Whenever I am looking for an article or a news story to write about for my weekly blog, there is always a supply out there. What I am always shocked by is the number of people who exclusively blame the people impacted by homelessness. This is the article I read this week, and there are many quotes from residents and business owners who claim to feel "empathy." Still, they are more concerned with how the homeless population is affecting them, their business, and their customers.
People experiencing homelessness are not the problem. The problem is we live in a society where stray dogs and cats receive more compassion and resources than people battling mental health or addiction. The United States GDP is the largest in the world by Ten Trillion dollars, over 2nd highest nation's GDP (China), and is more than the 3rd-10th nations' GDP combined. With this wealth and resources, there is no reason why everyone living in this nation should not have access to housing and healthcare. Fixing these two issues will solve homelessness. You can only expect to solve the problem by relying on something other than the system that created it. We need to create a new system that is people first. Only then can real change be accomplished.
Think about any time in your life when you experienced stress. Perhaps you or a family member experienced a health problem or lost your job. Now imagine dealing with that stress while being on the street and having to deal with the possibility of having all of your possessions swept away by local police because your campground was in a location where camping is not permitted. How do you expect those people to be able to deal with that stress and make any positive substantive changes when they are in constant turmoil. When it comes to mental health and addiction, those problems are challenging enough to deal with for people who have stable housing, resources, and a support system. We should seek to provide these things for the people impacted by homelessness. We need to seek to understand them and help them build community. We need to be empathetic and approach people affected by homelessness with compassion. Rather than thinking about how their existence inconveniences you, I challenge you to think, "How can I make a positive impact."
An easy way to make a positive difference is to introduce yourself to homeless people you encounter. Ask their name and learn their story. Do this consistently enough, and I think you will find that your perception of homeless people is wildly inaccurate. People experiencing homelessness are people, and they are not responsible for creating the housing crisis, nor are they responsible for creating a medical system that failed them. The people at the top of the economy prioritizing profit over people are the root of many of this country's problems. They use their power and wealth to lobby government officials who are supposed to act in the people's best interest and instead convince them to benefit the owner class. Now, with the Supreme Court still deciding on whether or not to criminalize homelessness, getting involved is more important than ever. Letting the police arrest people just for being homeless results in bringing them into the for-profit prison system in this country. The prison system is more expensive, non-rehabilitative, and, in a lot of instances, the penal labor system is essentially a form of modern-day indentured servitude (another topic we can dive deeper into in another blog). It is a slippery slope if that is the route we go.
People have a right to exist. Don't let politicians or corporate executives try to tell you that higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations and allocating those funds towards benefitting the masses is a bad thing. Countries with universal healthcare include Austria, Belarus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, & the United Kingdom. I could go on as more countries do a much better job providing for their citizens than the US, which also has way fewer resources than the US. Perhaps the US was the greatest nation in the world at one time, but we are certainly far from it now. In my eyes, the measure of a great nation is how it treats the people who have the least, and in that respect, we are closer to the worst in the world than the best.
