Where do they go?

 

I heard on the news tonight that the Governor of California has ordered all the homeless people living in tents in public spaces to be "cleaned up."  Where will they go?

I know how hard it is to start with nothing.  All those tents are not what public officials want to see, especially when their tourist income is suffering.  Homeless people are a problem, but destroying their very hard efforts to survive on the streets isn't going to help the problems.  The homeless need a safe place to start rebuilding their lives.  Street sweeps, which just put all their belongings into the trash, means they have to start all over... which means they find a new place for their tents.

What do you expect them to do???  Human beings have to sleep, have to eat, have to have a place to use a restroom, and then they need a place to shower so they can be clean, a place to do laundry so they can wear clean clothes, and everything else any human being needs to live from one day to the next.  

I don't know the property options in every city fighting the open issues with the homeless, but there has to be a place they can stay.  Starting over doesn't help anyone.  It makes the problem last longer.

I hear news reports all the time about the costs of dealing with homelessness.  Maybe we need a new way of handling the problems.

I remember seeing historic photos of the Great Depression.  They may have been of New York City, but I don't remember that detail.  What I remember was cardboard or some kind of material like cardboard being used by entire families who were forced out of housing onto the street.  They built whatever they could along the streets of a large urban space and that was their home.

I remember, when I grew up in Los Angeles, seeing news stories about Tijuana (a "city" along the border of Mexico).  It was a huge space where Mexican families lived the best they could, with "homes" made of whatever materials they could find... like plywood, cardboard, metal sheets, etc.

If you watch Gone with the Wind you will see the shanty towns that existed in that time of history.

Today, in other parts of the world, there are people struggling to survive in housing that is not the best, but it is all they can afford.

My point is that poverty is not ever going to be "solved."  There will always be poor people, homeless people, struggling people.  Even the Bible tells us this is the reality of living.  But I always hear political messages about solving the problems associated with poverty.  In my own thinking about these issues, I believe it is because there will always be a next generation of people with their own groups of poverty families.

It is a better idea, in my mind, to create permanent options to meet the needs of poor people.

We have housing, but being government run has its problems.

We have food options, both with government and charity sources, but they also have problems in the delivery.

I have always talked about the need for stability in the paths we create.  Housing is the primary form of stability for homeless and poor individuals and families.  Government programs work on the basis of obedience to the "rules" or you are gone.  That is not stability.  It takes years to overcome the problems of poverty and homelessness.  Each person's path needs to be stable for years.  When they are ready, they will move on.

Today, I was riding on the public transit in my city.  I saw the tents of people trying to survive here.  This city is also on the verge of cleaning the streets of homeless people.  Where will they go?  They will end up going through the same cycle of loss, wandering around while the government does what it does, and look for a new place to sleep, eat, spend their days, try to settle again in a new space.  The problem is not solved, it is "kicked down the road" again.

I have tried to suggest alternative strategies for many years.  

I have prayed for the funds to create these options as demonstration projects, to figure out the details, but GOD has not provided for my efforts.  Working Together is all about finding solutions for all these problems, but for Christians.  It is why I look for possible solutions.  And what my life experience has been about.

I hate to think of all the pain that is going to happen because of the government's view of these issues, and what they see as the solutions for their cities.  It's really a complicated issue, especially with media coverage pushing the problems to a different space.  What is being done is not solving the larger problem.

What are your solutions for the individual people who are the homeless?  Who are poor?  Who are not able to become self-sufficient tax-paying citizens in a day?  Who have handicaps, disabilities, substance abuse issues, other abuse issues, no money, no skills, prison records, can't get a job, are too old to work, have children with them, and more.

They need stability.  Will street sweeps help them?

What can we change about how we see this problem?

Maybe this is an example of that saying about insanity... something about doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.