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| By Sean Hughes |
Myths about homelessness abound.
The homeless are all addicts. They're all mentally ill. They're all too lazy to work. They're mostly battle-scarred Vietnam War veterans. They all panhandle -- and whatever you give them goes to buy booze or drugs. They steal.
Hoboes. Vagrants. Bums.
As with most generalizations, the common wisdom about homeless people falls far short of the truth. In fact, many of the homeless are mothers with young children. Some are undocumented immigrants. More than a few have part-time jobs that don't pay anything close to what it takes to rent an apartment, pay for utilities, buy groceries and keep the ever-growing kids in clothing.
If you want to know how people become homeless, do the math. If you earned minimum wage working full-time, would you be able to house your family? Could you do it even if you took on a second part-time job?
Perhaps the cruelest myth is that will power is all that's needed to get off the streets. Try this experiment: Go a week without bathing or washing your clothes. Sleep in your back yard. Eat whatever is in your garbage can. Relieve yourself outside, but surreptitiously, lest the neighbors call the police.
After one week, take your smelly self to a restaurant and ask for a job. They're always looking for help, aren't they? Make sure you walk to every company where you apply for a job, because the homeless, after all, don't usually have private cars.
In this nominally Christian culture, it's worth remembering the self-description of Jesus of Nazareth: "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head." You've got it: Jesus was homeless, dependent on the hospitality of friends, relatives and strangers. Not only was he born in a manger, he spent his adult life trolling about occupied Palestine, with no permanent address.
Remember that the next time you sneer at a man with a cardboard sign greeting you at a highway overpass: "Homeless. Please help. God bless you."
But let's not take the myths to an opposite extreme, for most of the homeless are not saints. They're just people with needs, hopes, wounds and flaws -- and that's the point of this package of stories.
