Clyde Johnson hasn’t seen his son Jerry since he became homeless 16 years ago. Clyde has tracked his son Jerry across the country through a string of mostly trespassing-related charges and recently learned he is back in Phoenix.
Jerry did not have an easy upbringing. According to Clyde, Jerry’s parents separated in his infancy, and he spent his childhood with his mother, who Clyde later found out was abusive. When Jerry’s mother suddenly decided she would put Jerry into foster care, Jerry moved to Phoenix at age 12 to live with his father Clyde. Jerry Johnson left home when he was 18 and has since spent his life on the streets.
Jerry is one of the 6,600 people without homes in Maricopa County, according to the 2019 Maricopa Point in Time Report. Clyde learned that Jerry has been spotted all around Arizona – in downtown Phoenix and predominantly in Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, and Glendale.
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“Everybody is concerned for him,” Clyde said, getting emotional. “My wife, my sister, my daughters, and even my son who has never met him.”
Many within the homeless community that have gone missing don’t want to be found, says Terri Jennings, an outreach coordinator with Arizona Friends of Homeless, a non-profit organization that provides services and resources to those experiencing homelessness within the Greater Phoenix area.
AFOH manages a Facebook page called Arizona Friends of Homeless-Missing, where loved ones can post about missing, unsheltered loved ones. Mike Atanasio, the founder and director of AFOH, started the page after receiving a slew of messages from people seeking missing loved ones.
It is tough to make the distinction between being missing and experiencing homelessness. People living on the street have no address, and many lack identification or a way to contact their loved ones, which some say inherently qualifies them as missing.
Most of all people that are homeless are missing people, said Jennings. “They all have families, and most of them don’t want to be found, that’s why they are living on the street.” Atanasio seconds this, saying in theory all homeless people could be called missing.
Rick Mitchell, the executive director of the Homeless ID Project, an organization that helps provide identification to homeless people, says that for many living on the street, identification is simply not needed.
“If you’re content living on the street, then you may not need an ID at all,” Mitchell said. The Homeless ID Project provides over 7,500 documents a year to the homeless community, and according to Mitchell it is common in the community for people to not have identification.
Jennings says homeless people often use street names because they don’t want police or family to find them.
According to The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office website, there are over 600,000 missing people in the U.S. There is no way to know how many of these people were experiencing homelessness at the time they were declared missing.
Ash Uss, an advocacy and partnerships coordinator at Andre House, a non-profit organization that provides a range of services for homeless people, said she has filed death reports for homeless people in the past. Officers will sometimes indicate that a person lived a transient life in the notes, but there is no individualized field on a death report that indicates if the person was experiencing homelessness.
Mercedes Fortune, a Phoenix police officer, says that missing persons cases also make no distinction on whether or not the person in the case is unsheltered or not.
There is absolutely no difference in the type of reports that are taken, said Fortune.
Uss said that she hesitates to say that there should be special protocol for people who are experiencing homelessness, but “the situation is different. It may require more work for someone to find and locate someone who is experiencing homelessness.”
Uss acknowledges why people may be hesitant to contact police when they’re searching for someone missing.
“If the only way to file a missing persons report is to work with the police, it excludes a lot of people from probably even wanting to participate or do that, because of their past experiences,” Uss said.
Clyde said he has yet to file a police report for his son Jerry because he worries it will ultimately cause more issues for Jerry than help him.
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People experiencing homelessness are in a “vicious cycle,” said Clyde, who only knows where his son is because of the trespassing charges he has. Clyde acknowledged these charges may be a part of why his son is hesitant to go around the public lately.
Clyde’s search for Jerry has not been easy. “We need to find him. We need to look. We’re not doing enough,” Clyde said.
Mitchell, Uss and Jennings all said they occasionally receive messages and calls from people searching for loved ones, and all three agreed that while they may try to keep an eye out, there’s not much they can personally do.
“The sad truth is, some people are just not gonna be found, some people don’t want to be found,” says Mitchell.
Contact the reporter at ribanuel@asu.edu.
