The following notes from the book represent real statistics and facts:
"You see, Michael, the homeless have no voice. No one listens, no one cares, and they expect no one to help them. So when they try to use the phone to get benefits due them, they get nowhere. The are put on hold, permanently. Their calls are never returned. They have no addresses. The bureaucrats don't care, and so they screw the very people they're supposed to help." (p. 87)"Your clientele will be a mixture of thirds…About a third are employed, a third are families with children, a third are mentally disabled, a third are veterans. And about a third of those eligible for low-income housing receive it. In the past 15 years, two and a half million low-cost housing units have been eliminated and the federal housing programs have been cut seventy percent." (p. 161)
"Only 14% of the disabled homeless people receive disability benefits." (p. 161)
"About half of all poor people spend seventy percent of their income trying to keep the housing they have. HUD says they should spend a third…One missed paycheck, one unexpected hospital visit, one unseen emergency, and they lose their housing." (p. 161)
"The trend in America is to criminalize homelessness. The big cities have passed all sorts of laws designed to persecute those who live on the streets. Can't beg, can't sleep on a bench, can't store items in a public park, can't sit on a sidewalk, can't eat in public…So the cities selectively enforce general laws, such as loitering, vagrancy, public drunkenness. They target the homeless." (p. 163)"Sweeps are common…They'll target one area of the city, shovel up all the homeless, dump them somewhere else."
"Remember…everybody has to be somewhere. These people have no alternatives. If you're hungry, you beg for food. If you're tired, then you sleep wherever you can find a spot. If you're homeless, you have to live somewhere…Then he gets arrested for sleeping under a bridge…He's guilty because the city council has made it a crime to be homeless…Here's the asinine part: It costs twenty-five percent more per day to keep a person in jail than to provide shelter, food, transportation and counseling services…Most of the cities are broke—that's why they're closing the services—yet they waste money making criminals out of the homeless." (p. 164)
During my years doing inner city ministry we talked about "systemic violence." It means that the system does violence to people. It is "politically correct" to try to move people off the streets. It is politically correct to get tough on crime, to criminalize homelessness, vagrancy and addiction to drugs. It is not politically correct to demand higher minimum wages, insist on universal health care, raise levels of school support, increase mental health services, add to numbers of available low income housing units, create more treatment opportunities for addicted persons, provide more job training and access to entry level positions with a future.
While it is true to some extent that the system creates a level of dependency, simply doing away with the system won't help those totally unable to change their circumstances without some exceptional help.
There's a song we sing: "I Am the Light of the World," with a verse that has the line, "to make the powerful care." If there is anyplace we can plug in, it is here. We ARE the powerful. Unless we care, nothing happens. It begins with us.