For Wilshire Baptist Church
Driving to an appointment on Tuesday morning, I saw a crew from Garland Power & Light setting up a temporary electrical service pole at the back of two vacant lots down the street from us. It’s a sure sign that construction will begin soon on two new homes. Just three miles and a few minutes later, I came upon a City of Dallas crew dismantling a homeless camp beside the railroad tracks on Garland Road just south of LBJ Freeway. Within a short span, it’s two very different stories about the same topic: home.
Both stories have been a long time in the telling. I wrote several weeks ago about the vacant lots down the street and my hopes for the new neighbors who will move in some day. And the homeless camp has been on the rise for months, but it was not so noticeable during the summer when trees and brush somewhat hid the site. But when the weather got cold and the leaves fell off and blew away, the camp – with its makeshift tents and piles of collected debris – became a sad eyesore for commuters and an even sadder reminder of a societal issue that still has no solution.
While most communities have building codes and procedures to make sure new homes are built safely, most are still grappling with codes and procedures to provide adequate housing and safety for people who have no home at all. Some have been forced into homelessness by bad luck, bad choices, addiction, persistent poverty and mental illness. For those who want to get back into the regular flow of society, there are numerous programs and agencies offering support although there still are holes in the system that need to be fixed and often limited resources.
But some people are trying. I know that in Garland where we live there is a concerted effort to help the homeless connect with the resources that can help them begin to get out of homelessness. The same is true all over our region. We went to Bonton Farms in South Dallas recently to recycle a Christmas tree and have breakfast at their wonderful cafe. While there, we had a brief, impromptu visit with Bonton founder Daron Babcock, who told us about the pair of tiny homes on the property and the desire and plan for more that will provide affordable housing along with the jobs, food and education that they already provide. It’s a great effort, but it’s not enough by itself. We need our communities to commit to these types of programs on a much larger scale. And because the “community” is actually us, we need to get on board and tell our leaders, “Let’s do this now.”
The biggest puzzle is and always will be what to do about the chronic homeless who reject help for reasons ranging from stubborn independence and distrust of authority to the full range of addictions and mental illnesses. I had a firsthand experience with this back in the 1990s with a homeless man I met on the streets of downtown Dallas. I gave him my phone number and told him to call me if he needed help. He did call and it took a while for me to realize that he was turning my help with groceries, clothing and cash into currency and bartering tools for the independent, homeless lifestyle that he seemed to prefer. I was only able to break the cycle when I moved and was issued a new phone number and he no longer could find me. It was a shameful way for me to part ways, and I’ve always wondered what happened to him.
Seeing the homeless camp coming down this week was a reminder that not even COVID can overshadow this “plague” that was here long before the pandemic. And unless we figure some things out, it’ll be here long after the pandemic is just a dim memory. If there’s been anything good about COVID, it has been that we’ve been forced to look outside the box for solutions to a widespread humanitarian crisis. Perhaps it’s time to finally admit that homelessness is a widespread humanitarian crisis and give it the attention it requires. Better yet, give these brothers and sisters in the flesh the love, respect, help – and the home – that our God created us to provide.