Some Notes on Homelessness
A three block walk on George Street. Three homeless men, two with signs, a third asking directly for anything I can spare. I usually give. I’ll drop a couple singles, a five, any little bit will help, even if the help is in the form of a bottle. Who am I to judge? Who am I to say what they can do with the little they collect? But today, I have nothing on me, no bills, no change, and I feel terrible passing by, catch myself avoiding their eyes. I know from earlier encounters, with interviews and conversations, that they want to be seen. I see them. I do, and I want to help. And I know that they are victims — of capitalism, of the local housing market, of their own bad choices. What does it matter?
One guy davens like a rabbi. Another sits stone-like in his wheelchair, a seemingly permanent presence in New Brunswick’s downtown. A third just smokes. They have stories, but I haven’t asked. These stories matter greatly, and not at all. They give life to the statistics trotted out every year, the half a million homeless on any given day, the likelihood of an individual becoming homeless, the numbers who are mentally ill, veterans, families. They give these numbers a face, make them more than just numbers. And they also mislead, create the lie that the fate of the men and women and children who make up the statistics are just a collection of individual tales. That it individual choices and failures are all we need to look at, to blame.
We pretend this intractable problem is not systemic, not the logical by-product of housing policies and an economy that assigns value and that consigns those it deems without value to the trash heap. We go home and forget what we have a seen. Or, if we remember, we judge, we say “beggars can’t be choosers,” say it’s their own damned fault, pretend it is not our problem. “They did it to themselves” may carry some kernel of truth, but it is incomplete, a convenient, if partial, explanation. “They did it to themselves,” but we helped. We, who benefit from an economic system that elevates profit above all other virtues.