Nothing News Under the Sun

Let's talk about the current lack of news!

I don't know how things are for you way out there in the future, three days from now, but here in your recent past nothing is happening. No world religious leaders have died in the last few days. No heir apparent to the throne of a major constitutional monarchy has wed within the last five or six days. If we're involved in a new land war anywhere nobody bothered to tell CNN. Headlines say China blames Japan for everything, but that's not news.

Oh, sure, there's the usual smattering of the homeless news that I enjoy so much. As a homeless news junky I make sure that I read all the homeless news there is every day. Today is as typical a day in the homeless news biz as they come. I will describe that typical day for you.

Today, as every day, there's at least one story about a big fire somewhere that leaves a whole bunch of people homeless. Sometimes it's a giant brush fire in Mozambique that renders whole villages worth of people homeless. Sometimes it's an apartment complex in Toronto or Budapest or Cincinnati. Today it happened in Duluth.

I always think of the people made homeless by fires as the luckiest of all the recently become homeless in the world because they have the easiest answer to the question, "Why are you homeless?" Others of us have to say things like: "Long-standing government policies regarding housing development, mortgaging, real estate laws, rental laws, subsidized housing, and zoning, have resulted in a desperate shortage of housing affordable for poor people, and I am one." The fire victims get to say: "House burned down."

Next, there's the homeless animal story. Today it's the story of "Blackie," the Dalmatian/Border collie mix, who became abandoned when her homeless owner froze to death under the Queensboro Bridge in NYC last December. It's a feel-good story. Thanks to some concerned private citizens, United Action for Animals, and a group called the Mayor's Alliance for NYC Animals, Blackie was housed until recently on the Upper East Side, and she has just this week been driven to a new permanent home in Philadelphia. The story, which appeared in the New York Daily News, also names three of the concerned citizens who helped out. But the original owner who froze to death is unnamed.

Of course, every day, someplace in the world, they are counting homeless people. Reports usually say homeless counts are up from last year, but sometimes they're down in one little town here or there. Let's say you live in Pissatchoo, Washington, and the town's one homeless guy, Max, hitchhikes the twenty miles to Wenatchee. Well that's going to lower your homeless numbers in Pissatchoo. It's all related to statistics and fluctuations and stock markets and missile guidance systems, and it's not really important unless Max scores housing in Wenatchee. Otherwise nothing good happened and nothing bad happened (that hadn't already.)

Finally there is a string of stories every day about new services or shelters that are planned or that are opening up, dovetailed with a roughly equal string of stories about existing services or shelters shutting down or not happening for lack of funds. Today we learn that pretty soon Phoenix will get itself a $24 million downtown homeless "campus," which will actually be more like a shopping mall of homeless services. Meanwhile, further west, Ventura County was having trouble even finding a site for some proposed transitional housing. You win some, you lose some.

Last but not least, there are the stories that tell me that homeless people commit crimes, too. I have yet to pick up a paper and read any headlines that scream "Housed Man Confesses to Nearly 50 Brutal Slayings" or "Apartment Dweller Accused of Eating Rape Victims."

When that happens, that will be news.