Or: What Are You Looking At?

[from 6/9/10]

Congratulations to the Homeless Remembrance Project for getting approval for the Tree of Life in Victor Steinbreuck park. This is such great news it has sucked a week's worth of piss & vinegar out of me. Sorry for the visual. I hope that this column will not be too ruined by my good mood.

I also hope this doesn't mean I won't be able to buy fifteen minute's worth of a security guard's wages by paying restauranteur Tom Douglas too much for baked salmon. I do love baked salmon & wieners, especially when fed to me to memorialize what Native Americans mean to Seattle (baked salmon and security guards.)

Questions I get asked all the time: "What was it like wearing bell bottoms, old man, and not knowing how stupid you looked?" "If you're so good at math, calculate how much I don't care." "What time is it?" "What's the difference between a bull and a cow?" "How can there be a just, loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God in a world of so much random senseless pain and suffering?" "How much do Capuchin monkeys cost, anyway?"

But my life is not all frivolity. Occasionally, someone asks a question that matters, like, "What can I do to help homeless people?" and I say go find one, give them the keys to your house and let's see you sleep in the bushes for a year.

No, I don't. That would be rude. I say lots of other things. I talk about this initiative and that regulatory problem, and how affordable housing is impacted by political decisions, and watch people's eyes glaze over. So this time I'm going to say something different.

Instead of asking what you can do to help homeless people, ask yourself what you'll let them do to help you.

Seriously. I'm not trying to be Kennedy-esque here. I'm trying to be anti-Kennedy-esque. Ich bin kein Berliner. Ich bin ein Frankfurter.

Today in my customized Google News I found a story titled "Program offers help to homeless veterans." I see headlines like that every day, My reaction this time was pretty typical. I wondered how many homeless veterans really need help. I think about where they've been and what they've done. I find it hard to believe they need all that much assistance. I think they mostly need people to get out of their way.

I think at least 50% of homelessness is caused by obstruction of homeless people's own efforts to pull themselves out of homelessness, and most of that obstructionism is motivated by the belief that homeless people are needy useless people who can only be helped and can't possibly do anything for anyone, and who couldn't possibly know what's best for themselves, belief driven by refusal to allow anyone to prove otherwise.

When I was homeless, as soon as someone realized that was the case, they wanted to know what I wanted from them. Some of them said it with a smile, some of them said it with a frown, as in, "Oh great. What do you expect me to do about it?" No one noticed that I hadn't asked for anything. I didn't want anything from them, I never wore bell bottoms, I never claimed to be great at calculating, it's time to eat your peas, young man, I'm not sending you out to milk, 42, and 100K per dozen if they have all their original teeth.

I don't see anyone concerned about the loss of habitat of polar bears suggesting that we get together ice-floe food banks and pass out canned seal meat among them. The discussion is focused on ending the loss of habitat. Hello: that's what we have here among us. It's a loss of habitat. Fix that.

In the meantime it would help make the wait for housing bearable to let homeless people contribute to the work of getting there, and let them make contributions, in general, if only to lift the conviction that the untried is impossible.