Moral dilemmas are much easier when contemplated from a distance. I can orate with great passion about various social injustices, the raising of other peoples’ children, and Arizona’s immigration policy. I feel a personal obligation to force myself not to look away from ugliness, brutality and the messes in our midst.
Homelessness sickens me, as it should anyone with a beating heart. I know that it’s complicated; I used to represent people who were applying for Social Security based on mental illness and/or substance abuse issues back in the days before Congress made itself feel virtuous by making it impossible to obtain benefits based on drug or alcohol addiction. Many of my clients lived in shelters, or on the streets. I have also tended to give money to homeless folks on the street when I had enough to share, believing it was not my business what they did with it. Why is it any better for me to blow twenty bucks on fatty food and eyeliner than it is for a Vietnam vet to buy a couple of bottles of malt liquor? Is it my charter to monitor his lifestyle choices because I am a well-heeled white girl with a vast safety net?
In the past few years, my firm position has come shaky. We live in a large college town, on a street where all of our neighbors are student renters. The average age of our neighbors is 20, and life is a constant whirl of football Saturdays, cramming for finals, and walks of shame. I am pretty sure none of my neighbors could lend me a cup of sugar, but most of them could come up with a joint if I needed one. They sometimes annoy us with noise, but at the end of the day…we care about them. We are parents and they are children. We lend them cookie sheets and shovels, and they rake our yard when we aren’t looking. We come to love some of them, and remain friends as they sail out into the open seas of jobs, marriage and adulthood.
Into this already unstable mix of town and gown come the “Can Guys.” Drawn to this neighborhood because students tend to have lawns strewn with returnable beer cans and bottles, they come on rickety bikes or on foot. In rare cases someone has an ancient car with rust holes and dicey suspension. Some are very respectful and maintain a distance from inhabited houses, others feel free to walk onto our large, open porches, take half-smoked cigarettes out of the ashtrays, look under furniture for stray bottles, or knock on doors to ask for a smoke or a couple of bucks.
For the first few years of our life here, I ran out to give them our cans and bottles, and felt nothing but indignation at the fact that these men were reduced to scrambling for dimes to support themselves. A couple of years ago after a rash of thefts in the neighborhood, I had a conversation with a police officer who warned me to “be careful about the can men.” I assumed a veneer of patient attention, waiting until it was my turn to talk so I could let him (The Man) know what I thought about the whole thing. As he spoke, I found myself drawn in, and questioning my smug assumptions. The Can Guys were mostly not homeless; they lived at the Rescue Mission or in halfway houses in Lansing. They were nearly all paroled felons, many known to the police through their Parole Officers. Many had committed violent crimes against women. I recalled a story told to me by a tiny, Goth girl living in cooperative housing at the end of our street. She described being the only person home in the vast, old Co-op, and waking up to see a Can Guy in the doorway of her bedroom asking if she had a cigarette. My stomach pleated and my mouth got dry.
As it turns out, I can‘t save everybody: the Can Guys are victims of the system and need my empathy, and the students are vulnerable and naïve and need my protection. I imagine that the Can Guys are my husband, my father, or my brother after a long, hard road, and I am outraged that there is no better opportunity for them to earn a living after prison. I imagine that the students are my son, my niece or my stepdaughter, and I am terrified at the proposition of violent ex-cons hanging out around their houses, many of which have locks that don’t work really well.
So last night, I warned a group of female students to be careful about the Can Guys. I told them that it feels good to help them, and that lots of students adopt them as if they were pets (secretly thrilled to have a Real Live Poor Black Guy drinking from the beer bong). I told them that these guys aren’t gentled domestic creatures; they are men who have had to struggle to survive. I told them to keep their doors locked, and to feel okay about telling the Can Guys that they weren’t comfortable having them come onto their porches. I told them that if they were really uncomfortable, they should call the police.
I can work for justice, put my money where my mouth is, and believe that everyone in this country is entitled to a safe place to live and an opportunity for a fresh start. Right now, though, the silly, unsophisticated children who play house in my neighborhood are my first priority. It may not be the way things should be, and I would undoubtedly have a different perspective from a great distance, but I can live with this. Mostly. I think. I have to.
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Comments
I've no problem handing a dollar to the guy on the corner. I keep "bum bucks" secured to the sun visor with a rubber band. Like you, I figure it's none of my business where it goes; it's my job to share what I have, and a buck is little enough.
But when homeless people, or people with no obvious connection, come into a residential neighborhood, it's an entirely different story. In those situations, our own rights to property and an undisturbed life come into play.
A majority of the people in shelters and living on the street have substance abuse problems, psych issues, or both. Those who do not are usually career criminals, and are apt to be psychopathic (or at least sociopathic, which for purposes of this discussion is almost as bad). Good intentions, metta and all that aside, these are not people who belong in residential neighborhoods. There are labor pools and professional services to help them, if they choose to use them. Donate to those, instead.
Start calling the cops. Make life sufficiently inconvenient for them that they go elsewhere. Don't wait until a string of burglaries -- or much worse -- forces you to close the corral door. You don't want mavericks in your paddock.
Since then I've had a chance to speak with doctors who work with homeless shelters and if you truly want to help the homeless, the best thing you can do is donate to these organizations or volunteer. Giving money away just perpetuates a lot of really bad problems. Do you really want your dollars going to the local drug dealer? Do you really want to help someone kill themselves with alcohol? Have compassion, but direct your compassion in the right way.
I lived in East Lansing for a short time in the 70s while attending MSU, and yes, it's a wonderful college town and, at that time, you could hitch-hike w/out any sense of danger.
I also own a tiny recycling venture (aluminum only), and I have a set of rules that I follow when "trolling" (my word) for cans:
- the cans must be safe to pick up;
- the cans must be convenient to pick up; and
- I never enter a private residential yard for cans, unless someone is home and specifically invites me to do so.
Mine is a much different proposition than your Can Guys (I work f/t too), and I've encountered similar CGs--and I too stay away from them. Chulacabra's advice is on target: help the homeless and downtrodden by helping and donating to those agencies that help them.
Thanks for this. You're right it is a complicated issue. My daughter's apartment (where she lives with two other students) is next to a halfway house. I'm glad for the support for people getting back on their feet but I always remind her to watch her back. She is young and too trusting. So, it has to be that way.
One thing, tho'. Those who have shelter may yet be homeless. I qualified for the grim title myself, even after I kept a roof over my head during crisis. I may even say I found I was kept unsafely housed more than once, a frightening consequence of not having the power to say No when most needing to. I found others put me down during this process, as tho' to slight the underprivileged even as they offered me places to stay. If we are in crisis, we need more surety in our safety and wellbeing than such a temporary measure as free housing can provide in most cases. So, in still being labeled "homeless" by the state, I soon learned how this would be perceived. Not only could I not claim space ample enough to be called a home, but had no privacy nor say for my better care in those places where I then stayed. It is a vast misnomer among those adequately housed that we are homeless only if on the streets full time. Please rethink that statement above. I'd appreciate it greatly if you would
Rated for cogency.
Previously, a "can guy was working the neighborhood while my neighbor two doors down was mowing her lawn. She took a break to get a cold drink. When she came back the power mower was gone. Coincidence?
On another occasion my car window was broken ($150 replacement) so that somebody could relieve me of a half a roll of quarters I kept in the ashtray for parking meters. They left an empty beer can in my cup holder for souvenirs.
Sorry, I am very sympathetic to society's broken and helpless, and I do a lot to try to alleviate the problem on a larger scale. But somebody roaming around a neighborhood, venturing onto private property, carrying a beer can, etc. is someone to be righteously suspicious 0f.
That said, I have no problem giving money to people on the street. Our development has a guy who comes around and picks through our recyclables for cans and bottles to return for money, and he never bothers anyone. I used to recycle them myself at the store, but now I leave them for him to pick through. He can certainly use the couple of dollars more than I can.