The rich and the homeless on Thanksgiving

This is the land of beautiful people, perfect weather, and stunning coastlines, but in the fringe areas along the back, the rarely traveled dirt roads to the stunning Oceano beach dunes are the homeless – skinny, filthy and screaming out loud at the rising sun he was drugged or psychotic, or both. And I picked up my pace, not sure what the guy was capable of in the cool dawn of this Thanksgiving morning; Silently, I urged the dog to move faster.

On the corners of the gleaming grocery stores, which offer everything from kale shakes to premium grass-fed beef, men and women are seated with signs like “Please help” or “Anything will help. , God bless you”. Hoping that we roll down the window and give them something, anything.

Last Veterans Day, I heard a newscaster speak about John Kerry’s speech and the promise he made on behalf of the Obama administration to ‘end homelessness among veterans’ and ensure that every veteran has a roof over your head with lots of food.

At the very least, it is disconcerting to see these men and women on street corners, sometimes with dogs holding up their various posters; At best, our thoughts merge with Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement and we feel shame, guilt, even anger over this seemingly simple problem: Our response, like Kerry, is to give money, thinking we are helping, providing them with a food.

I have learned through the years of working with different shelters, speaking with some of the homeless men and women that they encountered in the various programs that we have become familiar with, that the ‘homeless’ are made up of a variety of men. and women ranging from having suffered a streak of bad luck for addicts and the mentally ill.

Men and women who have a streak of bad luck seem to somehow recover and go back to work. But addicts and the mentally ill confuse this terrible problem in ways that couldn’t be more complex.

The homelessness problem was exacerbated by Jack Kennedy’s decision to insinuate the federal government into institutionalized mentally ill populations. Many thousands of patients with chronic mental illness were discharged from institutions that had been acting as guardians, most with nowhere to go; Almost overnight, the cities of this country were faced with a labyrinthine problem. With the best intentions of the federal decision that ‘freeing’ these people was more humane than locking them up, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, took to the streets of the city and remained there.

Are they better sleeping on patches of sand here along these coastal roads, much better, no doubt, than concrete from a city street or “safe” and chemically anesthetized in institutions?

Many of the homeless veterans Kerry spoke of have such severe PTSD along with other psychological problems that drugs and alcohol are their favorite treatment. Reasonably, homeless centers cannot house people unable to maintain sobriety.

Give more money to solve this problem? If only the solutions were that simple.

We keep driving past the “Work for Food”, “Please Help” signs these people carry, wondering if the five dollars we give them goes to food or medicine, wondering what their story is; wondering how they will spend Thanksgiving. And sometimes I go down the window and hand him the money.