Homelessness isn’t a sin, so stop treating it like one
Midnight is closing in. You’ve just finished an exhausting shift at work and your only thought is how much you miss the gentle embrace of the covers on your bed. The streets are empty and devoid of life, except for one mysterious silhouette leering in the distance.
On the way to your car, you notice the silhouette and it leaves you mortified. Approaching it is your only option, but your fear envelops you and leaves you breathless. Can this stranger hurt you? Perhaps, but you’ll take your chances and trudge onward anyways.
As you near the obscured being, you hear words exit the latter’s mouth and your heart ticks like a time bomb ready to explode.
“Hey man, do you have any change?”
Your face turns flush and you’re speechless. A feeling of terror floods your veins.
“Please, I’m hungry. C’mon, can you please spare a dollar or two?”
This human being has a name: Michelle. Michelle wanted to start her life over, but ended up homeless in California. Incidentally, more than half of the nation’s chronically homeless individuals are in California. She’s disconnected from her entire family and has no one left to turn to. Michelle has feelings and all she wants in life is to return to her home and reunite with her family.
We’ve probably all seen hundreds, if not thousands of people like Michelle across the United States and across the world. Despite this, the majority of us continue to ignore them.
“A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.” —Marcus Valerius Martialis
Ignorance is a sin. Homelessness isn’t.
Before you click away out of disgust or horror, read this carefully. “On a single night in January 2017, there were 553,742 people experiencing homelessness in the United States; 65% were sheltered individuals and 35% were unsheltered individuals.”
I am guilty of having been ignorant. Many of us are guilty in this respect. I’ve passed countless homeless men and women in the past and although I’ve always recognized their humanity, there have been times where my fear has consumed me.
It’s taken me several years to realize that we haven’t been told the whole truth.
Mental issues don’t make us lesser people
In 2014, a consensus estimate determined that at least 25% of the North American homeless (around 140,000 individuals) were seriously mentally ill at any given point in time. This 25% has largely been rejected by their families and friends, leading them to wander the streets without the ability to shelter themselves properly.
Mental illness isn’t limited to homeless people, even if they are more prone to develop mental issues.
More than 44 million American adults have a mental health condition. To gain some perspective, there are over 300 million people in the U.S., which means that around 14.6% of the U.S. population has some sort of mental problem.
There have been a multitude of documentaries and mainstream films denoting the complications concerned with mental illness, but a large majority of them falsely accuse people with psychological issues of being dangerous.
Regardless of your views on mental health, those 44 million adults have hearts like yours, they breathe the same air you do, and they deserve the same opportunities.
Realistically, the majority of these people pose no detectable threat. On the other hand, the violence against them is alarming.
Addiction plays a big role
In my article about the misconceptions of addiction, I mentioned that in some way or another, we are all addicts and we should all receive the same level of respect and compassion. Even though we may not all be homeless, we still need to find it in ourselves to sympathize with the difficulties faced by those lacking shelter.
“In January 2016, one in five people experiencing homelessness had a serious mental illness, and a similar percentage had a chronic substance use disorder,” leading myself and many others to believe that there is a direct correlation between substance abuse and homelessness.
The unemployment rate may be at a low 4%, but it doesn’t account for homeless people because a large portion of them rarely look for work for multiple reasons, including addiction and mental illness.
A joint effort of HUD and Veterans Affairs known as the Collaborative Initiative to Help End Chronic Homelessness (CICH) found that “72% of participants had a substance use disorder and 76% had a mental illness.”
These results sadden me and I hope they sadden you too, because sadness moves us to take gigantic leaps forward. Together, we can change the outcome of millions of lives and spark the beginning of a more positive future.
Deception is unavoidable
When I traveled to Belgium in May 2018, I rode on several trains. On these trains, I saw a startling amount of homeless people jump aboard cabins immediately before departure.
As a child, I rode on my fair share of MARTA subways, but there’s something I observed in Belgium that I had never seen in the U.S…
Note-cards. A brilliant business idea can help any company thrive and somehow, the Belgians turned homelessness into a thriving business. The concept was simple:
1) Buy a couple dozen note-cards.
2) Print unique, personalized stories on each homeless person’s set of note-cards highlighting the most tear-jerking parts of her life.
3) Jump on the cabin of a train seconds before the doors shut for departure.
4) Hand out note-cards to as many people as possible before the next stop. Leave them time to read the note-cards, then shake an empty bag in front of them, begging for money.
5) Get off the train.
6) Use the money from each run to buy more note-cards and repeat the process.
At first, I thought this was an ingenious idea and wondered why the hell the homeless in the U.S. didn’t follow the same method. My naivety got the best of me and it was only afterwards that I was told the truth. Businesses would hire workers to pose as homeless people and collect money for them.
As soon as I discovered this, I was struck with a lingering feeling of disappointment. I thought people were better than this, but apparently I was wrong.
I mention this for a reason. Deception is everywhere and unless you carry a lie detector everywhere you go, it’s inescapable. However, just because one member of a group deceives, this doesn’t mean the rest will do the same.
Imagine you have 12 dollars. If you give one dollar to one homeless person every month, you’ll only be spending 12 dollars a year. Even if 5 of the 12 people you give dollars to are con artists, you’ll still be helping 7 people.
Individually, one dollar per year won’t be of much benefit to anyone. This is where collective efforts become helpful. Assuming there are 300 million people in the U.S. and 76.2 percent of the U.S. population can access the internet, 228,600,000 people have internet access.
If each person in that group of people with internet access read this article and gave one dollar to one homeless person each month, then $2,743,200,000 would be in the hands of homeless people each year. That’s the power of collective charity.
Assuming 5/12 of homeless people were con artists, there’d still be $1,600,200,000 going into the pockets of homeless people. Personally, I find those odds favorable and I think the happiness and safety of the homeless is worth much more than $12 a year.
However, this method of charity has certain drawbacks that make it unattractive, such as the possibility of deception.
How can we help?
Even though giving people change on the street might help, it’s only a Band-Aid on the epidemic that is homelessness. Shelters aren’t enough. They’ve become dangerous and disease-ridden.
Long-term, some of the most reliable solutions involve:
· Providing permanent supportive housing
o A combination of affordable housing and support services for those with mental illness, HIV/AIDS, and other serious health problems.
o Housing programs provided by the government have been shown to greatly reduce family homelessness and ensure stability once out of the shelter system.
o Moving homeless individuals directly into subsidized housing and providing them with support services has allowed stability and significant health improvements for the majority of long-term homeless people.
Coalition for the homeless has helped integrate the solutions above into communities across the United States since the 1980s. If you’d like to be a part of this cause, you can contribute by clicking here.
Happiness prevails
Initially, I recommended making eye contact and greeting the homeless, but since posting this I’ve come to the conclusion that this can be somewhat dangerous, since people in general are unpredictable. If making eye contact and saying hello could end in violence, the more practical solution is to continue finding ways to diminish, and eventually eliminate homelessness.
Either way, if you’re asked for money, giving it out is up to you. If you’re asked for beer, I’d recommend saying no because it’s doing more harm than good. Above all, though, just respect your fellow homeless citizens and recognize that they’ve been through a lot. Dignity is essential to living. Without it, there’s no motivation to survive.
Compassion for our unsheltered brethren can help restore their confidence, their dignity, and most importantly, their happiness.
