When I walk by homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles, way more often than not I don’t pay attention. At all.
I came here from New York and in New York I think you learn to just completely tune out asks for money and things. Earlier this year (I think I may have mentioned it on the blog), I realized that that’s probably not the best way to treat human beings around you.
So, I started carrying around lists of homeless shelters and food pantries around Los Angeles. I even carried an extra Tap card (what we use to ride the subway) with some money on it that I could give to someone who wanted to go to one of those helpful places.
I (of course) was stopped by a number of homeless people over the course of a few weeks, and each time I got out the little packet from my backpack, trying to help. Every time people turned down the packet and said they just wanted cash. So much for my brilliant idea (which I honestly thought would be helpful to people).
So, I went back to just tuning people out.
A couple of weeks ago I was at dinner with a group of people. (There were six of us.) We were sitting on the outdoor patio. This homeless guy came up and started asking for money. I stayed intently looking at the guy who had been in the middle of a story, because seriously I have learned to completely and utterly tune out asks for money. I wasn’t even thinking about the homeless man at all.
But then, I saw every other person’s attention at the table turn to the homeless man. And the guy who’d been telling the story stopped and got distracted by the ask for money. I was way late to any kind of reaction to noticing the homeless man.
This was actually quite embarrassing to realize I was the most heartless person at the table.
Then, on my way into work one day not too long after that, I was walking down the street. There was this homeless man sitting on the street, and I saw this woman run up to him as though she was in disbelief that there was someone in front of her without a home. I mean, really. It’s hard to explain in words (as opposed to act it out for you), but it seemed like it was the first homeless person she’d ever seen.
“Oh my goodness, sir. Can I help you? Can I give you anything? Here’s all the money I have in my purse. Are you okay? God bless you.”
And I just thought, “You know, that’s actually probably far more of a normal human reaction to seeing a homeless person on the street – being in such complete disbelief that no one’s helping, as opposed to just walking by like ‘meh, that’s life.'”
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this information about myself, but I noticed my heartlessness shining through and just thought I’d shine a spotlight on it.
As you know, a lot of homeless people hang out around Berklee. What I tell myself is that I’m tired of cleaning up other people’s mess. Meaning, the number of people from that exact area who are homeless is quite small. But you have rural and suburban areas which don’t care for their destitute at all, and even some areas of cities that do a lot less, so the homeless drift to where people (on average) do care a little bit and those areas end up overloaded.
I’ll sometime give to the homeless, but not where I live or work, or we’ll get even more.
Ultimately, this is a societal problem that needs to be solved on a societal level. Did you know that there are almost no homeless Americans in the 1970s? That was a time of public housing developments and extensive social services for the poor and mentally ill. Legions of homeless were one of Pres. Reagan’s legacy gifts to America–with an assist by his successors who continued these policies, and of course from those Americans who voted them all in. (One can argue it’s been 20 years since Americans were given a dramatic choice in terms of how much effort we will make to care for those less fortunate. However, at minimum, there were very clear choices in 1984, 1988, and 1992.)
I really did not know that there were almost no homeless Americans in the 1970s. You always add such interesting things to the discussion! Thanks so much for your comment.