Joe Thompson wakes up most days with the sun. He presses his shirt on the beach, tidies his backpack and puts on a pair of faded tennis shoes.
He’ll take the rest of the day in stride, catch the 9:45 a.m. bus to Abraham’s Tent, take a long walk, eventually make his way back to the beach, and do some reading and writing while the sun’s still up. His favorite book is “Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy” by William Atkinson.
“Sometimes I even play a little golf,” Thompson said, smiling. “I carved out a piece of driftwood I found on the beach, and then I have this little ball I use.”
When the weather is nice and the people are friendly, he goes to sleep content. But most days, that’s not the case.
When it’s cold, he gets sick. When it rains, he gets drenched. And when he’s lucky enough to find a roof to hide under, he’s left sitting there, sometimes for hours, until the rain lets up.
People steal from him, often. He said sometimes the ones who steal have nice cars and places to live.
“I don’t mind people stealing from me if they need it, but most times they don’t,” Thompson said.
And sometimes loneliness sets in.
“Saturdays and Sundays are probably the hardest times of my life because girlfriends and boyfriends are out at the lakefront holding hands, and I’m just sitting there,” he said.
Thompson, 57, is among the 500-600 homeless people in the Lake Charles area. He said he goes through the same daily struggles as any other homeless person. But his reason for living homeless differs from those of others.
March 1 made a year since he started going by “Homeless Joe” and living in a sleeping bag by the Lake Charles Yacht Club. At first it was just a 30-day experiment, he said, in which he filmed a mini-documentary about the trials of being homeless. But, he said, at the end of the month he felt called to continue working on his documentary for a full year.
Craig Ryan, disaster program specialist for Louisiana, said he has known Thompson all his life.
“I think I was one of the few people made privy to what he was doing,” Ryan said. “He just made a conscious decision to try to bring some illumination to the plight of the homeless, and I commend him for it.”
Ryan said Thompson had been living with his wife, now ex-wife, after recovering from a major brain injury in 2004 that erased much of his memory. Before that Thompson worked with Ryan as a substance abuse counselor, among other odd jobs. He was an exceptional athlete, Ryan said, known for success on various regional softball teams.
But Ryan said the past 12 years have been “really hard for him and his family.”
“With his brain injury and everything he was going through, he really felt like he had to find a mission, and he felt this is what he was called to do,” Ryan said.
Ryan has seen the footage Thompson shot over the past year. He said it should make a moving documentary and that he would personally help edit the film.
Pearl Cole, executive director at Abraham’s Tent, a local food pantry, is well-acquainted with Thompson.
“He approached me some time ago and said he was going to do an experiment of being homeless for a year and told me he was going to do a documentary,” Cole said. “We began this thing of a countdown.”
But, Cole said, more than just the documentary, Thompson has been active in helping homeless people each day.
“He works hard at it, I’m telling you,” Cole said. “He brings me people on the street, whether they need a shower or clothing. In the winter months, he brought people looking for sleeping bags and blankets.”
Cole said Thompson has also helped homeless people find jobs. She said his biggest wish is for a new homeless shelter to open in the Lake Charles area, one that offers a variety of services to help homeless people get back on their feet.
“His concern, like all of our concern, is that we do the feeding and we provide these needs, but where do they go after they leave here?” Cole said. “That’s the big problem that we have here in Lake Charles. We don’t have enough shelters. We don’t have programs that are going to help you get from the streets to a job.”
She said she sees many people at Abraham’s Tent who have what it takes to make it in the job market; they just don’t have enough basic resources, like transportation and indoor housing, to transition to the work world.
City officials say 500-600 people are living homeless in the Lake Charles area. But capacity at the three homeless shelters in Lake Charles — Potter’s House, The Lord’s Place and the Salvation Army — is under 100.
Esther Vincent, Lake Charles director of community of services, said Thompson has been to City Hall “several times” to talk about his documentary and pitch ideas for fixing the homeless issue.
She said the city is interested in supporting Thompson’s efforts to bring more services to the homeless; it just doesn’t have the time or resources to tackle the project alone.
Although he doesn’t have the funds, Thompson said, he hopes his experience and his upcoming documentary encourage other people to pull their funds together and make something happen.
“Most people are not aware of the homeless situation, and when I tell them about this, it really blows their minds,” Thompson said. “They are fascinated with it through me.”
Thompson films partly on a small video camera, but mostly on his phone, which he periodically adds more minutes to when he collects enough money. Many of his videos are simply of him, out by the water, talking about his day and the new people he has met.
He said that once he learned to “live homeless” — to find his way around town and function with minimal food and personal care — the hardest thing became watching other people around him struggle.
He said at least three homeless people have committed suicide in the past year. One homeless woman in particular moved him, he said, in a way he’ll never forget.
“The thing that touched me the most was a lady and her 9-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter that was on the beach,” Thompson said.
He said the woman was hiding from an abusive husband. “That touched me because she was a lady, and she did nothing to cause this, and she was proud.”
She didn’t trust him at first, so he brought her food from Abraham’s Tent as a peace offering. Accustomed to scavenging by that point, Thompson said, he went out looking for toys for the children as well.
“I had a Frisbee and a ball, and I was playing on the beach with them, and I looked over the second day and she was crying,” Thompson said. “I walked over there, and she said, ‘This is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen my children happy and having a good time.’ ”
Thompson hopes his story helps to humanize the issue, he said, and that his year as “Homeless Joe” will inspire others to do what they can to help the city’s growing homeless population.
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