Greg is a conservative’s dream.
He wakes up every morning before 6 a.m., showers, eats breakfast and dons a suit and tie. He goes to his office job every day, puts in more than 40 hours per week, saves his money and doesn’t drink. He gets back in time for dinner, watches the news and is in bed by 10 p.m.
Greg is not his real name. Homeless shelter volunteers are not permitted to give out the names of those staying in the facility, for fear of discrimination. It’s a fear that is well-founded.
The prevailing attitudes toward the homeless in America are not particularly sympathetic. Most people view them as a minor annoyance; their only exposure to the homeless comes when someone on the street bothers them for change. Many would characterize them as a bunch of degenerates and alcoholics, fully deserving of their unfortunate fate.
If they would only get themselves together and get a job like everyone else, most say, they wouldn’t find themselves in this predicament.
But it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Homelessness in the wealthiest nation on earth is caused by a variety of factors and they are not always the result of repeated bad judgment by those who are homeless. For Greg, it came from the skyrocketing rents and housing prices in Boston, which did away with rent-control laws in 1997.
For others, it comes from an untimely lay-off and a lack of close relatives to take them in. Some, like a former Boston College basketball player and account coordinator whose story appeared in a recent Boston Globe column, just made one mistake–in his case, incurring the wrath of the I.R.S.
Walking into a homeless shelter in Cambridge, Mass., the shelter where Greg sleeps, is not setting foot into the armpit of society. It’s more akin to walking into a hospital waiting room: residents play cards, watch the news or read magazines. At dinnertime, they are as orderly and polite as anyone else.
The shelter is dry; anyone who is intoxicated is turned away at the door. Fights and rude language are no more common than in the rest of society. Residents are early to bed and early to rise, and strive to look as presentable as everyone else.
For most at this shelter, homelessness is not a career. They have fallen on hard times, and are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Anyone who buys into the American work ethic, particularly politicians, should be proud.
Yet efforts to help the homeless remain woefully under-funded, and the only legislation that deals with homelessness–the oft-amended McKinney-Vento Bill of 1987–addresses the effects rather than the causes of the problem. The National Coalition for the Homeless called for $4.3 billion for their efforts in the 2002 budget, an amount it says will still leave many of its programs without adequate funding. Bush requested just over half that amount for efforts to help the homeless.
In today’s political climate, this is not surprising. Requests for homeless programs are seen as bleeding-heart-liberal garbage, further evidence of the liberals’ tax-and-spend nature. They do not understand that efforts to help the homeless are compatible with the historical, mythical allure of America: the opportunity to start over, to begin anew. It brought colonists here as the continent was being settled, and it brought them to the frontier as the country grew.
But the frontier is gone; those with economic troubles can no longer escape to the West. Greg will probably escape homelessness through his shelter’s progressive work-contract program, but he is one of the lucky ones.
Today’s economy is struggling, and most homeless shelters do not have enough beds to go around. Not all of them have the resources for the kind of work-contract program Greg takes part in. Few can offer the necessary treatment for diseases that sometimes contribute to homelessness, namely mental illness and alcoholism.
Unfortunately, the problem will probably not be addressed until stereotypes disappear, until those begging on the street are no longer taken to represent the group as a whole, until people understand that those who are homeless often appear no different than anyone else. Most strive for the same goals and possess the same virtue, but do not have the same luck.
Politicians must change their attitudes, as well. They do deal with the effects of homelessness; no one enjoys hearing stories of the homeless freezing to death in winter months, and usually there are places for them to stay for some period of time. But the politicians need to get over their instinctive reactions against funding programs to address the roots of homelessness and helping people out of it.
The cause is not a helpless one; it has simply never been given the resources it needs and deserves. Republicans and Democrats alike must recognize that though the homeless lack a strong political voice in this country, most do not lack its ideals.
Matt Lynch is a junior majoring in English and political science. Heather Long, a volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter in Cambridge, Mass., contributed several background details for this column.
