As I sit here in my warm home, complaining about the unusually cold weather for this time of year, it's far too easy to forget about an estimated 3.5 million Americans who would be happy to complain about winter heating costs for their home. The "unseen Americans," many living in tent cities, invisible to the majority of us. Often, I think we consciously avoid thinking about them, realizing how many more Americans are just one paycheck away from joining these communities.
The National Coalition for the Homeless state that 44% of America's homeless population are employed. Employed in jobs with wages so low, there is no escape from their plight. Tent cities have also become home for increasing numbers of the mentally and physically impaired, those recently release from incarceration in our growing penal system....people likely to not find employment in a highly competitive and unforgiving climate. One in four of our homeless are military veterans. Surveys find even college graduates among the homeless population. There is that haunting echo.....it could happen to you!
While tent cities and homeless populations spring up through the nation, those states and cities with the most temperate year round climates are most appealing. It's not coincidence that these are the same geographical areas, popular for tourism and business. Naturally, homeless populations and tent cities threaten the "bottom line," for businesses and business leaders demand their elected officials, "do something," to alleviate their concern. Of course, we live in a nation where the immediate knee jerk reaction is, "There oughta be a law!" So much less expensive and far more popular a solution when the real objective is to win a reelection. Thus, we find cities like St. Petersburg, FL, actually "banning" tent cities, while Boston, MA, banned sleeping in public parks, many years ago. Other cities across the nation have taken the approach of outlawing the feeding of homeless people or providing any basic human services....hoping the homeless will go elsewhere. Several cities have actually been caught buying one way bus tickets out of their cities and giving them to the homeless....passing the problem on to another city. The "out of sight, out of mind," approach. Politics at it's best.
I appreciate the concerns of business owners, demanding a safe and pleasant environment for their customers....and I recognize the "not in my backyard," feeling of those who are not among the homeless population, our current approach is not a solution to the problem. Not for the homeless and certainly not for the rest of the population, either.
The overly simplistic approach of merely "outlawing" homelessness and tent cities accomplishes what? Little more than feeding an already overloaded justice system by declaring "poor" to be a crime. Now, we can reduce homeless populations by building more expensive jails and prisons, feed and provide for people who's crime was being homeless. This hardly seems "cost effective," but no doubt is a very encouraging move for the growing "private prison corporations" we are allowing to feed and grow off our most unfortunate members of society.
We can opt to just ignore the growing homeless population. At least for awhile. In time, these homeless camps, without basic services, housing people with no access to medical care and we're asking for a "perfect storm," for disease to reach epidemic levels. We are already seeing strains of Tuberculosis and other diseases long ago, eliminated from our lives, coming back and resistant to the medications we have. We're seeing an increase in diseases such as Hepatitis C, STD's and more. These diseases don't respond to laws being passed against them, nor do they recognize boundaries separating homeless camps from "respectable neighborhoods and businesses." When they strike your family, suddenly, the least costly solution, doesn't appear to have been the best solution.
As these tent cities continue to grow and spread, unless we manage them and provide basic services, as we do for the rest of our cities, the social ills and financial burden is going to continue to grow. Obviously, the perfect solution would to have a nation where our citizens did not have to live in squalor, but that's too idealistic for our "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," Americans. So, for now, we continue to be extremists, one extreme attempting to outlaw being poor, while the other extreme seeks a Utopian society. Somewhere, down the middle, either we get busy finding viable solutions, or surely we are going to be facing far greater crime, disease and social unrest than we've known in this generation. Unless we cease to ignore these people and the problems we have, we could, one day, see our own version of an "Arab Spring."
Do I have the solution? The answer to it all? No, I don't. What I do know is that a nation can only ignore growing poverty and anger for a period of time before the pot boils over. I've seen it and lived through it in what we consider "third world nations," and like it or not, we are not exempt from taking that same road.
What do you think? What would be a beginning step toward a real, sustainable solution to our growing homeless problem? These people are not going to just crawl off and quietly die so we don't have to think about them. I don't think most Americans would tolerate internment camps today, as we used for Japanese-American citizens during World War II. Do we just turn ourselves into a "prison society?" Do we just allow clueless elected officials to continue on, "outlawing" whatever we don't want to see?
I believe that as human beings, caring citizens of this planet, the solutions lie with us to find and demand from our elected officials. And, I believe we can take the first steps, ourselves, to educate our people....giving them the truth about the homeless crisis, how it is growing, the potential ills we face if we don't effectively address it and demand change.
As always, I would love to hear your ideas. Let's listen to what other people think....in a respectful, thoughtful manner. In doing so, perhaps we can find something....the "beginning of change," among ourselves. If change is to come, it begins with each of us...and with our finding solutions. Please share your thoughts and please respect the differences in opinion of others.
