This morning I am supposed to be working on my theology homework. It is about the doctrine of election. Yesterday I cared about this topic. Today I don’t. I want to. I know it is important, and I need to get my homework done, but there is something more important on my mind. This morning I read an article in the LA Times about Sacramento’s tent city. If you haven’t heard about this, read the article here. This is front page news and because of that the city has decided to shut the tent city down. It has been open for about a year and the living conditions are terrible. The article was striking to me because this tent city is reminiscent of the hoovervilles of the depression. The people here are not all the stereotypical homeless.
Many are recession victims, people who wouldn’t normally be homeless, but are now homeless because of the economic situation. The city has ignored this problem for a year as far as I know, and now they are set to close the tent city by the end of April. Some might say this is a feasible solution. I’m not sure. Won’t shutting down the area simply relocate the homeless? I don’t have all the answers, but I know that the recent rise in homelessness is a symptom of a much greater problem. I am at a loss as to what the right response is, but I realized today that relocation can’t be it.
I came to this realization because of a bus stop bench.
This morning I went to Starbucks to get my aforementioned homework done and I passed by the same bus stop bench that I always pass by. On most days this bench is occupied by a particular homeless man. I will admit that I do not know his name, and have not spoken to him much. We have only shared a passing hello, but he always seems to be there. This morning he was not there, but I still took particular notice of the bench. I noticed it because for a while it has had a clothing advertisement on the side that shows a woman who is barely clothed. Now this is a pet peeve of mine for reasons that are completely unrelated to this story, but come on it’s a clothing advertisement, she should probably be clothed. So I passed by the empty bench and found myself annoyed with the sign. I worked in Starbucks for several hours, but as I took a break I read the article in the LA Times about Sacramento’s tent city. My heart burned and I was completely distracted from my work.
On a side note, is God speaking to me supposed to feel like ADHD?
I don’t know, but I do think God has been speaking to me today. I walk out of Starbucks and the bench is GONE. It’s as if it were never there. I look around in disbelief and I see the usual homeless resident of the bench across the street at another bench. He has several friends with him who also look homeless. Everything suddenly falls into place for me. I don’t know this man’s name or why he is homeless. I don’t know if he needs help, because that is not an easy thing to ask a stranger. But I do know he is not going anywhere. I don’t know why the city of Pasadena would remove a bus stop bench, but I know that the result was the simple relocation of a man, and he didn’t go far. It’s almost impressive how quickly this bench was removed. It was there at nine, and was gone at eleven-thirty. If Sacramento removes this tent city, it must have an answer for how it will help these people. Otherwise upwards of two hundred people will simply relocate, and they won’t go far.
I doubt very many people will read this post as it is kind of long, but if you are reading this… yes I am aware of my failure to understand or handle this situation. I don’t have any answers for the homeless recession victims whom I am sure God loves. While I live the American dream, they live the American nightmare. I don’t know what the city of Sacramento should do with the people of the tent city anymore than I know what LA should do for the people in Skid Row, but something must be done. I know that I cannot say that someone else will do it. If God is speaking to me about this, it’s for a reason. I still probably need to be able to understand theological concepts like election if I ever want to graduate, but I would rather know people whom God loves. I also know that as I write this it is glaringly obvious that I do not know the name of the man that I see several times a week in the same place. I should probably remedy that. There are as many as 80,000 homeless people in LA County. What do I do with that? I don’t know, but I know where one of them will be.
