Jane is just two months shy of her 90th birthday. She beams with the look of a proud grandmother as she talks about how her grandkids worship the ground she walks on, and how she does the same of them. She doesn’t see them as often, as they live out West, while she stays in Latham. It’s the only place she’s called home. She was raised on her parent’s farm, set back from where Troy-Schenectady Road runs. The time line of her adult years runs the length of Route 9, with all the businesses she had worked for through the years. She’s proud of her hometown. She’s proud of how properly her mother raised her. She’s proud of her son in Boston, and her daughter in Arizona, and the fine adults they’ve become themselves.
Jane sits in her car. She still drives. She’s healthy, and is proud to say she doesn’t have to take a single pill during the day. No, wait. That’s a lie, she said. There’s one small one, but nothing like you see other people having to take. She walks nearly four miles a day. Some of which at the local Price Chopper, where she says they love her.
At night, Jane still sits in her car. It’s where she sleeps these days. In the backseat, a laundry basket of clothes, clean and folded. Next to that, three blankets for the night. In the passenger seat, another basket of papers and envelopes, the important ones sealed in air-tight sandwich bags. One of those important papers is a news article and a police report on her brother she said ruined her life. It was nearly 15 years ago, but it’s as fresh to her as yesterday. She said he drove her from her home at a local trailer park. She said she pleaded with town officials and local authorities to help her from a conspiracy she alleged her brother devised to drive her away from the home her son helped pay for. In the end, she sold it for a loss, she said. It had an addition, a patio, and it housed a lot of the finds she scored at garage sales. She found a lot of treasures, she said with a smile, as she scoured yard sales across the Capital District. A lot of them she had to sell away, she said. The few she kept now sit in storage.
Jane has been homeless for the past few weeks now, evicted from a home she lived in for several years. She had no problems, except how often mail was mixed up with her neighbors. She cleared that by getting a post office box. The last few years, however, were marred with what she described as a tumultuous relationship with the landlord. When she moved out, she said the landlord called her an “evil woman.” Who calls an old woman evil, she said. Her mother raised her to treat her elders with respect. In the mail, she received a notice for unpaid utility bills.
In the affluent, bedroom communities we live in, it’s difficult to recognize the faces of people who need help. Homelessness is not a unique characteristic possessed by urban cities alone. It happens in Latham. It happens in Bethlehem. And, many times, it’s happening to our neighbors as they age. Social, educated, friendly people who are in need of a help up … not a hand out.
A simple phone call was made by our offices to Albany County Social Services, and immediately a helping hand extended out to Jane. It’s her decision whether or not to accept it. As members of the community she takes pride in being a part of, it’s our obligation to help neighbors like her when we see there is a need.
