Tuesday, April 20, 2004
It's been a while since I've been posting on any blog but Catholic Meditations, but now that Lent is over, it is time to get back into the flow of things.
Today, I read an article about the increasing criminalization of homelessness (frequently without much real alternatives to help the people in those conditions and it made me sad.) There's an old history of juggling the needs of the community not to be victimized by the effects and costs of caring for the poor versus the humanitarian need to care for the poor.
As Catholics, we cannot just turn our back on the problem of the poor. There is a tendency in comfortable middleclass areas to try to shoo the problem away (hopefully to let it become someone else's problem), but it is a complex situation that doesn't have a lot of quick fixes that work for everybody. I don't have any easy solutions to the problem, either, but to turn our back on the poor is a sin. Here is a site that is working for this cause:
National Coalition for the Homeless
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/index.html
Our mission is to end homelessness. We focus our work in the following four areas: housing justice, economic justice, health care justice, and civil and voting rights. Our approaches are: grassroots organizing, public education, policy advocacy, technical assistance, and partnerships.
Today, I read an article about the increasing criminalization of homelessness (frequently without much real alternatives to help the people in those conditions and it made me sad.) There's an old history of juggling the needs of the community not to be victimized by the effects and costs of caring for the poor versus the humanitarian need to care for the poor.
As Catholics, we cannot just turn our back on the problem of the poor. There is a tendency in comfortable middleclass areas to try to shoo the problem away (hopefully to let it become someone else's problem), but it is a complex situation that doesn't have a lot of quick fixes that work for everybody. I don't have any easy solutions to the problem, either, but to turn our back on the poor is a sin. Here is a site that is working for this cause:
National Coalition for the Homeless
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/index.html
Our mission is to end homelessness. We focus our work in the following four areas: housing justice, economic justice, health care justice, and civil and voting rights. Our approaches are: grassroots organizing, public education, policy advocacy, technical assistance, and partnerships.
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