Tonight, Christ Church will be the host for the "Interfaith Collaborations to End Homelessness: Next Steps for the Boston Region." Building on the work of the March 25 Forum, which welcomed State Senator Byron Rushing, tonight's meeting will bring us together to look at some action steps for ending homelessness. There are several important bills before the legislature, and the state's affordable housing law will be on the ballot in November.
In his address at the first meeting, Byron Rushing (one of "ours"--he's an Episcopalian) talked about how his family was poor as a child. "Why are we poor," he asked his mother. "Because we don't have any money." "Why are the homeless homeless? Because they have no homes." People of my generation don't realize that it hasn't always been this way, that homelessness as an accepted fact of life is a fairly recent phenomenon. Rushing reminded us: "I want to make clear to young people: It's something that doesn't have to be, because it's not something that always was," Rushing said.
Instead, people like me are inclined to rush to services; day centers so people don't have to be outside, storage lockers, PO Boxes, voicemail, shelter beds. But if you have a home, that's not necessary. The state spends thousands of dollars to put people in temporary housing in hotels when our shelters are filled; it's astonishingly poor logic to say that society can't get organized enough to create affordable housing, but we can use more than twice the money that that would take to give (inadequate) temporary shelter.
My first church job, ten years ago, was with the homeless work at St John's, Bowdoin Street in Boston and Ecclesia Ministries. At 21, I had never met anyone who was homeless, nevermind actually shared a meal or a prayer. I soon learned that being homeless is kind of like a full time job. Though many homeless people also have paid employment, in addition to that they spend time going from shelter to shelter, fulfilling requirements for public assistance. They find a shelter with a bed available, and have to arrive at a certain time and leave at a certain time, and figure out the schedule of available meals around the city. Fighting addiction or mental illness, everything becomes even more complicated. There are health costs, too--to society and to individuals. According to the Boston's Health Care for the Homeless, "119 street dwellers accounted for an astounding 18,384 emergency room visits and 871 medical hospitalizations over a five year period. The average annual health care cost for individuals living on the street was $28,436, compared to $6,056 for individuals in the cohort who obtained housing."
Meeting the direct needs of people, with food and a bed to sleep in, is a start, but it's not the final answer. I'm reminded of a story often told by former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond:
Two men are sitting by a river and see, to their great surprise, a helpless baby floating by. They rescue the child, and to their horror, another baby soon comes floating down the stream. When that child is pulled to safety, another baby comes along. As one man plunges into the river a third time, the other rushes upstream.
"Come back!" yells the man in the water. "We must save this baby!"
"You save it," the other yells back. "I'm going to find out who is throwing babies in the river and I'm going to make them stop!"
That's the challenge of justice work; don't just pull the baby out of the water; find out why so many of them are getting thrown in. The move of charity is to pull out the babies--we have to do that, too--have to give them diapers, and give their grandparents food--but that's not the whole of our task. Tonight's meeting, in whatever small way, invites us to see how we can accomplish the justice work that is set before us as well.
Blessings,
Sara+
No comments:
Post a Comment