Once a person resorts to a stereotype in order to evaluate strangers, it can be extremely difficult to alter the mental file folder that has been created. If I can neatly categorize you and "your people," it makes my life easier and my worldview less confusing.
Stereotypical thinking, something we all do, enables us to dismiss folks and move on.
Unfortunately, none of us really enjoy dismissive people, even though we all are guilty of the crime we resent so much when we see it in others!
I have noticed recently how easy it is for us to dismiss people who have no homes.
In a radio message last week I heard Paul Harvey refer to the homeless in another American city as "bums." Fairly dismissive stereotype, don't you think? Maybe people like Mr. Harvey because he helps us iron out the wrinkles of inconsistency and complexity that life throws in our faces every day.
Let's be honest. Homeless people scare us. We don't understand them, nor do we know their stories. We don't know what to do about their problems. It is just easier to assume that they like their lives on the street or that most are mentally ill or strung out or both, or that they are paying for their personal mistakes, that there is nothing that can be done to really help, etc., etc., etc. I bet you can fill in another line or two here.
Research--hard, empirical evidence has a way of destroying stereotypes. Most people I talk to just don't believe that the homeless population here in Dallas could really handle having apartments of their own. This skepticism fuels the city's penchant for shelters and soup kitchens and bread lines.
The evidence shatters our misguided understandings.
The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducted a study of one of their programs that provides supportive housing for people who have no homes. HUD's study found that after a year 84.5% of disabled and formerly homeless tenants remained in housing. I guess if you just dismiss your commitment to a stereotype and give your common sense some slack you can see how that would be the case. Street vs. Home? Street vs. Home? Duh!
Or, consider the results of a four-year study by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Almost eighty-four percent of formerly homeless mentally ill adults living in supportive housing--single room occupancy (SRO) apartments--remained housed after one year. Hmmm. Go figure.
In New York City, where city and state funding financed the construction or rehabilitation of over 8,000 units of supportive housing for homeless persons from 1990-1997, program evaluation found that approximately 80% remained housed after a year. Novel notion there, don't you think. Public money guided by enlightened public policy to solve a public problem that benefits everyone.
I guess people in Dallas will think what they want, leaders and service providers included.
But the facts are clear. Homeless people are pretty much like the rest of us. Like all of us homeless people need lots of things. And, like you and me, what they need most is a place to call home.
[For additional findings on homelessness in the United States check out this Congressional site:
http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/31699san.htm.]
7 comments:
I think there was an extra "." in the link; here is the site.
Also, for those who believe that those who are living in poverty are simply lazy or unwilling to work towards getting out of their situation, I challenge you to go on the Poverty Tour ...
http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour2.htm
Thanks, Jeremy! I have corrected the address in the blog post. Thanks for reading.
Here in Nashville, the Mayor's Taskforce to end Chronic Homlessness has started their 10 year plan to make housing available for the homeless. I hope it is accomplished.
I think you are right about many people, espeically Christians being homelessfobic, as well as homofobic. I wonder if we lived on the streets for a week or even a day if our perspective would change.
another good link you might know about:
thehomelessguy.blogspot.com
Larry:
I just want to thank you for this ministry. Your writings are a daily challenge for me. They keep me focused on the important and remind me that caring for the poor and "dismissed" is where we are called to llve. I love you brother.
Shawn Mayes
In reference to Paul Harvey's comment of the homeless being "bums," I want to relate a story that was shared at the CCDA Institute yesterday. One of the participants recounted a conversation he had had with one of the homeless men living under one of the bridges here in Dallas. The man talked about our mayor's big push to "clean up" our city and get the homeless out of sight. He went on to say he would really like to demonstrate to her that they are not "bums" but just simply down and out right now. He expressed his desire to plant a small garden at the side of the bridge in order to grow some food and donate it to different places just so she could see that "homeless" doesn't equal "bad." That doesn't sound like a "bum" mentality to me. It would do Paul Harvey and Mayor Miller good to begin to realize this.
Homelessness is a complex phenomenon including those on the lowermost rungs of poverty, the mentally ill, the addicted, the dually diagnosed, the recently incarcerated now on their own, and many fleeing from abuse and broken lives. The factor that unites them is absence of shelter. The public face of homelessness is most often the hard-core, so-called service-resistant population.
Our culture believes that life is fundamentally a competition, played on zero sum terms. Contests between adversaries play out in every sphere, as reflected in our legal, educational, economic and entertainment systems. That there must be winners (whom we adulate) and losers (whom we scorn) is a necessary corollary. In America we imbibe such truths with our mother's milk. A jungle would be the right metaphor. Perhaps, it is here where the ground needs to be cleared. We must ask ourselves basic questions about winning, losing and competing. I can imagine a different world, where fear is replaced by faith, where the metaphor is of a garden whose resources -- thoughtfully husbanded -- are potentially infinite, where life struggles are undergirded by supportive, just and caring communities and not framed solely in terms of agonistic individuals.
Naturally these two visions represent a continuum and not a polarity. We need a strong, strong dose of idealism.
Post a Comment