Homeless People Aren’t The Problem. Our Community’s Meanness Is.

 
In the 2003 film “Seabiscuit,” there’s a scene in which Charles Howard, the
eventual owner of the film’s equine namesake asks Tom Smith, an old-school
trainer why he’s caring for an injured horse that will never race again. Smith
replies, “You don’t throw a whole life away just ‘cause it’s banged up a little.”
 
But what I most consistently heard from those complaining the loudest about
homelessness in my three-and-a-half years serving as the City of Asheville’s
Homelessness Lead is that Asheville must throw these peoples’ lives away because
some citizens find them too banged up and difficult to look at. 
 
I don’t like seeing people experiencing homelessness either, though likely for very
different reasons.
 
After working on homelessness and affordable housing for twenty-five years, I am
certain of three things:
 
First, homeless people are not the problem – homelessness is the problem.

Second, as long as there is no common baseline understanding of the issue among

city and county elected leadership and senior management, there will never be any
sound public policy decisions made about homelessness.
 
Third, this community’s meanness toward our neighbors experiencing
homelessness is far uglier than any encampments I’ve ever visited or behaviors
I’ve encountered among those who live in them.
 
In fact, the vitriol that was hurled at me almost daily about homelessness –
including multiple death threats made against me and my child – is some of the
most hateful, vile speech I ever encountered in my 64 years on this planet. And it’s
come from both sides of the issue: those who insist they are “advocates” for our
unhoused neighbors as well as those who are convinced we should confine them all
to concentration camp-like facilities and limit their Constitutional rights of free
speech, movement, and assembly.
 
I will stipulate that the behavior of some people experiencing homelessness is
obnoxious, rude, and illegal. I will also assert that at least an equal percentage of
housed people also behave in obnoxious, rude, and illegal ways, often even in
ways that are downright frightening.
I’ve certainly never had a homeless person threaten to kill me and my child, for
example, but some housed person recently thought such a communication to me
would produce the result they sought by leaving a bomb threat on the door of my
home with a note that read, “Do your job and get all these [expletive] homeless
junkies out of MY city.”
 
I will also stipulate that existing laws should be enforced vigorously, but only after
we’ve obviated the necessity of urinating in public or violating other public order
ordinances because we lack an adequate supply of the only proven solution to
homelessness – permanent supportive housing.
 
I’ve heard all your views on homelessness. I hope you’ll now at least be courteous
enough to hear mine.
 
I’ve never met a homeless person whose life story didn’t include a complex
constellation of adverse childhood experiences (including sexual abuse perpetrated
by family members), intergenerational poverty, lack of a reliable support network,
evictions, suffering as victims of violent crime, and disruptions caused by the
addiction or incarceration of a parent or other caregiver.
 
I’ve met those who had worked steadily until their bodies became disabled or the
companies for which they worked were bought by an equity firm that believed only
in the primacy of investor or shareholder value and “right-sized” the labor force.
 
I’ve met veterans returning from multiple combat deployments, so scarred by
traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder that they can barely sit in
a room and converse with other human beings. My own father was one of them.
 
We will not see any meaningful change as long as the loudest voices choose to
remain vincibly ignorant about the issue and what really needs to be done to
permanently fix such an eminently solvable stain on our society.

Nor will we ever move the needle on homelessness as long as the general public
continues to insist on the least effective approaches and both the City and County
fund them, often recklessly, with limited, uninformed (or poorly informed)
perspective. More emergency shelter, street outreach, arrests, jail time,
hospitalizations, or boutique transitional housing programs will not solve the
problem.
There is no “somewhere else” for Asheville’s homelessness problem to go. It’s a
community problem in need of a community solution.

For those who claim to be so troubled by homelessness, why not seek less to be
understood and seek more to understand, as the prayer attributed to St. Francis of
Assisi beseeches us? Why not seek to better understand the problem and become
part of, or at least advocate for what two decades of research has proven to be the
most effective solution: housing. Housing ends homelessness. Period.

Our unhoused neighbors have lives and souls equally as worthy as yours or mine.
Our Creator doesn’t cast lives aside because they’re banged up or difficult to look
at.
 
Neither should a moral, ethical community that claims to be so “progressive.”
 
Respectfully,
Brian Huskey
Asheville, NC
 
(The writer is the former City of Asheville Community Development Division’s
Homelessness Lead).