How it feels to be homeless for a night

In the past few years, it has become a tradition for the Aurora Service Learning class to spend a night homeless. This year was no different, as both Melissa Foster’s class and Mike Rubin’s classes spent the night of October 20th at the stadium in boxes.

For most people, it is hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily decide to sleep in a box outside, even only for one night. However, I can say from personal experience that it is certainly something I would recommend doing in the future.

When you hear about homelessness most of the time, there is a feeling of disconnect. I will never be homeless, you might think. But it is quite possible that anyone could become homeless one day as a product of misfortune or natural disasters. Nevertheless, even logically knowing there is a possibility of being homeless one day, it was hard for me to connect to those people and really understand what they go through.

Sure, they sleep outside in the cold. They don’t have comfy pillows or beds. They have to endure any weather Mother Nature throws their way. And while all of those things sound terrible and painful, it is nothing compared to actually living it.

I was lucky enough to take a trip to New York City the weekend before the sleep out. While walking around, I noticed the many people on the streets, holding signs and cups with change in them, with a few jackets or dozens of stacked up blankets. A few of them I even recognized from past trips. Their signs gave details or jokes to get tourists and New Yorkers to give even a penny from their wallets. Some read, “Give me a dollar or I’m voting for Trump,” another “Need money for weed and pizza,” and several more somber such as one woman with a sign about how she is pregnant and desperate for any help.

Seeing all of those people helped me gain more insight from the experience of sleeping outside. When we slept out, it was 48 degrees and rainy, we had a box wrapped in tarps to sleep in, a blanket and pillow, and most of us had our expensive cell phones to keep us from boredom.

Most of the people I saw in New York barely had even one of those things. They would still be outside in the cold even when the temperatures dropped below freezing and the rain turned to snow. They did not have boxes or tarps to make up any kind of shelter. Perhaps they had a pile of blankets or a winter coat, but not one had a pillow and certainly none of them had a cell phone or even a book to read.

It was those people that I was thinking about as I lay in a box, unable to sleep, at four am. I slept maybe two hours total. I was cold but not anywhere near as cold as I could have been. I was all right because I knew it was only one night, only a few hours in the wind and rain. Reflecting on the experience, it is hard to understand how people can survive in those conditions for weeks, months, even years. If we complain so much after just one day, how awful must they feel?

Now I’m certainly not recommending that everyone go out and sleep in a box one night to understand homelessness, but I would recommend taking the class next year. And I would suggest that maybe in the future, if you ever get the chance to help someone get off the streets or give someone some food or just drop some change from your pockets into a cup, you should do what you can.