It’s OK for them to camp in their cars. We’ll give them a parking lot to use.

children, homeless, politicians, social conscience No Responses »
Dec 162011
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Late in November the Seattle Times published an article discussing a suggested initiative to allow homeless people park their cars in empty church parking lots at night (ironically, web link for the article contains "carcamping").  In true bureacratic fashion, a caseworker will screen applicants.  They’re going to spend $30,000 on the caseworker.  If that’s what they’re paying this person altogether I would imagine that they’re hiring from the pool of homeless car campers.  The purpose of the caseworker is to connect the homeless to services and help them get housing.  Called Seattle Safe Parking, the program appears on the surface to be a benevolent action by the homeless "task force" to provide them with a place to park for the night where they won’t get towed or ticketed or arrestead.

When I first read this article, I thought it was a good thing for them to do.  And it is.  But not as altruistic as it looks.  While it’s true that there are people who are deeply concerned about the homeless in this country, it looks to me (admittedly from the outside looking in) like most of these programs are really about getting the homeless out of sight – at least for the night.  The Seattle task force was only created after a homeless woman froze to death on the street.  It took her death for the officials to take notice of the situation.

Photo by www.yovenice.comReading a little further down, only one church has actually offered their parking lot.  Assuming that the members and clergy of all the churches consider themselves to be Christians, that should be a surprising statement, but it’s not.  The same people who will follow you around preaching about the salvation that Jesus Christ can offer those who believe have very little compassion for the people they’re trying to hide away from sight.  Those believers who tell me (and tell me and tell me) that compassion and love are what the world needs to get on track are withholding it from people who really could use a little compassion and love.  Out of all the churches in Seattle, only Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church stepped up to the plate.

I’m not Christian.  I’m really not a believer at all, unless you count belief in the inherent selfishness of people.  More wars have been waged over peace and love than the abuse of human beings.  Christians proclaim that by accepting Christ the world will be saved.  I guess accepting Christ doesn’t include a warm place to sleep or a little something to eat.  Jews believe that the way to repair the world (implying that at one time it was whole to begin with) is through acts of loving kindness.  Only could you take that act of loving kindness and go behind the building so no one sees?  I’ve been told that living a moral life is not possible without religion.  Is that so you have someone to blame when you inevitably fall short?  I’m pretty sure I will be able to share my lunch with the homeless guy on Chauncey Hill even if I don’t have god to share the credit with me.  I don’t think that the lack of a belief in life after death will cause me to go out and murder people.  Right and wrong are not absolutes, and I don’t believe they’re dictated by a higher being. 

In the end, as Richard Dawkins says, there are no Catholic children, or Muslim children, or Jewish children – there are children.  And they all need to eat and have a safe place to sleep.  At least they can sleep in cars in the parking lot of Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Seattle.

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Posted by Deb at 12:55 pm

Reality Check

#occupy, making a difference, politicians, social conscience, welfare No Responses »
Oct 252011
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I was walking through campus one day, on my way to lunch with a friend, when I realized I was about to walk past the homeless guy that asks for quarters all the time.  I’ve been told that he’s not really homeless, but he sure looks like he is.  Before I was aware of what I was doing, I diverted past the Grant Street Garage so that I could bypass him.

Why did I avoid him?  Was it because I was uncomfortable with his asking for money?  Maybe it was his unkempt appearance and smell?  Was I in a hurry and didn’t want to stop?  Or did I just not want to give him anything and so avoided the whole experience?  I’ve given him quarters before.  A couple of times I only had dollar bills and so that’s what he got.  I remember thinking that I didn’t have any cash on me that day, so maybe I was feeling guilty because even though I’ve given him money in the past, that day I wasn’t going to.  I was on my way to a lunch I really didn’t need and he was there in his usual spot panhandling for whatever money he could get.  He certainly doesn’t look over-fed while I’ve been overfed for at least 20 years.

I don’t really know anything about this guy, other than his propensity for panhandling and his ability to make all kinds of people really uncomfortable.  I’ve often wondered why I don’t follow through on the spur of the moment things I think of when I’m out and about.  I see a young mother with a small child and it’s raining but they don’t have an umbrella.  I want to give them mine but I don’t.  I see a scruffy man at an intersection with a sign asking for work or money as I sit in my car, munching on something completely unneeded while I wait for the light to change and I don’t give him the $5 I have in my purse that I would never miss.

Sometimes their pain is more than I can bear.  My heart aches for the teenager who is convinced that she has ruined her life by getting pregnant.  My stomach hurts when I see the guy with the sign at the intersection, no coat or hat, offering to work for food.  I cry for the child in the grocery store who is clearly exhausted and crying, while his mother – equally exhausted and almost crying – drags him up and down the aisles because she has no money for a babysitter and no food in the house and not enough in food stamps.  But I don’t really do anything.  Why is that?  I know that I can’t fix it all, so I don’t even start.  Not even a good excuse, but it’s all I’ve got.  I think it’s time to start now.

I wonder if that’s part of what’s behind the Occupy movement.  People coming together because they can’t keep ignoring the bad in life anymore.  It’s not so much about a specific goal or demand, but about knowing things are not good, and knowing something needs to be done, and feeling so helpless at making that change.  I know I need to do something, anything.  I just don’t know what.  I think a lot of the people participating in the Occupy actions are in the same place.  For awhile I’ve told my husband that a change is coming, I wonder if this is the change – regular people saying we want things fixed.

First there was the Arab Spring.  Amazing things have happened there, but there’s still such a long way to go.  Now it’s America’s “Arab Spring.”  I want to be part of it, but I can’t Occupy Wall Street because I have to work.  I can’t Occupy Chicago, or Los Angeles, or St. Louis.  I want to be part of the conversation, though.  I don’t know what I have to say, only that I want to say something.  I found a possible venue – occupy cafe.  It’s an online occupy movement.  I don’t know if it’s the answer for me, but it’s a start.

Posted by Deb at 10:21 pm

Just don’t look and you won’t feel bad.

children, homeless, politicians, welfare No Responses »
Aug 112011
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There’s a new type of town out there.  Not often seen since the days of President Hoover, tent cities are popping up all over the country.  Now, even if we manage to avoid eye contact with the panhandler on the corner, we’re apt to still encounter the homeless literally pitching their tents – or whatever they can find – and squatting on public land.  It’s hard to maintain the fiction of an improving economy with homeless masses living in tents and lean-to shelters right there in plain sight.  Really difficult.

I stumbled upon an article today that told the story of a woman, once a successful New York designer, who now lives in a make-shift tent in New Jersey with her husband.  First they lost their jobs, then their home, and since very few places in this country have “right to shelter” laws, have had to make do with what they could find.  In a cursory search on Google, the only states that came up with right to housing laws were California, Nevada, and New York.  What was more telling was the number of studies that have been done on the interrelationship between housing and education, and on housing as a tool toward self-sufficiency.  Homeless children do poorly in school, and homeless adults are indigent.  That was the results of every study.  I think the money spent on the studies would have been better used as funds to house some of the homeless, thereby increasing their performance in school and potentially making them self-supporting.

Homelessness has become a much more common occurrence in this recession, and it doesn’t appear to be getting any better.  While our elected officials were in Washington, trying to out bluff the other party, families were living in huts and tents, without running water, or enough food, or electricity.  As Senators and Representatives rallied around the rights of corporations to keep their tax breaks, kids tried to go to sleep with hunger gnawing at them.

I’ve often thought that all elected officials should have to live on the typical food stamp/welfare allowance for one month.  Or work a job that only pays minimum wage.  Or find a dentist for a hurting child that takes Medicaid and will see that child.  Or find a doctor for the baby on Medicaid with a ruptured ear drum, after being turned away at the Emergency Room because the family was uninsured.  Perhaps a month, or six, of living life as so many of us do will help them see that this fighting and grandstanding has to stop.

We don’t need terrorists to destroy this country.  We’re doing it just fine all by ourselves.

Posted by Deb at 9:47 pm
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