in Alabama and Lancaster but won’t ask them for help.
“We were always poor. I would never want to involve them in my plight. They didn’t cause this,” Naret said.
She said she would love to have her own home, a garden and to be able to listen to classical music.
But for now, she’s “praying for a laptop,” she said with a big grin.
Photo Gallery
‘Rabble-rouser’
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
Her small world
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
In God’s hands
PHOTO – Philip G. Pavely/Tribune-Review
![File0005[1]](http://pastatenews.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/file000511.jpg "File0005[1]")
