Homelessness

This is a picture of what Food on Foot did on Christmas. It’s a larger version of what they do every week, which is feed and cloth homeless and give them an opportunity to get back on their feet themselves. If you graduate from the program, you end up with an apartment, a job and a bank account. Entirely volunteer run and funded.

Amongst the program members are accountants, lawyers, computer programmers. It includes mothers, grandmothers, and children. It includes families, and people without family. “The homeless” is a microcosm of the rest of society, not “them”, but “us”.

Yes, it’s true that many homeless people have addictions or mental disorders. But so do many people with homes. I don’t see homelessness as a problem. I see it as a symptom.

The problem is in the society, the culture. It’s a form of illness or dysfunction of the higher level agent. It’s not an inevitable part of an industrialized society. And certainly not one as wealthy as the United States today.