Dental Care Just a Faint Dream for Va. Homeless

Getting help from Northern Virginia Family Service, a nonprofit organization based in Oakton, posed other hurdles. It sets up appointments with dentists at reduced rates, but it requires financial information and proof of local residency, a problem for Overgaard, even though he has lived in Fairfax for more than 15 years.

"Madam, I need to have this tooth pulled before it kills me," Overgaard told the Human Services woman on the phone, the frustration in his voice rising. "No, I haven't got any money. . . . I've been homeless for the last 15 years."

The other options, Washington Hospital Center and Howard University College of Dentistry, are in the District, a long haul on public transportation for someone in poor health, and they also cost money. The National Institutes of Health is free, but it will yank only wisdom teeth -- as part of a pain study.

If Overgaard lived in the District, he would have access to a new city-funded program that provides dental care to the poor and homeless.

Overgaard is angry when he finishes on the phone.

"It's sick."

Overgaard's teeth have crumbled. So have his fortunes.

He was born in Chicago and grew up in rural Wisconsin. According to his sister, Tera Mauer, he came within a few credits of graduating from Syracuse University in the mid-1960s. He had held a series of jobs, including one for a manufacturer of medical supplies. He was selling cars in Northern Virginia when his marriage fell apart in the mid-1980s. His wife and three children moved to Minnesota.

"I failed them," he said. "I never made enough money to keep the family together. Facing child-support payments, he fell behind on his rent and lost his apartment, then his car and ultimately his job. Trouble with the IRS followed. He has drifted in the years since, through a succession of friends' couches, apartment house basements and parks.

He is well-read and carries himself with a quirky formality. "I try to avoid taking advantage of the public exchequer," he told the Human Services worker on the phone. Conversations include long digressions into plans for new engines or reactors.

"Jim is a dreamer," his sister said. "He's always had dreams of discovering something or re-doing something and making it into something more wonderful."

On Friday, after inquiries by The Washington Post about dental care for the homeless, a Human Services staff worker told Overgaard that the department could give him a check for $170 to cover treatment at Howard.

That was fine, he said, but it wasn't completely the point.

"These people are falling all over themselves now that somebody is looking," he said. "This isn't about me. It's about suffering people."