Under a makeshift cardboard roof on a sidewalk sits a man bundled up with a sad excuse for a blanket. His hands are dirty and his unshaven face is burrowed under his arm, which is holding a sign to convince passersby to stop and help.
The situation is one that Americans have become somewhat accustomed to witnessing. While poverty and homelessness may seem distant to most, it knocks daily on 45-year-old Terry Cosner’s front door — if he had one.
“Not all homeless people are standing on a street corner with a sign begging for money,” Cosner said. “A lot of them are like me — people who have children and just can’t seem to get ahead.”
Homelessness and poverty are growing problems in the Palouse region, said Stephen Bonnar, executive director of the Sojourners’ Alliance.
Bonnar said Latah County’s 2010 census revealed that 29.2 percent of Moscow residents meet the federal definition of living in poverty.
“Most of those cases are at extreme risk of becoming homeless if they aren’t already,” Bonnar said.
Bonnar said Sojourners’ Alliance was initially designed by the Young Women’s Christian Association to assist women and children who needed emergency assistance, but has since expanded to serve families and single men, like Cosner.
Cosner lived an ordinary childhood and grew up on a cattle ranch in Orofino, Idaho. He was raised by his father and said he was taught the value of hard work at a young age.
“I had chores to do before school and after school, and I took care of 4H animals,” Cosner said. “I had a lot of freedom, but I had a lot of responsibilities. That work ethic that goes with ranching has carried over — like now I wake up when the sun is up, because my brain does it easily after 40 years of doing it.”
At 16, Cosner stopped going to school and left his father’s ranch to find work at a sheep ranch in Riggins, Idaho.
“I found out what the price of cheese is,” he said. “It’s expensive and I like cheese. That among other things, I mean when you’re out on your own and start paying money for things that are normally just there — like there was always toilet paper and hot water at my dad’s — and all of a sudden ain’t nothing is free and it’s all on you.”
Cosner said the following years were spent “bumming around,” doing odd jobs and traveling to places he’d never been with people he hadn’t known long. Homeless, Cosner started using meth heavily.
He racked up a few possession charges in the state of Washington before bolting to the East Coast to find work. He spent time in Florida and traveled as a driver and ride operator with a carnival company for a few years, before attempting to settle down in Minnesota with a job in construction.
“After you start on (meth), it’s really hard to stop,” Cosner said. “Like I would be working at a construction site and they’d be all happy and high and they’d say, ‘Here, do a line and let’s get this concrete poured’ and I’d just do it.”
Cosner received another meth possession charge in Minnesota at the age of 28. He spent a while jumping states, until authorities discovered him in Florida and extradited him back to Washington to face his escaped felonies. He was also forced to return to Minnesota and turn himself in for drug charges there.
“I rode all the way from one corner of the nation to the other shackled with belly chains — it sucked,” Cosner said. “It took a long time to get back up here.”
Cosner eventually made his way back to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, where he attempted to settle down again. This time, he was newly married and had two daughters, born in 1999 and 2000.
“They became the reason I went to work,” Cosner said. “I remember feeling like things were finally falling into place.”
But in 2002, his wife gave birth to his son, and the three of his children were taken away by the state because the doctors found traces of methamphetamine in his son’s blood — due to his wife’s meth addiction. Cosner and his wife fought an 18-month battle to regain custody of their children.
“That’s when my wife left,” Cosner said. “She left me to be with her meth-using boyfriend. I did what I had to do and became a single father to my three kids.”
Cosner and his children moved to St. Maries, Idaho and lived in a small cabin in the woods in exchange for working for the man who owned it. Cosner said as the kids grew older they wanted to see their mother more often, and their mother wanted a second chance. Cosner said she suggested their children move in with her.
“I didn’t want to tell my children they couldn’t see or live with their mother,” Cosner said. “I understood that they loved their mom. So, I gathered all of their things — beds, dressers, clothes, school supplies — and moved them in with their mother.”
Cosner put all of his belongings in a backpack and took off to Albuquerque, N.M., where he began a hunt to find the only remaining family he had left — his biological sister he hadn’t seen in more than 20 years. He returned to a life of homelessness and wandered the streets looking for her.
“I was sleeping on couches or hopping in and out of shelters the entire time,” Cosner said. “They would wake up really early and kick us out. I would go find aluminum cans out of recycling bins and on the streets and take them to the recycling center when it opened and I would usually make about $20 doing that. I would usually buy some food and pot.”
When Cosner came back to the Northwest a few years later, he was shocked at what he found.
“My ex-wife had kicked the kids out of her place and I found them staying at my ex-girlfriend’s house,” Cosner said. “I was upset. If she wanted the kids back, then why did she kick them out the door when I was gone? Now look at where I am.”
Cosner is living in transitional housing with 12 other men at a facility supported by Sojourners’ Alliance — a local homeless resource center.
“I am holding down three jobs right now,” Cosner said. “I work part-time with Sojourners as a maintenance worker, I get work with Wilder Fencing and I get some cleaning gigs.”
Cosner said after everything he’s been through, he is thankful that he has somewhere to stay for the time being and his main goal is to get his kids back –because they still live in Lewiston, Idaho with his ex-girlfriend.
“For Thanksgiving, I rented a room at Motel 6 down in Lewiston to spend time with the kids,” Cosner said. “It was great but it made me realize how much I want my kids back. I’d like to get them out of that nasty valley, because the pollution from the mill down there is not good for them.”
According to a 2013 study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, an estimated 1.75 million Americans are homeless.
Cosner is just one of those 1.75 million individuals. He said although he’s working on rebuilding his life, it’s hard to get started because homelessness is a perpetual cycle.
“It’s that first paycheck actually, that first month and half when you really don’t have anywhere to shower,” Cosner said. “It’s really hard getting started. Cause yeah, I can go work any old time because I have skills. But if I don’t have somewhere to come home to where I can shower or where I can leave my stuff while I go to work — I’ve had to carry everything I own to work with me before — it’s tough.”
Written by Amber Emery