Handout Handup

We don't want people to be "given handouts"...we "don't want to support people with our taxes"..."it shouldn't be up to the government to help people, it should go to charitable organizations"...But then we pass laws specifically designed to prevent people from helping the homeless. 

I do understand that there are a lot of people that don't want to 'encounter' homeless people on their way to work, or have to 'deal with' them in atm vestibules...the blatant evidence of the suffering of others can really bring a person down. .there seems to be a borg like lack of consciousness that enables some of us to conveniently forget that these are human beings. 

As a client advocate on the board of a homeless shelter I got to see and deal with many homeless, and I know there is no cookie cutter situation. The largest group of homeless individuals is children. A lot of them are children of parents with mental illness, and mental illness plays a huge role in our homeless situation in the United States. People like to point fingers and say that homeless people are making a choice, and sometimes they are correct. There is indeed a syndrome and there are indeed people that choose to be homeless, and some of them are of sound mind when they make that decision. Others are not so fortunate, they may think it's what they want, but they aren't in a place in their minds where they can make that choice coherently. 

As a person with mental illness I am aware of the need to isolate, and I do...I deliberately isolate myself. I simply do not have the wherewithal to add another person's pull to my life. I have a small circle of people that know and love me and understand this about me. I am a strange mix of extroverted introvert with an analytically creative mind. Some people aren't fortunate enough to have people in their lives that understand their need to recharge through hibernation and still remain an integral part of their lives, and the isolation becomes complete...these are the people that end up on the street. These people simply are not going to go to a shelter. They are not going to go to a community center and gather socially to eat among many. These are the people that are falling through the cracks, these are the people that are getting hurt by these laws of no public feeding, of bus benches with arms so people can't lie down, of tents and shacks being cut up and knocked down by the river and under bridges. 

These people need our compassion, not our boot.