Some people assume, when they hear “help me” or “help the homeless,” that we are asking for money. However, from my observation of the pain-stricken faces of the homeless people around me, I would say that some are literally begging for help.
Watching those around me struggling with housing instability and other stressors, from day to day and night to night, troubles my heart and saddens me almost to tears. In just a couple months, I encountered three women in dire need of help on our streets. They didn’t need money. A lack of economic stability had ground them down to this point over many years.
They needed compassion. They needed other people to take the time to care.
First, there was a young lady I had met several years ago. When I saw her recently, her mental and physical decline was heart-wrenching.
When homeless people struggling with mental illness act out, the system’s main response is to jail them. I stretch the term to include institutions where they are isolated, along and managed — which might as well be a jail.
That is not a solution, early-on or down the line. When our policymakers can’t justify locking someone up, they resort to pumping them full of medication that will take a couple days to wear off. This is not treatment. It stops the bleeding without treating the wound. And it turns the person who is struggling into an unthinking mummy, wondering about.
Next, I re-met a lady I’ve known on and off through the years. She is in her late 30s or early 40s and has spent half her life on the street. This has been a largely self-destructive experience for the past six years. The reasons that launched her into this state are irrelevant. No human being should be forced to live on a street. Not here in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, nor on any other street in this great nation.
Lastly, I chose a specific route to the Street Sense Media office to walk by a bus shelter that an elderly woman I know calls home. She’s a dialysis patient in her 60s and I try to check on her when I can. Good thing I did. I found her unconscious. And when I called an ambulance to take her to a hospital for the treatment she needed to stay alive, it took at least 20 minutes to arrive. And if I hadn’t checked on her at the hospital several times, she would have been discharged too early.
What would I have done if she didn’t make it? To God be the glory for guidance in what to do. But all I could do was all I could do, which I felt was insufficient. What if that had been me?
Had she not made it, what would I have done, how would I have felt, in her place?
It’s depressing to speak with someone with uncontrollable issues that are only heightened by systemic neglect and ever-present danger on the street. These situations can cause the people caught up in them to want to commit suicide.
That is not the answer. But what is?
One person that attempted suicide told me they were running from their life. Many in the community passively attempt this everyday by abusing alcohol and other drugs. But that can only lead to jail, institutionalization or death.
Our society leaves a margin of people to suffer like this. It’s by design. If there are “haves,” there must be “have-nots.”
I want so badly to help others. To find out you don’t have the resources to do so is draining. But that just means more help, more of us reaching out, is needed.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Robert Williams is a Street Sense Media artist and vendor.
