Homelessness is a stark reality in our North American cities.
My fellow citizens have expressed deep concerns about the pain and suffering of anyone who does not have secure shelter. They are expressly concerned about the abuse and suffering that homeless women suffer.
You must always evaluate a society by the care and concern it demonstrates towards the poorest, the most vulnerable in its midst. How Canadians treat the homeless is a test of who we are as human beings and as a society.
First, the problem of homelessness grows directly as the price of real estate goes up. Your parent’s house increases in value every year. Their wealth in real estate is going up. But at the same time, the cost of rents at the lower end also goes up. People who were able to afford minimum hosing are low pushed out completely. Homelessness is the downside, the black side, of prosperity.
People’s lives are precarious, and for many, they live on the edge. They have weak or non-existent family and social connections. There is no family that will take them in. In the old days one of your family members could take the old dad to live with them. Today, that social reality does not exist for so many homeless people.
Among the homeless there is a great deal of mental illness and serious addiction issues with drugs and alcohol. We want to be very careful not to criticize any family member who cannot deal with serious drug addiction. Very few of us can deal positively with a close relative who struggles with heavy drug abuse.
We also must recognize that human lives can fall apart. I remember one of our young (age 27) street people came to the door, hungry. It was a cold winter day. I asked him, “Where are your gloves?” (I had given him a pain of winter gloves two weeks previously.) He shrugged his shoulders. Probably he had lost the in a drinking spree. I made him two sandwiches but his life was very unmanageable.
The human reality is that many people can pick themselves up from disasters, get organized, take care of themselves and thrive. But the downside is that some human lives will fall apart. The very poor appear to be living a life in steady collapse.
We all know that we need social housing. This is easier said and done. All our governments are strapped for money. Social housing is expensive and must be maintained. If any level of government builds social housing, this is always a long-term commitment.
The concern of our Christian people is genuine. They not only make a sound judgment about the problem of homeless in Canada, but there is genuine feelings of concern and compassion in their lament.
How we respond to homelessness is a complicated matter. Our response as a Canadian society must be multi-pronged. There are many issues that must be dealt with; there is no one solution that is a fix-it for homelessness.
Just because it is a very difficult situation does not mean that we will run away from it. Thank you for being concerned and having your heart move for anyone who is on the streets this cold winter evening.
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