I am a mixture of sad, angry and feeling hopeless about the number of homeless people. I was in Boston this past week, and in a blizzard that is now the 6th worst in New England’s history and worst in the month of January. I will add that I was here for the January 22, 2005 blizzard that up until today was the worst in New England history.
This blizzard saw 60 mile per hour winds and wind-chills below zero and when the snow finally ended there was close to 25″ on the ground.
On this day I bought meals for two homeless people and gave money to another. This does not include the people I fed or gave money to last weekend before the blizzard began.
Homelessness and poverty break my heart and makes me furious at America. We the People allow this. We allow 51% of children to live in poverty and allow people to have nowhere to go and left to cower in alcoves of the mall attached to our hotel and trying to hide in our lobby and business center.
People are homeless everywhere and we just allow it and look the other way. It’s not our problem, some will say. Others will say, don’t give them money, they will use it on drugs and alcohol. Ignorance, excuses and a callous indifference that makes me furious.
If I won the lottery I would take care of my son and then take care of children, the homeless, those with psychiatric illness and those simply lost between unemployment and unemployability.
We need to say no more to anyone in America living homeless, hungry and without employment. We need to say never again to people with psychiatric illness living on the streets and with nowhere to go and without proper medical care. We need to say “that used to be America” where we did not care for people with disabilities and those to old to care for themselves.
We need to be the solution and not an accomplice.