Last weekend students from South Windsor and East Catholic high schools camped out in cardboard boxes on the grounds of St. Francis of Assisi Church in South Windsor, their idea being to “raise awareness” of homelessness.
Connecticut really does not need more awareness of homelessness. In one way or another, homelessness is in the news almost every day. And surely even the students who camped out on the church lawn already knew that it gets cold in the winter and that nobody in his right mind would want to have to live outside.
Not being in one’s right mind is the problem underlying homelessness. For most homelessness is caused by mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, or some combination of those ailments, and spending a winter night outside in a cardboard box does not come close to approximating them. These ailments probably can be appreciated only by those who have suffered from them, by those who have had to deal with a family member or friend suffering from them, and by those who work with such troubled people. That is, the torment of these ailments is not the cold at all. Indeed, these ailments can desensitize people to the weather, putting their health even more in jeopardy.
The homeless and those at risk of homelessness don’t need more displays of piety in the name of “awareness.” They need solutions, which are available, and the political will to implement them, which generally is not.
Shore Up Nonprofits
First, the homeless need the shoring up of the nonprofit social-service agencies that minister to them. These agencies are financed by state government but so inadequately that their employees are paid only half as much as state employees doing similar work. Everything else in the state budget long has been given higher priority than this far more compelling problem, which can be a matter of life and death. Politically the people who minister to the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, the mentally retarded, and the otherwise severely handicapped simply do not count any more than the people they serve.
Second, the homeless need what is called supportive housing — modest, inexpensive apartments from which they can rebuild their lives under the supervision of social workers and medical people. While the concept is recent, supportive housing already has shown much success. But few people want to live near anyone who is trying to recover from mental illness or addiction, and getting zoning approval for such projects is difficult. Getting government funding for them may become almost impossible as the economy collapses and takes tax revenues down with it.
State government still has money for less important things. Last week the state announced that it will spend $10 million to acquire open land in 29 towns to protect them from development — as if there is going to be much danger of development for a long time. The need for supportive housing is infinitely more urgent and — unlike the need for open space preservation — growing as times become harder and more people lose their jobs and are pushed down into despair.
No Money To Build It
While Manchester recently approved zoning for a supportive housing project, there is as yet no money to build it. Neighbors of the site proposed for it have begun petitioning against it. Enfield recently rejected zoning for a supportive housing project for the Thompsonville section of town in the belief that the neighborhood is already stressed enough by troubled and troublesome people and the social-service agencies that serve them.
Like most affluent towns in Connecticut, South Windsor declines to host much in the way of social services, which concentrate in bigger towns like Manchester and Enfield and, of course, cities like Hartford. So imagine the awareness about homelessness that might be raised if, instead of showing their concern by camping out in cardboard boxes, the high school students attended a meeting of South Windsor’s Town Council to urge the town to start making provisions for supportive housing. Of course, then even their own parents might urge the kids to save Darfur for a while instead, something with equal potential for demonstrating piety without the risk of letting undesirables move in nearby.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
