Hurdles to Humanizing Homelessness
A reflection on the pandemic, the protests, homelessness & race asks fellow white people to take a step back & educators to re-imagine what it means to be human.
Near the beginning of 2020, the non-profit AMP (which I serve as secretary to the board) received a grant from Global Ubuntu and the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities to fund a series of community dialogues within Rome, Georgia, USA — the small city where I grew up northwest of Atlanta. The dialogues were supposed to center on the intersection of homelessness and developmental disabilities.
Homelessness felt like a particularly prevalent issue because Rome had recently approved an urban camping ban. Many citizens felt this criminalized homeless encampments. Simultaneously, local homeless shelters experienced massive funding cuts from the local branch of United Way.
In lieu of funding the shelters themselves, United Way hired a consultant and established a task force for better understanding the issue of homelessness in in Rome. The task force instituted its own series of community discussions about multiple aspects of homelessness with the hope of producing an actionable plan.
