Heat Kills: Visit Phoenix Now and See the Wretched of the Desert

by Robert McGarvey

Here’s the good news about the record setting Phoenix heat wave where day after day highs are greater than 110 and night time lows are above 90, sometimes even 95: so far the impacts on Sky Harbor Airport are minimal.  The airport says that it is good to fly up to 122 and we haven’t quite gotten there.

That is the end of the good news.

The rest is all bad.  We are in the longest, hottest heat spell in recorded Phoenix history. This is felt by all of us but especially by the 5000 or so unsheltered Phoenicians who live outside on the streets and sidewalks. They are dying this year – at least six so far this year but there will be more.

Yesterday I saw this misery on the faces of 100 or so who had come indoors at a church to get a few hours of relief.  I was there, with 10 volunteers, to bring them lunch as they sat indoors in air conditioned comfort.

For them the problem isn’t the daily high it’s the night time low which is so high it amplifies the Phoenix Heat Island Effect which is a fancy way of saying our concrete and asphalt roads and sidewalks and buildings absorb and radiate heat and this cranks up our temperatures 10 to 15 degrees.

There is only one 24 hour heat respite shelter available in Phoenix. There are over 100 daytime shelters with ac and there are unofficial ones (libraries, shopping centers, anyplace a homeless person can duck into to get some water, use a toilet and get a few minutes of cool air). But the nights are the worst this year.

For some years now I have coordinated a group that feeds homeless in Grace Lutheran’s downtown Phoenix Heat Respite Program. I got involved because on my daily walks downtown I saw misery that I had never seen before, not even walking in Manhattan and Jersey City on frigid winter days.  Cold kills, make no mistake, but if there were a homeless misery scale I would bet Phoenix at 118 is worse than Jersey City at 8.

I remember asking a career letter carrier in Jersey City – he had so much tenure on the job he had his pick of routes and his was a few streets lined with big, leafy trees that give shade on hot days and catch a lot of rain on rainy days – which was harder for him, summer or winter, a 100 degree/98% humidity summer day or an 8 degree winter day.  He did not hesitate.  Summer, he said, because Post Office regulations and local laws limited how much he could strip down whereas in winter he could always add another layer.

You see this in action in Phoenix in summer. Many of the homeless wear so little it skirts up to public lewdness but the police don’t do much – in fact they do as little as they can get away with regarding the homeless except when lately platoons of them have been dragooned into clearing away homeless tent encampments in what people call The Zone downtown, an area that had housed around 1000.  Yes, that is classic whack a mole – the cops know it, the homeless know it, everybody but a judge and some city officials knows it.  

Back inside Grace Lutheran yesterday, we served a lunch of beef tacos (nobody requested the vegetarian option we were prepared to provide), rice and beans, housemade pico de gallo, salad, a horchata drink, and housemade cupcakes.  We brought a Catholic priest – from St Mary’s Basilica a few blocks away in downtown  where most of our volunteers are parishioners – and he said a short prayer before service commenced and he, along with some of our volunteers, dined with the homeless because they are we and we are they.

Did we do any good? In past summers – and I think I’ve done this eight summers now –  I had no doubt we brought a few hours of pleasure to the homeless.

This year, I know we did no harm, but did we actually help in this season of misery? 

Yesterday I found myself thumbing through Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and thinking about writing The Wretched of the Desert.

The faces and the bodies of the Phoenix homeless this year are those of people in a death camp and they know they are. They are angrier, more aggressive, more on edge.

It is harder to reach them.

But we try because someone has to.

And that is on us because there is nobody else.

To donate to Grace Lutheran’s Heat Respite program, follow this link.  We at St Mary’s have adequate funding for our heat respite work, by a donation from a single donor.  But we also encourage donations to Andre House which nightly feeds around 500 homeless year-round and where many of us also volunteer regularly.