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Alexander Masters couldn't have chosen a more apt name for his biography, "Stuart: A Life Backwards." Not only does the title fit literally - Masters recounts the life of his subject in reverse chronology, starting with Stuart Shorter's death at 33 - it also sums up nicely Master's iconoclastic style of chronicling, in which he dismisses all the usual elements employed by biographers: objectivity, a famous subject, an invisible author.
What he gives us instead is a personal and humorous account of the scattershot events that molded this psychotic, violent, alcoholic, drug-addicted, ex-con, homeless man.
Masters was an outreach worker in the streets of Cambridge, England, when he met Stuart, and the two became friends while collaborating on a campaign to free the jailed directors of a local homeless shelter. The two directors were convicted, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of knowingly allowing the sale of illegal drugs on their premises, and the thread of their story winds through the book as an example of the senseless injustice and wrong-headed thinking that complicate the world of the homeless.
As the author bores deeper into Stuart's troubled past, it becomes clear that the system - foster care, social services and prison - has left its tread marks across the life of someone who started life as "a happy, lively little lad."
Stuart, though, is adamant about taking responsibility for his own actions, expressing to the author a fear of being reduced to the product of arbitrary circumstances. "Now you want me all tied up in explanations," he complains to Masters. "I haven't had it that simple. Why should you get to put reasons on it when I've f-ing lived it and still can't?"
Like Johnson's Boswell, Masters writes himself into Stuart's story, an act of literary pluck that not only keeps the book from sinking under its own weighty subject matter, but turns it into a hugely entertaining read. In the conversations he has with Stuart, we are able to see Stuart's life through his own eyes. This includes, like one of Escher's infinite loops, Stuart's occasional comments on the book itself, which he first declares "bollocks boring," making the suggestion that it be rewritten more "like what Tom Clancy writes."
The end result is something infinitely better. The book humanizes a misfit named Stuart Shorter while opening our eyes to all the Stuarts who surround us: the woman pushing her shopping cart up a deserted street, the man asleep at noon on the park bench, the hungry throngs at Sts. Peter and Paul. As the author declares, "This is a man with an important life."
St. Louis City & County Unveil 10-Year
Plan to End Chronic Homelessness
from the Mayor's Office
Wed, Aug 10, 2005
ST. LOUIS – Mayor Francis G. Slay joined Philip Mangano, Executive Director, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness; Marilyn Robinson, St. Louis County’s Director of Human Services; and Bill Siedhoff, St. Louis City’s Director of Human Services today to unveil the ten-year plan to end chronic homelessness for St. Louis City and St. Louis County.
“In this ten year plan, we have created a new strategy based on best practices to reduce suffering,” said Mayor Slay. “Helping someone move away from life on the streets is not easy. It requires a comprehensive approach that focuses on securing permanent housing accompanied by necessary support services.”
The plan creates a new strategy based on best practices. The foundations for the plan are the adoption of the “Assertive Community Treatment” and “Housing First” models of addressing the needs of the chronically homeless. The Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model brings teams of experts together to address the individual problems of a chronic homeless person. The Housing First model focuses on achieving permanent housing for the individual, permanent supportive housing that provides long-term services for the chronic homeless individual.
“The leadership of Mayor Slay and Executive Dooley is evident in a realistic plan targeted to those homeless people who are the most disabled and vulnerable, the most likely to be living and dying on the street,” indicated Philip Mangano, the Bush Administrations point person on homelessness. “The plan makes sense - common sense and dollars and sense – and will be good for the City, good for everyone’s quality of life and good for the taxpayer.”
While the chronic homeless comprise only a fraction of the homeless population, the chronically homeless account for approximately 50% of the resources devoted to the problems of the homeless. The majority are male between the ages of 31 – 50.
Implementing the plan will require several steps: • Identify funding and resources to carry out the plan. Redirecting and increasing resources will be needed to fund the Housing First and ACT models. • Identify the individuals that comprise the chronically homeless population. Ongoing identification will commence with restructuring existing emergency shelters and establishing “safe havens” as intake points to provide assessment and to identify needed services. Mobile outreach will be strengthened to facilitate identification of the homeless. • Inventory existing permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless. This is housing for single individuals who have been homeless for twelve months or more or have experienced four episodes of homelessness in three years. • Quantify needs for additional permanent supportive housing. As detailed in the body of the plan, it is estimated that an additional 700 units of permanent supportive housing are needed – 200 in St. Louis County and 500 in St. Louis City to address the housing needs of the chronically homeless. • Increase availability of permanent supportive housing opportunities to meet quantified needs. The City and County will seek federal funding and other resources to develop and operate permanent supportive housing facilities such as SRO’s, apartments and group homes. • Quantify needs for non-permanent housing for the chronically homeless. Review the need for emergency and transitional housing for the homeless before they enter permanent housing. • Complete an annual inventory of supportive services currently available. • Using the ACT model and improved coordination among service providers, ensure that every chronically homeless person has seamless access to services from first contact to permanent housing. The plan calls for the addition of eight ACT teams in the City and the re-establishment of the ACT teams in the County. • Increase awareness of specific supportive services. A directory/guide of all available mainstream services and available homeless resources will be developed. • Develop and implement mechanisms for continuous feedback and continuous improvement. Input from chronically homeless persons and service providers will be solicited as plan implementation occurs to make improvements as needed.
It is the goal of the plan to improve the efficiency of all programs, redirecting funding and improve our competitiveness for federal, private and philanthropic grants.
While the 10-year plan lays out a very ambitious strategy for ending chronic homelessness, we believe it is very achievable. Compared to other cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, we believe St. Louis has a very manageable homeless problem.