The Homeless in Columbia: Update

A City Council (Columbia, SC) member (present at the meeting where Councilman Runyan's plan was reported to have passed) says the Runyan plan was not passed.   According to a piece in Free Times, "The city has heard from both the South Carolina branch of the ACLU and the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, both asking Council to slow down and let them make some recommendations on the issue . . . . " Another Council member says, "We never passed a resolutaiton that we're going to force people or arrest people to go to the shelter."  Here's the Free Times link:

http://www.free-times.com/news/emergency-homeless-proposal-raises-new-issues?utm_source=FT+Weekend&utm_campaign=d6c1ea5c72-FT_Weekend_Inaugural&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e0584309e7-d6c1ea5c72-324798777

I shared a link to an article on the subject at FreakOutNation on Facebook, and it generated some back and forth with a lifelong friend.  She had this to say:  . . . "No one's talking about drowning homeless in the river. Feeding, shelter, counseling, medical treatment, job assistance ... these things are not inhumane treatment. To characterize Council, or any other group who recognizes and tries to address the encompassing scope of the problem, as unconscionable or blind to human plight is objectification in itself. . . ."  I'd said I objected to the objectification of homeless people.   And she had talked earlier about cleaning human excrement from the steps of her husband's office building and picking up trash littering the ground on a regular basis.  Not pleasant tasks, I'm sure.

Of course the services my friend lists are not "inhumane."  They're the opposite.  Still, this is a complex issue.   A sad situation.   I have a visceral reaction to the idea of arbitrarily sending our fellow human beings away or putting them in jail.   Hopefully Council will listen to the voices who understand the harsh blow the Runyan Plan would deal to their fellow humans--to have what must be very fragile human dignity violated by those two sad options—punishment meted out simply for being alive in the world without benefit of a home.   The words of Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata" apply equally, including to those beings who are homeless:

. . . You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. . . .

 

Here's what I posted on Facebook in the exchange with my friend:

. . .  I'm advocating for "commerce" or whomever to see homeless people as fellow human beings, first and foremost. Tragedies occur (and have in the history of this world) when one group of humans fails to see another group of humans AS humans —rather than simply as a problem, a statistic, a nuisance that should be removed. I understand that commerce is affected when people stay away from downtown because they're "afraid" of homeless people. I think sometimes it's less that we feel unsafe as that we feel uncomfortable. And the discomfort is within ourselves, I believe. Makes us go deeper; makes us think, makes us feel.   I don't know how we begin to motivate people to engage in introspection, self-examination.    I would like to be a part of  any project that would help us imperfect humans to recognize and and then remember our "sameness."  And I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say sometimes I forget that myself.  Mostly when confronted by racism or people who are contemptuous of the poor.    I suppose it would take a charismatic teacher to help bring about a transformation of the magnitude I'm thinking about—a Ghandi, Dalai Lama, Jesus, Mother Teresa?  That's what I was thinking in" the darkest hours before dawn" when I wanted to be sleeping.

 

Update 8/25/13, 9:30 pm:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/us/south-carolina-city-takes-steps-to-evict-homeless-from-downtown.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

Columbia and its approach to the homeless has made the New York Times.   The link above will take you there. 

 

According to Free Times, Columbia City Council will take up the discussion about homelessness again on September 3.  So there's a little more than a week to make our voices heard.  I'm not sure how to ask them for what I'd like to see:  Open hearts, recognition of the humanity of the beings who are homeless.  Councilman Runyan's plan is called "Columbia Cares."  My question is What does Columbia care about?  The answer might be a good place to start.  Again.

 

From the City of Columbia's site:

"You may write to any member of City Council at P.O. Box 147 , Columbia , S.C. 29217 . You can e-mail the mayor at skbenjamin@columbiasc.net[or click on the link at left for contact information for all Council members" [at the City of Columbia site].  

Also, you may also offer your thoughts in letters to the editor or comments on any articles on this subject at the Free Times (link above) or  The State newspaper http://www.thestate.com/.