Friday, January 22, 2010

Homelessness in Wallingford

A few days back, a neighbor of Keystone posted a concern on the neighborhood blog "Wallyhood."

He said that he has seen homeless people sleeping in cars in the neighborhood and wondered if Keystone was attracting them.

Below is the response I sent in.
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Not only am I the pastor of Keystone Church but I live one block away from the church, so I spend most of my time in the neighborhood. I have lived in the neighborhood for over 9 years. Long before Nickelsville stayed at Keystone, there have been homeless people sleeping in cars, vans and R.V.s in the area. Maybe the particular car you are talking about wasn’t here but homeless people have been in the neighborhood as long as I’ve lived here.

I agree that people shouldn’t take up residence on the streets or under bushes. People should have homes that they can afford. But thirty years ago the federal government slashed funds for building low income housing and spent the money in other ways (like tax breaks for the wealthy). Since then large scale homelessness has been a reality for cities like Seattle.

One way of dealing with homeless people in a neighborhood is to try to drive them away to some other neighborhood. Another way to deal with homeless people is to criminalize homelessness with a variety of laws and thereby incarcerate them.

Apart from lacking compassion, these strategies are not very effective. Ultimately, you cannot force people to obtain what they cannot afford. So we can pay a lot of money to provide affordable housing and support services or we can pay much more money to harass and incarcerate homeless people. It was in response to Mayor Nickels’ policy of harassment and criminalization that Nickelsville was born.

Right now the current policy seems to be a confused mixture of compassion and harassment. With homeless shelters largely full, and low income housing programs carrying long waiting lists there are no quick and simple answers.

One of the guys who used to sleep in his van in this neighborhood is now happily residing in an apartment which charges him 30% of his limited disability check. If we had more such apartments we would have fewer people living in their cars.

Currently, Keystone does not have any direct service programs for homeless people on church premises. Yet, we continually support local efforts to care for and house homeless people.

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