Kansas City News Blog

Students at the University of Missouri- Kansas City may be going hungry today.

As part of its Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, the campus chapter of the NAACP is asking class-goers to skip a meal and drop what they would have spent into a collection bucket for Harvesters food pantry.

It's not the group's only effort this week to get the urban campus involved in aiding the city's homeless population. Last night, residents from the City Union Mission shared their stories during a tearful panel discussion that revealed the "Faces of Homelessness." 

Read their stories after the jump. 

John explained that he'd been homeless, off and on, since 1986. Growing up in Independence, he dealt with life in an abusive home before running away as a teenager. He started hanging out with the drivers at a local taxi company and learned ways to stay off the streets at night by crashing on benches at the Greyhound station, hiding away in area malls and getting familiar with bus routes to the furthest destinations, like the airport, to garner as much time as possible sequestered from the elements. Things started looking up when he got a gig as a cabbie; then he could keep a suitcase in the trunk and sleep in the car. "But there was alcoholism the whole time," he said. "It was drink and drive, drink and drive." He ended up doing a long stint in prison, where he stayed until last July. "I got out with no life skills whatsoever," he said. But now that he's at the City Union Mission, he added, he's learning those life skills and something even more important: self esteem.

Next to him, Stephanie said she grew up in the inner city and, when many of her peers got pregnant before they were 15, she vowed to "get out of the ghetto." She earned a full scholarship to a university and left Kansas City to work as a missionary. She met a man and, after September 11, 2001, the two came back to her hometown to work full time in the ministry. But last year, after her husband destroyed their credit and drained their finances, she decided she needed to get herself and her son out of that marriage. Trouble was, they didn't have anywhere to go. "My son and I lived in a little room [in the church]," she said, starting to tear up. "It was very degrading. There's a verse in the Bible: The thing I fear most has come upon me. I was a single mother in the inner city." She found Community Link, a transition program for homeless individuals, which helped her find a place to stay and learn money management. "Now," she said, "I'm studying for the LSAT. I'm going to law school. Because I gotta get my son out of the ghetto."

Patty nodded tearfully as the other panelists spoke. "I worked for a company for 17 years and it went bankrupt," she said. "I was in management. I always thought, 'Everything's going to be OK.'" In the few months following her job loss, both her parents died. "Instead of getting help, I started to drink," she said, breaking down. She moved to Colorado to get work and got involved in a relationship that, six months later, landed her in a domestic violence shelter. Last October, back in Kansas City, she had nowhere to go. "I was literally looking around outside for someplace to sleep," she said. But living at the City Union Mission, where she's part of a long-term program, has changed her life. "I don't feel homeless here," she said. "Now I know what I want to do with my life. I don't want to be owned by a corporation anymore." Instead, she wants to keeping helping people who've been through similar experiences at the Mission.

The final event of UMKC's Homelessness Awareness week is this Friday at 6 p.m., when students stage a silent march from the Oak Place Apartments to the campus Quad, where they'll camp out until 6 a.m. "A Night Without a Home" includes a keynote address from Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver II and student performances. For more info, contact Jasmine Powell at jasmine.powell@umkc.edu.