What to do about the homeless

What to do about the homeless? I ride through town about ten times a day, and I always notice the homeless people that congregate around the library, on the curb in front of Central Methodist, on just hanging around downtown. I think they need some place that they can go during the day.

I know that I’m putting myself out there among my conservative friends who think that I’m a bleeding heart liberal at best, or a commie pinko Marxist at worst, but that’s okay, I’m used to it.

It’s very comfortable for my right wing friends to think that the homeless are just a bunch of deadbeats, or drunks, or drug addicts, and certainly there are some out there that have one or more of those qualities. Classifying all of the homeless as such, makes it very easy to dismiss any moral obligation to help them. There are a lot of reasons for being homeless; here are the most common reasons.

1 Poverty: This is the big reason pure and simple. It can, however, take a lot of different forms. There are the working poor, who cannot make enough to pay for housing, food, and clothing. There are people who have lost their jobs, and in turn, have lost their housing. Increasingly, there are people who are no longer eligible for welfare or unemployment benefits. There are victims of marital abuse, or divorce. There are people whose medical conditions have lead them to become bankrupt.

2 Mental illness: It’s commonly estimated that 20 to 25% of homeless people are suffering from some form of mental illness. Our country has a shameful history of not properly caring for it’s mentally ill, but that’s another story.

3 Drug or Alcohol dependency: This is the tough one, and it tends to queer the deal for all of the other reasons I have mentioned. We tend to consider drunkenness and drug addictions as character flaws instead of diseases, even though almost all of us have seen evidence to the contrary. I challenge you to name one person who as a child aspired to become a drunk. I also challenge you to name one person who walked away from his addiction without help.

The one thing that all of the homeless categories I mentioned above often have in common, is a lack of friend or family support. Consider yourself transported to any city in America, put out on the street, broke and friendless, and try to imagine what you would do if you were a victim of life’s circumstances. I hope I have put you in a more compassionate frame of mind, and now you will appreciate my idea for them.

The Salvation Army runs a night shelter for the homeless in town, and I think it’s a great service to the community. The problem is that the homeless have to be out of the shelter early in the morning, and can’t return until late in the afternoon. Surly our town can provide them with a place to go during the day. A place where they can come in out of the cold, have telephone access, Internet access, a place to sit and talk, and have a cup of coffee. I suspect that before this recession is over, there may even be a need for soup kitchens in town, so I’ll include that in my wish list as well.

I’m proposing that the homeless can be given something that they can take advantage of, not proposing that we be taken advantage of. I don’t want our town to be a homeless haven, known far and wide for its’ munificence. I think that every town in America should be more considerate of its’ homeless population.