But it was not that way when I grew up, in a liberal southern city. There was a big reflecting pool and a park on the same block as city hall. Before the public housing building boom by FDR, people were allowed by the city to freely camp there around the pool under the live oak trees.
There was no shame, it was right there in downtown. It was a source of community pride that something was going to help those people - as their situation was bad luck and not a thing to wave a cross at and expect it to go away. It was going to be temporary. IIRC the man who donated the land for the city hall wanted it that way.
It was a time when the trade unions were being made strong and prevailing wage was the norm. People were united, not in love with material things. It was not a crime to be down and out. Since Reagan, until Obama, there has been no let up on attacking of public institutions to help the sick, poor, mentally ill or addicts.
I've seen the difference where I live now, in a blue state, where Obama's focus on medical help and other things ignored completely by media, have taken the thunder from those who want to end the last of the helping institutions.
Homelessness does not have to exist, it is a man-made problem and not to be alleviated by feeding people in public. It, and not the people without housing, is to be eliminated. This is an area where I feel our energies should be better used, to not treat the homeless as interesting folks who we can go and see and help for a day. The action that is needed is housing.
I know that is offensive to some for me to say that, but think about it, with this example. I have a friend who is faithful to work with her church to supply one meal a month for some of the city. The church is on an out of the way street, almost impossible to see, and the bus does not run there often. They have been having this meal fo the homeless for twenty years. That is what they do and feel it is the Lord's work. It may be, but I couldn't help but feel their was a less appealing side to the charity work when she and others who voluteered, complained how the homeless were late coming to their meal anmd they refused to keep going fo them. That they just had to know when the meal was being served and not be late. So if they don't get their on time it's their fault they don't get fed and the church people were tired and had done their best. I suggested that the cost of the bus, with many transfers and the long walk to them from the stop, or other complications in their lives, was to blame.
And that if they had to pay a few dollars to get there, which they would, as the bus isn't free, was it really worth their time to come for the one meal one time a month? If they just had a place to live, and cook, wouldn't that be much more efficient for everyone?
My friend is not really political, she just votes Democratic and leaves it at that. Her religion makes way for her behavior, but not that of others. Mainly she votes Democratic since she has some in her family who get state help. Other than that, she doesn't want to know.
The solution, I suggested, was not 'feeding the homeless' but working however possible to get them housing. These folks that worked to serve the food, were not homeless. They did this because they thought God wanted them to do it, and many do. The hard thing though, is getting people to part with their money, and face up to those who are ripping off all of us, isn't it?
We are as a nation capable of so much more than a bandaid, or the right to sleep in public, etc. I bite my tongue when I read these threads at times, and discussions of the civil rights of the homeless to continue to be without being pestered. But that's not what people want, tney don't want just the right to camp out in a nation that can afford to house them. That's not a right that FDR would have championed, and he did not call for civil rights for the homeless to continue to be in soup lines. Their right was to be housed. We seem to lose this in this nation, as if being homeless is a choice or a way of living. It's just the most public examply of a failure to supply basics.
The right was to have a home, but let's not even say that, let's be more straight talking. It's about housing, home is an emotional word that isn't the same for all and gets lost. it's housing, physical housing that is needed and is what people are not spending a lot of time asking for when they do stop gap measures. Arguing for the right to feed people in public is not the answer. The answere is money, and the money is there, too, it's being spent for other things like stadiums. To pretend that this nation cannot have housing is ridiculous and the acceptance of it as a regular feature is not the anwer. .
I say that, because I have seen it eliminated, even among the chronic homeless groups made so by Reagan. Our city, with the help fo the Catholic church supporting them publicly and 'bleeding heart liberals' made inroads into the homeless population that is addicted by building a new apartment complex just for them.
It was widely mocked by conservatives, but the intent wasn't to set up a complex with beer or wine flowing from the faucets as their pundits used their depraved energies to insist it was. The ticket to living there was proof that those applying had failed a many times at sobriety, after going through rehabilitations and being unable to leave their drug of choice alone. No more treatment would be offered, but they have a place to live as human beings.
Most treatment programs insist the addict turn against their 'sin' of drug use, it appears, but anyone who knows the science of addiction, knows some will not escape it, no matter what programs based on religion say. It's not a choice, anymore than cancer or type 1 diabetes in a child.
Even Nixon's surgeon general (whoever it was) knew once the brain and the metabolism is predisposed to substance abuse, it's not a 'chararcter issue' as the Reagan religionists painted it. It's a disease that put people in desperate straits and caused them to commit crimes to feed their addiction. The solution was said to be not more jail beds, but treatment beds, or diversion. We have diversions through mental health courts here.
But we are suffering now with privatization and teabagger ignorance heavily seasoned with rightist religion and starve the beast libertarianism. The idea is there, but hard to get going. The number of people kept from dying from frostbite on the sidewalks was reduced by this. It's housing that is the solution, nothing else.
The homeless have a right to be - not homeless. That is all.
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