Homelessness

My changing views on homelessness.

Homelessness Part 1
Homelessness Part 2
Homelessness Part 3
Children seeing homless people

My daughters are almost five (twins). Living in San Francisco, they see homeless people all the time. They both have asked if being really old means you then become a homeless person. When I told them their grandparents weren’t homeless, they said that’s because they aren’t really old.

I told them a story the other night. I am a children’s story teller by the way. The story was about a troll who does good deeds and had decided one day to really give himself to others. As he went into a town, he asked if there was anyone who needed help. People told him to seek the Baker. As he found the Baker, he found he had no one to help him make bread. The troll helped him make the bread and was paid in bread. The next day the troll returned to help the baker again; however, this time an old beggar came into the bakery and was chased out. When the troll asked the Baker why, the baker explained that his uncleanness would turn customers away. The troll decided to take his day’s payment of bread to the old beggar. The beggar was very thankful and explained that he used to be a farmer, but a drought destroyed his crop. With no crop he could not pay the lease on his land and lost it. He farmed other people’s land, but the money was never enough to save. Finally, he got too old to work and had to scavenge for his food. The troll asked why the people of the town didn’t help him. The old man explained that all the people who lived in the town where children of those who had known him. They’d only known him as a poor tenant farmer. Now, they don’t care to listen to him. The troll took the old man’s welfare upon himself and took him back into the woods to care for him.

After I told this story, my children began to tell me a story about the time my wife had given some money to a man who had a broken leg. They both began to weep for him as he had no crutches and no home. My 4 year old children had witnessed this event when they were younger. With this story they were able to articulate their feelings. It really left an impression on me. My young children wept for a wounded homeless man.

My daughter asked me, “Will you ever be homeless Dad?” I told her I didn’t intend to be. She said she didn’t want to be either. I told her I would work to make sure she never was. She was clearly scared. Normally, my goal for my young children is to shelter them so they can have a strong foundation to deal with the hard parts of life as they come. Living in San Francisco, that’s hard to do. I was really blown away by their response. Ultimately, it’s compassion. I’m glad to see it in my children. I feel it, too. However, I reason myself away from it. I say, giving money only supports the bad habit. I’m ready to shed that reasoning now.

Interesting how I’ve gone from many different levels of thinking as I’ve investigated homeless for myself (abstractly speaking). I was first compassionate. Then, as I began to pick myself up and achieve, I expected others to do the same. Homeless people included. Then I realized I was succeeding because of my environment which influenced my thinking. Then I thought about the homeless person’s environment by the underpass. Well, I figured, they just have to change their environment. I have to say, that expectation is way way off base. It takes incredible strength to change your environment. If you are in an environment that you feel you can’t escape from, how can you? The mental fortitude isn’t there. From this view, I am now back at compassion, especially with the perspective of my daughters. Compassion and respect.

I’m learning. That’s for sure. People have passionate responses to this subject. Especially people who are homeless. The psychological experience that supersedes and subsedes the experience is illuminating to me. I knew I was missing the details of individual experiences. I have never ever ever lost my home to circumstance and no addiction has ever taken me. How can I have compassion for the individual experience if I don’t know the experience? I think this is where the line is on ambivalence towards homelessness (at least those who don’t want to be a homehaver).

I have found that compassion has to be a large piece of it. If one chooses that homeless people don’t have feelings, then the whole picture is missing completely. It’s a human experience. There’s a large online community of homeless people telling their stories.

The shunning of the homeless from the homehavers can really be crushing.

In my next post, I will be outlining my process of thinking to show how it’s evolved on homelessness. I suspect that it reveals a hierarchical matrix of thinking where more information leads to higher levels of thinking. I also suspect that others on the homehaver side fit into this matrix at different levels depending upon how much awareness they have.

Stay tuned. This has potential to change the conversation. Instead of going back and forth with someone on how to proceed with a helping homeless policy, we can stop the discussion and say, “Listen, right now, you are on level 2 thinking and you more need information. Once you get this info and have some time to absorb, let’s talk again.”

For the last few days, there’s been someone sleeping on my corner. I remember passing them whilst walking the dog. I thought it was odd that the person was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk with twelve or so coats and suitcases scattered around them. However, living in San Francisco, just off Market street, I’m somewhat accustomed.

The next day the person was gone. The day after that the person returned. From night until well in the middle of the next day, they were still there sleeping under a pile of coats.

I have lots of thoughts in my head about people who are living on the streets. This was one of my first posts. I have some guilt around it…as if I should help them get back on their feet. I have a house and they don’t. I feel like a “have” and I feel like they are a “have-not”. However, fear of what a conversation with them might bring to me usually keeps me from getting involved with helping someone off the street. I feel like since they know where I live, I might be called upon when I’d rather not be called upon. I’ve been asked for money by desperate people way too often in this city. For this and other reasons, I just pass them.

Today as I pass, I find there is a fresh pile of “humanure” on the side walk. Right where my children and I walk every day. I was quite disgusted and assumed this person who had been sleeping twenty feet away had done this. I might have been wrong. It was time for them both to go in my mind.

A call to public works got a steam cleaning scheduled and a call to the police station had the person evicted from the corner. I felt guilty for calling the police to move them. Calling the authorities to bother someone less fortunate than me doesn’t bring me joy. This is when I had my next thought and this is where I need an expert opinion.

As someone who raises children, I’m aware of some extremely effective methods for raising an independent and responsible thinker. I apply some of these methods as best as I can. One of the principles that these methods are built on is this: Don’t reward behavior you don’t want else you condone it.

For example, when a child asks for something, don’t move until they say it as a polite request. If you get them water when they command you to, they learn to command you to get them water. This is obviously is not what one desires from a child. When children use potty talk, get up immediately and with a smile take their hand and say, “Oh, do you need to go to the bathroom.” This teaches the power and the appropriateness of words. It also gets you the behavior you want. Now, to my point.

It seems that the city of San Francisco wants to provide a safe, clean city for it’s residents with law and order. In order to provide this, they provide the services of police who will remove homeless people from your corner and a city cleaner to steam clean your sidewalk. The city provides these services free of charge. By providing these services, it seems to me the city condones vagrants sleeping and defecating on my neighborhood’s corner.

By allowing the behavior to exist and continue without consequence, the city therefore condones it. By allowing your children to command you to get their water, you condone it. This is the same to me. Now, you may not mean to condone your child commanding you, but this is the message received by the child because the child commanded water and received it. It worked to the child. The city may not mean to condone it, but this is the message sent to the vagrant. The city sends the message, “You can sleep here for free unless someone complains and feel free to poop on the sidewalk. We’ll clean it up.”

I think this is totally wrong wrong wrong. I think the city has taken the wrong approach by assuming the responsibility. I think the city should enforce that the responsibility lies with them. Experts please weigh in.

Does giving money to a homeless person help? Is it not their choices and their habits that got them there? Perhaps some are victims. Generalizing here is dangerous because many situations are unique and there could very well be victims. However, when someone approaches and asks for money, I have to generalize. I’ve been asked for money many times. I’ve given it only to see them asking for money again.

Often, I see the same people everyday. It looks like a choice they make to continue this path. I don’t like the path they’ve chosen. I want them to take another path. I guess my expectation for them is the more normal, healthy path. I don’t want to feed the habit or create a situation where I enable them to continue to be on the unclean, unproductive, and unhealthy path.

I know of a few serious alcoholics who have lost their jobs and subsequently their homes. One became homeless. The other is about to become homeless. There’s an argument here about whether they were predisposed to this condition either genetically or environmentally, but I still think that there is a capability to chose the response.

My end thought is that it is a choice that’s made. I think this choice is a product of an individual’s environment. Perhaps it’s a choice made in despair that’s compounded by a mental disorder? From that perspective, it may not be a choice they have the strength to make. If you really can’t make the choice, then I’m not sure what to think. My humanist side says get them off the street and in a mental institution…I guess. This sounds terrible. What other options are there in this case?

I read an article in the NewYorker by Malcom Gladwell where he presented a financial picture of how a few homeless people can drive up serious medical debts and how it would be more cost effective to provide an apartment and in home care for them than to let them be on the street driving up government costs. My take on this is that it’s all in the environment that people choose.

If you choose a situation where you feel you must drink to have the good times, either because the environment is truly unfortunate or because your mental outlook is truly unfortunate, then it seems that the resulting circumstances can’t be positive. If you choose to change your situation to one that’s empowering or change your outlook to one that’s empowering, then I expect your results will be empowering.

I’m sure there are those who are homeless who have never seen abundance. They might not know it exists. Again, I think this is an environment problem.

To fix homelessness, I think we need to focus on the environment an individual is in. Any other thoughts? What have I grossly missed? Experts needed…Please!