What We Say with What We Don't

While discussing federal homeless assistance programming and funding with a friend I recently came to a startling realization: our good intentions are drowning us.  As a nation, as a people, our morale, our pocketbooks, all of it!

You see, currently our federal homeless dollars are put together through a series of grants appealing to particular legislation.  A good example of this is the Projects for Assistance Transitioning from Homelessness (PATH) Program which is funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) which is part of Health and Human Services (HHS) funding.  (I realize a mouthful, but I want to be thorough).  “PATH programs provide services to people who are experiencing mental illness and are experiencing homelessness or risk of homelessness” (from their website).  

This is a beautiful thing.  Our representatives have recognized mental illness as a problem in our homeless population and created programming, funding, and legislation to help pull the mentally ill from the streets.  We have recognized that their illness exacerbates their situation and that it is unreasonable to expect a person with these symptoms (e.g., psychosis, chronic depression, developmental disorder, schizophrenia, or delusions) to “pull themselves up from their bootstraps,” find a job, an apartment, a support network and their place in our community without assistance.  We as a society have made the statement that it is unacceptable for the chronically mentally ill to be subjected to poverty and homelessness as a result of an illness over which they have little control.

Therein lies the trouble for me.  By identifying the unacceptable conditions of homelessness and poverty we are making an insidiously subtle statement as what are acceptable conditions.  We have legislation, funding, federal and local programs all devoted to helping the homeless but in a fractured and segregated way.  Some programs, like PATH, help the mentally ill.  Others help substance abusers.  Others still are devoted to youth, or families, or single men, or the disabled, or veterans.  Some are faith based and help those in their congregation.  Some are for the elderly.  On and on the divisions go and through the web of people for whom homelessness is unacceptable there is the pervasive knowledge that somewhere there is someone who deserves it.

Is that what we mean to say as a nation?  That there are those who deserve poverty and homelessness?  We are doing wonderful things but we are working towards our goals, not our values.  I know that seems like splitting hairs but the difference is profound.  A goal is that no veteran is homeless.  A value is that all are deserving of a home.  Where a goal can be exclusive a value is inherently inclusive.

No one should be homeless.  No one.