Rural Homelessness and "The Grapes of Wrath"

It is a hard choice: which of the many issues and ethics topics should we focus on when talking about the staged reading of "The Grapes of Wrath," taking place at The Blackbird Theatre this weekend.

As a2ethics.orgers already know, we often cover The Blackbird Theatre's events, because of our relationship with Barton Bund, the artistic director and co-founder of the nonprofit theatre. Barton is the a2ethics.org web director. What makes this relationship additionally worthwhile, however, is that the productions of The Blackbird give so many opportunities to talk about ethics issues and concerns.

And as the discussion in Bart's article entitled "'The Grapes of Wrath' Then & Now"  suggests, the story of the Joad family and their economic plight is now the American story for many of our neighbors in Michigan and across the nation.

To be sure, the Joads would probably know from most people's access to the media today that California, the promised land for them, now reports a jobless rate of 9.3%, the fourth highest in the nation. Michigan is first with a 10.6% unemployment rate.

So, what would they find in California? No farm jobs, as they are declining in Kern County, near Bakersfield, the place where the Joads ultmately end up. Add to this the fact that the area has been dealing with  a long-term drought. Construction jobs maybe? They would have to wait for the new federal  stimulus plan to take effect. This could take awhile.  And housing? No Hoovervilles, unless you count The Hoover Institution on Stanford's bucolic and gated campus almost three hundred miles north, which is decidedly not for the public.

The Joads would remain homeless. And if they had an SUV or two, that is probably where they would be living.

Most of the national talk  on the homeless is about people displaced and without shelter in our cities. Likewise, today, for obvious reasons, the housing bust and economic recession has made home foreclosures the center of attention. Mostly, the stories we hear are from urban and suburban areas.

But what about rural America? The Joads and their plight as told in the current "Grapes of Wrath" staged reading offer an opportunity to describe a few of its dimensions and to ask a few questions about the ethics of it all.

According to the most recent report I could find, which only goes through 2006, there are about 600,000 homeless people in the U.S.  Nine percent of them come from rural areas.

At the end of 2007, the Upper Peninsula, Michigan's most rural region had documented 1,638 homeless people.

This may seem a small number, but if you add the numbers of people now facing foreclosures as a result of the economic crisis and its accompanying job losses, there are many more Joad families driving around, living  in their cars in the parks, getting cover in sheds, stopping at campgrounds or sometimes sleeping from sofa to sofa at a friend or relative's home. Shelters for the homeless are few and far between in rural townships and small towns.

And notably, the family and not the individual,  is the portrait of the rural homeless. For example, 57% of the rural homeless are part of a family in Michigan, compared to 45% of the urban homeless. And in rural areas, many are first timers, unlike the chronic homelessness that characterizes our cities. Finally, they are younger:  37% of Michigan's rural homeless are between the ages of 18 to 24.

What should neighbors, communities and others, including the states and the federal government do to help rural families like the Joads, whose farms have been foreclosed?

And what about the farmers whose skills are no longer needed in a land of agribusiness and megafarms? What should we do about them?

And where are the rural homeless going? Some of the anecdotal evidence shows that one of the ways local community leaders are handling the rural homeless is to buy them a bus ticket to the nearest city. The thinking is that such "Greyhound therapy" as some people have dubbed it, will at least give them a better chance to gain access to a shelter or to basic services that cities provide for the homeless.   

These are just a few of the multitude of ethical questions the staged reading of "The Grapes of Wrath" demands that we seriously consider. 

My guess is that there are no bus tickets out of homelessness.