Windbreaker
I used to be a tutor. In sophomore year, before I learned how to drive, I would walk 30 minutes past an apartment complex, past a gas station, under an expressway overpass, past a Safeway, to a cul de sac in order to reach my tutoring place. One day, amidst a drought-stricken California, it began pouring. I never believed in using umbrellas, despite my mother begging me to carry one on rainy days. So, instead of an umbrella, I was armed with my Interact windbreaker, and I made my way to tutoring. Upon walking underneath the overpass, I noticed a family of three — a mother and two young daughters — wearing thin long sleeves and shivering from the cold and the rain. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket as usual to give the family some money, but this time, it came up empty. So I did the next best thing that came into my mind, I shrugged off my windbreaker and handed it to the mother. It was cold to say the least. I arrived at tutoring drenched, and before I had completely dried off while tutoring, I drenched myself once again when I walked home.
Oh yes, how heroic of me. How altruistic, right? Wrong.
Interact was an organization that I joined in high school. In my sophomore year, our project was coincidentally on the topic of homelessness in the greater Bay Area. Our aim for this project as an organization that year was to destigmatize homelessness in the Bay Area. I knew of homelessness as the people who would panhandle outside of my family’s favorite chinese supermarket. Sometimes I would see them while my parents drove by highway entrances/exits, and I was taught to avert my eyes. But still, they were far and few between. Sure, homelessness existed, but not where I lived. Especially not in the Bay.
Wrong again.
Throughout high school alone, I saw the development of Main Street Cupertino, which became a downtown area for the suburban city, and Apple’s Donut Campus. In Main Street Cupertino, the monthly rent for a 1 bedroom loft started at the low, low price of $3,015. That means that if I wanted to live there, I would have to work for 51+ hours a week at a minimum wage ($13.50 at the time) job to pay for rent. Yet, citizens strongly opposed the building of affordable housing citing fear that our schools would be overcrowded. The same citizens who were concerned about the overcrowding of my high school, Cupertino High School, refused to allow students to transfer to Lynbrook High School, a slightly higher achieving school only 5 minutes away from Cupertino HS, worrying that Cupertino students would decrease the value of homes near Lynbrook. I had friends who would drive 30+ minutes in the morning to attend school because rent in the district boundaries became too expensive. Although I did not know of anyone personally who fit the stereotypical image of homeless, people living on the streets, with no physical shelter, more students started to live in a cheaper neighborhood, paying a reduced rent at a house in the boundaries so that they could continue attending school.
There’s a lot to be proud of in the Bay Area. Our air quality is always top notch, our water tastes great, we have a great basketball team, we’re home to Apple, Google, and a ton of other big tech companies. So how do we still have one of the largest homeless populations? Dammit, we can do better. We should do better.
Fast forward to a few months later. It’s bright and sunny, and I make my way to my after school gig per usual. As I walk underneath the overpass listening to music on my Apple iPhone and Apple earbuds, I feel a tap on my shoulder. A woman has my windbreaker folded in her arms. She utters a simple, broken ‘thank you’ and hands it back to me.
My windbreaker hangs in my closet now, logo cracked and virtually unrecognizable. I wonder where it’s been, who it has sheltered from the elements. It’s not altruism to want to make sure another human is not freezing in the rain, it’s basic human decency.
