Defenders undercover: Being homeless in Detroit

DETROIT – There are 35,000 men, women and children living on the streets in metro Detroit.

To find out who they are, how they got there and if they have any hope of making it back, I went undercover. In disguise, I begged for money and I slept on the streets.

I found out that priorities at night are finding a place to sleep and making sure not to get mugged.

I tracked a homeless crew to a fenced in parking lot, where several of them found a trolley for shelter. They told me they fake sleep so they are ready to pounce on anyone that tries to jump them.

"If you would have walked in that bus, you would have got stabbed. I was holding a knife and you would have been stabbed if you had walked through that door. Because that's where I live," one of the men told me.

He's an intelligent man who graduated from Canton High School, but because of a drug and alcohol addiction, he now begs for money at street corners. Sometimes he makes enough to feed himself, sometimes he doesn't.

"I got two or three days without eating. And then you wonder why the jails are full? It gets to a point where I say, ‘Guess what? I don't care,'" the man said. "So, I got up to somebody and I say, ‘Give me something.' Now, I only care about me. If that means I have to hurt you, I have to rob you, then that's what I'm going to do."

Most of the people who live on the streets didn't choose it to be that way.

"It's horrible. It stinks. We got bites all over our legs and feet. This is what my feet look like from walking around the city all day, you know?" another man told me. "You don't have any integrity. It takes everything out of you. It wipes the man right out of you. You can't hold your head up no more. You think about suicide, you know?'

They go to the bathroom outside because public places won't let them in.

In the winter, there's only two choices: Jail or death.

"I knew a guy whose name was ‘Boots' and he froze to death. It was minus 40, it was minus 30, it was minus 20. When it was minus 20, he froze to death. He made it through the first two nights. The third night he froze to death," one of the men told me.

Yet, there was one man I met who chose life on the street. He told me he likes to drink more than he likes to work and his life is just fine.

"My nieces now, they try to get me to go over there, man. I'm 55 years old. I can't deal with all that," the man told me.

The homeless people I spoke to said it was hard to see the mentally ill who deserve something better.

"They talk to themselves, they fight the air, hit themselves because they think somebody's on them.  These are true cases of mental illness and we try to look out for them as best we can. They need to be somewhere and not on the street," one man said.

One of the nights I was on the street fell on Father's Day. I asked several of the men about their children.

"He's going to be one I want to be there to teach him how to do this and how to do that. You know, like my dad was for me," one said.

Addiction, they said, leads someone to hurt the ones you love most. Eventually, you're kicked out, or you leave.

"I coached little league baseball. My daughter, she was a little cheerleader. It's me. I got away from them. I'm embarrassed of what I became. I don't want to be around them and hurt them no more. You know what I mean?" one told me. "I truly love my family. The best thing for me and my family is for me to stay away from them, because all I do is cause them hurt and pain."

There are several agencies that aim to help the homeless find clothes, shelter and jobs. But many told me it's not working.

"How do you get a job when you haven't taken a shower in a month? And you have no address to put down?" one said. 

Kevin Dietz will be continuing his series on the homeless throughout September.Â