Poverty and the Rest of Us....

Every so often I run into someone who is offended by the fact that there are poor and homeless people in our midst and imply that they are simply lazy and content to sponge off of the poor hard-pressed taxpayer. I wish such people would spend a week living in one of the shelters for the homeless and then we would see what happens to their self-righteousness.

I have no doubt that there are people in our midst who are content to live on welfare and have no ambition to do anything else. In fact, I’ve met them. But the overwhelming number of poor and homeless people I have met and spoken with do not fit into that category. Many are embarrassed by their situation; many feel helpless; some are bitter.

So, why is it that some people, who have been blessed by circumstances that have led them to leading fairly comfortable lives, judge those they know virtually nothing about? How many suburbanites have actually held a conversation with an inner-city beggar? If they are among the majority, they will pretend that they simply didn’t see the ragged clothes and sunken cheeks or the pronounced limp. They pretend that the people who do beg on our streets are simply lazy and that they could change their lifestyle if they worked at it. After all, anecdotal evidence tells us that someone once did offer a homeless man a job and the man turned him down. Goes to show, eh?

If people would actually converse with the people who have their hands out they might be surprised at what they discover: that the homeless are just like us.  Hard to believe, eh? Imagine you had lost your job and could not keep up with your mortgage payments, your spouse left you, and perhaps you’ve suffered an injury or a disease. Before you’d know what hit you, you’d be standing on a downtown street-corner with your hand out. What else are you going to do? Crawl into a corner and die? I have met highly educated and professionally-trained people living in our shelters. There are doctors, teachers, engineers, military personnel, accountants—whatever trade you can dream off—who, because of a few bad breaks, are forced to seek shelter wherever someone will take them in.

After all, bad things do happen to good people.

I know that the Christian religion does not accept that: God is supposed to bless the good folks and punish the bad guys. That, of course, leads to the inevitable conclusion that if you are well-off it’s because you are deserving and the homeless are there because of their own failures. They are somehow less worthy than our neighbour in the condo.

There is another very sad and disturbing fact: many of our homeless are mentally ill. At one time they would have been institutionalized and treated, but, governments have discovered that that costs an awful lot of money and who really cares if the government shuts down the local loony-bin?  We didn’t want it there anyhow.

When I was young, I met a lot of ex-military folks who were living on the streets. Mainly veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War. We send young people into dangerous situations and, when they are injured, physically or mentally, they turn into burdens that the taxpayer can’t afford—despite the lip service that we pay to veterans on Remembrance Day.  The rest of the time we wish that the guy missing an arm who can no longer communicate clearly would simply go away; get off our streets; stop messing up the landscape.

Of course there are people who abuse the system. Just as there are salesclerks who slip a twenty dollar bill into their pockets; or managers who take credit for the work their underlings have done; or policeman who take bribes; or doctors who make mistakes; or priests who fondle little boys; or students who cheat on a test. None of us is perfect. But do we judge an entire class of people because of the shortcomings of a tiny minority of them? If I concluded that all salesclerks are thieves; all managers are bullies; all policemen take bribes; all doctors make mistakes; all priests fondle little boys; and all students cheat you would be, quite rightly, outraged.

The poor, my friend, are no better and no worse than anyone else. And, we are in no position to judge anyone until we have walked in their shoes—or, at the very least—talked with and listened to them.