Problems with poverty prevalent

At 53 years old, Willie Brown has been living at the Memphis Union Mission off and on for the past decade after what he calls a "rollercoaster" fight with drug addiction.

After graduating from Manassas High School in 1975, Brown joined the Air Force in '77 and served for four years before coming back to Memphis.

"I wish I made a career of it," Brown said. "Now I see old classmates I went to school with, and they're all successful. I just think,''That could have been me."

Brown and his wife moved to Minnesota in 1989, where he had no friends or family except her.

Brown said after a divorce in 1995, he moved back to Memphis, where he started using cocaine more and more frequently.

Doug Imig, political science professor at The University of Memphis, created a course exercise to show his students that the simplest mistake could prove costly. Imig said it only takes a few mistakes for someone to mess up his or her life.

"We're all just a couple of lucky breaks or bad breaks from being in a better or worse situation," Imig said.

Brown doesn't believe his situation came from a case of bad luck. Instead, he takes the responsibility for the way his life has gone so far.

"I don't look at myself as a bad person," Brown said. "Most things that have happened to me are because of myself."

Brown said he is now paying for his past mistakes. His problems with drugs led him out of the homeless shelters and towards cocaine, which led to him living on the streets for the entire year of 1999.

"I just got tired of all that," Brown said. "I wanted some treatment."

Brown lasted about nine months in a drug treatment center before he was back on the streets with a cocaine addiction in 2001.

That same year, Brown thought he could beat his addiction by running from it. For three months, he did, at another drug facility in Little Rock.

"I came back to Memphis, and - you can see where this is going - I was back on cocaine," he said.

After coming back to Memphis and living in an apartment provided by the Memphis Housing Authority, Brown found himself in yet another battle with cocaine.

"I lived there until November of 2003 before I left. Well, I didn't leave. I was evicted," Brown said.

From there, he moved in with three of his childhood friends near North Parkway, which lasted from 2004 to 2008. During that time, Brown was in a relationship with a woman who came to live with him at the house.

He said everything went fine at first, but the relationship started to wear on them. Brown said they began to argue "all the time," with some confrontations turning ugly.

"Sometimes it got a little physical," Brown said. "I decided if I didn't leave then, someone would get hurt."

"For four years, I had a roof over my head - up until Dec. 31," Brown said. "But then I got back into drugs."

Since January 2008, Brown has been a constant resident of the mission, where he said he's trying to make another change in his life.

"I'm doing my best to have a positive attitude," Brown said. "This might not be what I want, but it's what I need."

Brown is employed part-time holding advertising signs for furniture liquidators, and he is currently waiting on paperwork to apply for another apartment.

In the meantime, he spends his days at the mission while he waits for the phone call.

While many residents jump at the opportunity to grab potential job fliers, Brown sits back and relaxes, confident he'll be out of there soon.

"I try to look at the bright side," Brown said. "You see a lot of negativity here, but I try not to let that hold me down."

Jeff Patrick, transient program pastor at Memphis Union Mission, said his goal is to provide people a clean place to stay so they don't have to live on the streets.

"We serve breakfast, lunch and supper for men and women. And everyone is required to attend chapel," Patrick said.

Patrick said their strategy separates people who genuinely want help from those who just want a warm meal and get back on the street.

For example, he said, he would rather bring someone into the mission who wanted real help instead of giving to a panhandler.

Patrick said many of those people want money so they can buy drugs or alcohol.

"When you give to a panhandler, you're just enabling him to continue his lifestyle," Patrick said.

At The U of M, the urban planning department works to end the problem of poverty and homelessness through education.

Imig makes his students meet in the Walgreens parking lot at Poplar Avenue and Cleveland Street for an in-class exercise. From there, he gives the students only 20 minutes to find dinner.

Students must pretend they have a baby in their arms crying for food and only a few dollars in their pockets.

Imig said there are a number of places for food around the area, but the students have to choose the place most logical for them.

"The beauty of this experience of learning is it gives these students a chance to try on very real situations," Imig said.

Imig said the student has to find food to feed their child, whether it's a gallon of milk from Kroger or something from the dollar menu at McDonald's.

If the student isn't back within the 20-minute limit, then they miss the theoretical bus ride and have no other way to get home.

Imig came up with the idea as a way for students to gain a different perspective in life.

"I want them to know that at some level, people do what makes sense to them," Imig said.

This exercise, Imig said, allows students to get out of the classroom and instead experience what they're learning.

"It's easy for us to talk and make ideas about what we should do," he said. "All of these stories we hear about poor people, we talk about personal decisions and choices people make, but that's not everything."

Imig said that while society tends to blame poor people for their own situations, it's also society's job to provide some sort of helping hand because poverty could happen to anyone.

"People are making decisions across town in a neighborhood that doesn't look like my neighborhood or feel like my neighborhood, but they're making decisions for the same reasons that I am," he said.

Imig told the story of a former student who used to show up all the time for class and always made good grades, but one day she stopped coming. She never officially dropped the class, so he was forced to change her incomplete grade to a failure.

He was surprised to see her a few months later and felt compelled to ask her why she stopped showing up for class.

"She told me that she had a couple of children she had to take care of, and her husband left with the car," Imig said.

"Then her friend died, and she decided to take care of the friend's children. So, this woman has four kids to take care of and no car," Imig said. "School is the last thing on her mind."

Imig said he enjoys teaching this part of the class because his students understand the message he is trying to get across.

"They care and are genuinely committed to making the world a better place," he said.

Imig said he got the idea for this exercise from passing the same corner every day on his way home. He lives in a neighborhood not far from the Walgreens and said he sees people waiting for a ride home at the bus stop almost every day.

"I've passed by and seen an awful lot of people at that bus stop," he said. "It seemed like a real tangible way to talk about the kind of decisions people have to make in the city."

Imig said even though people are separated by race, gender, income level and other social traits, we are all the same.

"We all just want a decent job, good schools for our children and safe streets," Imig said. "We all care about the same thing. We're just trying to get by."

Betsy Friedman, program associate with Partners for the Homeless, said more than 44,000 households in the city of Memphis are under the median income.

Friedman noted the importance of the community helping each other out, from the richest to the poorest.

"We're all in the same canoe," she said. "If the canoe has a hole in it, we're all sinking."