Oct. 5, 2012 —
“A man’s home is his castle,” says the old English proverb but that ideal is shattered when conditions force homeowners onto the streets.
Why do we often think the worst when we see or hear of an individual or family becoming homeless?
Why does it seem so natural to criticize a homeless person, even when we don’t know their circumstances?
Do we automatically assume that a person living under a highway overpass or in a junked car is there because they fell victim to booze or drugs or mental illness or laziness?
Or do we think that person in those smelly old clothes pushing a battered grocery cart collecting beer cans and pop bottles and sleeping in a cardboard box actually chose such a lifestyle to get away from the world?
Or that they are fugitives from justice and are trying to hide in plain sight?
If you’ve been reading legal notices in the classified advertising section of this or any other newspaper, then you are aware that homes are continuing to be lost to foreclosure at alarming rates.
If you lost your home today, where would you live?
Could you sleep in your car tonight, wash up in a gas station or restaurant restroom tomorrow morning and be at work on time, looking your best?
Or could you take care of small children while living in your car and moving it each night from parking lot to parking lot, as is the case with some families here in East Kentucky?
Could you live as a squatter in an abandoned building, waiting for the owner or the sheriff to chase you away?
Before sitting in judgment of those who are homeless, perhaps we should recall what Cain said when asked the whereabouts of his murdered brother, Abel.
“I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Cain’s sarcastic words have come to symbolize the unwillingness of some of us to accept any personal responsibility for the welfare of our fellow men.
We may not have contributed to or caused someone’s homelessness but does that give us the right to look the other way while expecting some government agency or charitable organization to provide the solution?
Former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich once described homelessness as a weapon of mass destruction.
His premise was that countless families are being lost as surely as if they had been killed.
In our opinion, that is not acceptable public policy for the richest, most compassionate nation in the world.
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Is homelessness a weapon of mass destruction?
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