How should a student treat the homeless of Madison when passing them by on a street? Should he or she ignore them, give them money, take them out for lunch or just say “hi?”
No matter what the right answer is, it should always revolve around one key concept: treating homeless people with the respect they deserve as fellow human beings. This is an important lesson for all students to learn at some point in their time here, but it is not a lesson for students alone – the City of Madison and Dane County seem to need a reminder of the humanity of the homeless as well.
Ever since 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker’s administration removed homeless people from a cafeteria in the state Capitol (which was long-treated as a daytime shelter), there have been calls for a permanent shelter site for Madison’s homeless. Fortunately, funding was approved for a site last November. Unfortunately, although almost an entire year has passed, the plan has not been carried out and homeless people are still left without a permanent shelter as winter approaches.
Madison has several temporary solutions for the homeless, such as Porchlight Inc., a local emergency shelter and low-cost housing center, Central Library, which is scheduled to reopen in late September and the homeless ministry of Madison’s Bethel Lutheran Church. However, these resources are not substitutes for a permanent day shelter.
This is not to say that there have been no steps in the right direction – Dane County has been trying, albeit somewhat feebly, to find a site for the future shelter. Even so, all potential locations have either been more expensive than the county’s $600,000 shelter budget or outside the downtown area specified by the funding committee. Regardless of the difficulties of finding a suitable shelter site, the county must prioritize this search and focus on real solutions rather than mere plans for action. It’s nice to know the city approved funds for a shelter and has started looking at possible sites, but after nearly a year of speculation, a plan for a shelter is simply not enough.
Madison’s Equal Opportunities Commission has proposed a homeless “bill of rights” of sorts. The bill would be based on similar bills in other states giving the homeless the right to use, leave property in, sleep, share food or solicit donations at public spaces, with some limitations.
While this seems to be a good idea, it’s currently facing opposition from Downtown Madison Inc., a local membership organization that works to promote a business-friendly environment in the city. They believe giving homeless people a special status would take the focus off a single standard of behavior that is needed to make public spaces welcoming to everyone.
This viewpoint, however, looks at the issue from a fairly shallow level; homeless people are not just going to disappear from the utopian downtown environment that Downtown Madison Inc. seems to be aiming for. A bill of rights would not serve simply to condone poor behavior in public places, rather, it would give the homeless the respect and assistance they need and deserve.
The City of Madison, Dane County, and even we, as students, must treat the homeless as real people and not a mere social problem. Even if helping the homeless is difficult, inconvenient or awkward at times, all we can do is what seems to be the right thing to do at the moment, whether it’s giving them money, food or a friendly greeting. If the city and county were to follow suit and provide the homeless with the day shelter they need and the bill of rights they deserve, perhaps we could all ease our consciences.
A bill of rights is a step in the right direction – it would recognize that the homeless are treated differently as lesser humans, and it would explicitly state the rights that should have already been given to them. Although it is unfortunate that we must state the obvious, it’s better than letting the rights of the homeless disappear altogether.
Allison Hare ([email protected]) is a freshman intending to major in biology and psychology.
