My education in "the least of these" truly began in the late 1980s when I returned to St. Edward's University in Austin as an non-traditional student. One of my philosophy professors worked with the homeless, and in one half-hour period, he shattered all the conventional wisdom about them.
It still surprises me to this day was that I needed him to tell me what I already knew, for I had been homeless with two young children.
So who are "the least of these" and how do we treat them? What I've learned over the years, what I've seen, has left me furious.
Note: I cannot provide links to the newspaper stories cited here because the archives are no longer free.
On being humane
Around the time of Ted Kennedy's death, many of us repeatedly heard Matthew 25:31-46, of which the most memorable line is:
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.
These verses carry a pretty stern admonition, and you don't have to be Christian to realize that how we treat the "least of these" is truly a moral issue, one that affects us all. Sorry, you can't hide in a gated community and escape the moral cost of ignoring what is happening around you. We have a duty to our fellow man, whether or not we're religious, a duty that springs from our commonality as human beings. It's that thing we actually call being "humane," a word that carries its own judgment about what it means to be human.
My professor told us that night in class that he worked with the homeless. He said they were not "ne'er do wells and alcoholics" for the most part, that over ninety-percent were actually employed. But how, he asked us, could a dishwasher in a restaurant afford an apartment? He could barely afford to eat.
So who are the homeless?
My education continued soon with an article in the Austin American-Statesman about people living in a state park. Yes, living there. Some people complained to the park service that these folks never left, but were in the campground year round. The complainers wanted these people removed.
So the Statesman sent a reporter out to interview these so-called transients, entire families living in tents. Yes they were paying their campground fees. No they weren't causing trouble.
One interview stuck with me: A nurse with three children. She had moved to Austin to get a full-time job after her previous job had been eliminated. Her husband worked as a carpenter in local construction when he could find work. They lived in the campground simply because they could not feed themselves and their children and still save enough for all the up-front costs of renting an apartment: First and last month's rent, security deposit, and utility deposits. Just to move into a cheap two-bedroom apartment cost an estimated $2200 dollars (this from the Statesman, in the late '80s). The family could not get that sum together, although they were trying to. There had been medical expenses for the children, childcare costs, her base pay was ridiculously low, his hours as an experienced carpenter were earning minimum wage. They made too much for subsidized housing, and not enough to get a place of their own. They were entitled to absolutely no public assistance of any kind.
The park was full of people with the same story. Homeless and working.
My daughter was even one of them for a while. She had a job at a local grocery, but it didn't pay enough to meet rent as well as food when her former husband was out of work. I didn't know it until later, but she lived in a campground, in a tent -- and she was surrounded by many others in the same position.
There is another way to get shelter, an illegal one. I knew a number of families who joined together to rent an apartment. In violation of the law, two or three families would share a two-bedroom apartment. Not only were they crowded beyond belief, but they could be evicted the instant property management became aware. So they hid as much as possible, kept their children indoors and sadly quiet. No kid should have to be that quiet.
Being homeless locks people into a cycle of poverty.
If you don't have an address, most employers won't talk to you. If you don't have an address, you can't even get assistance checks, like VA disability, or SS disability... or food stamps. Nor can you even get a bank account so you can have these checks deposited. Many of our veterans who are living under bridges are in exactly that bind: unable to even collect the disability payments that might help them.
If you don't have an address, even if you still have your Social Security Card, you can't get a driver's license or other photo ID, required to do almost anything in this country.
And if you don't have an address, well, probably the only jobs you'll get will be cash jobs, as day labor. And those won't pay for a roof.
How do people become homeless?
There are 1.5 million homeless people now, according to recent estimates, and a horrifying percentage are children. These people, in most cases, have wound up homeless because someone got fired or someone got sick and they couldn't meet the rent or mortgage payments. (See The National Coalition for the Homeless) My only argument with this site is that they intimate only the poor are at risk. These days median income families, too, are one crisis from the streets.
The Coalition provides the stark insight that the homeless have made the only choice they could. When forced to choose between food and shelter, people will choose food for themselves and their families over shelter.
Remember, we're not talking here about "dregs." Most homeless people are not alcoholics and drug addicts who can't work, and even if they were they ought to be in treatment, not on the streets. But we don't provide that to anyone who doesn't get arrested for an alcohol or drug related crime. Oh, no.
What alternatives do the homeless have?
Subsidized housing is overflowing. In many areas of the country, there are waiting lists of one to two years. So tent cities are springing up. Everywhere it's warm enough to live year round under canvas, and now even in some places where it's not.
How do we react to this crisis?
A Tampa minister called the cops to tell them he had a bunch of homeless drunks in the woods behind his church and he wanted them removed. His congregation shouldn't have to be exposed to them.
Well, the property was private. It belonged to a man who owned a nearby strip mall. He didn't want to evict those people, as they were doing no harm. As he told the local paper, "They're not drunks, and they don't cause any problem." But the mega-church next door wasn't content with that. Pressured, the owner's insurance company got involved and told him he had to evict those people because they were a potential liability. The day they moved out, the property owner went out to help them, offering use of his truck, lifting heavier items, taking them wherever they wanted to go. He told them, "I didn't want to do this but my insurance company is making me." I won't even tell you what I think of that minister. Or maybe I will. Of all people he should have been aware of Matthew 25:31-46. He and his church should have been offering to help those people find work, offering to feed them, shelter them. But they were just "a bunch of alcoholics."
Oh no, Reverend, they were not. They were indeed "the least of these."
St. Vincent de Paul Society here in Tampa has a fenced vacant lot next to their thrift store. They allowed the homeless to set up a tent city, and fed them and provided sanitary facilities. The homeless people living there expressed their gratitude to the newspaper, not only for the food and facilities, but for the fence that protected their meager belongings during the day while they worked at lousy jobs, or hunted for equally lousy jobs.
The neighbors complained. The police investigated, but could find no immediate cause for eviction. Still, they set up a round the clock patrol, refused to allow any of the homeless families to emerge to search for work, and when concerned citizens arrived with blankets and other supplies, they weren't allowed to take them in to the people. No they had to throw them over the fence.
A Tampa man was cited for bringing hot meals to the homeless under a bridge every day. Students from the university were told they'd be arrested if they continued handing out canned foods to the homeless who haunted the park.
Miami had a huge uproar over a two-acre tent city that wasn't causing anyone any problems...except that it existed. The property owner was forced to evict these people. They set up another tent city on another vacant lot. What else were they supposed to do? Even the city itself began to recognize that these people have no other alternative. All you can do is drive them from one location to another.
So who are the least of these?
They used to be us. They used to have jobs and homes, but circumstances dealt them a blow: a job loss, an illness, a trip to a war that broke their minds. They are little kids whose parents love them and don't want to give them up, and scramble as hard as they can to keep them fed and clothed. Parents who cannot bear dumping their children into an overcrowded foster care system that is rife with abuse. Parents who keep right on believing that tomorrow, or the next day, things will get better if they just keep working hard, or find a decent job.
Personal responsibility and self-reliance.
There was a time in this country when we didn't condemn people who lived in tents or in handmade shelters. There was a time when we called those people pioneers. But today all we want is for them to vanish.
For a nation of people who brag about self-reliance and personal responsibility, we're awfully busy trying to stamp out those who have nothing left but self-reliance and personal responsibility.
Why do you think that is? Have we lost our national capacity to be humane?