Many willing to mitigate the homeless situation

By Lethbridge Herald on August 10, 2022.

Editor:

Several years ago, I wrote a blog (that a few people read) about the long historical evolution of the idea of the “deserving” as opposed to the “undeserving” poor. 

In the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods in England, parish and poor taxes helped alleviate somewhat the plight of the “wandering poor” without rigidly sorting out the “deserving” from the “undeserving.”

As the more modern world emerged in the West, some elements of Protestantism and Capitalism promoted the exaggerated belief that our singular exercise of individual autonomy and authority shaped us, which further drove the notion that some few poor but not all deserved assistance from the rest of us.

The idea of parsing who is deserving from who is not is nonsense. In fact, the simple notion that we have created our own successes and failures primarily through our own efforts ignores fundamental and profound determinants like geography, history, parentage, inheritances, access to education and health, innumerable special circumstances, bad luck, and on and on, which have nothing to do with our individual hard work, initiative, or choice.

Now, with the diminution or “end” of welfare in our neo-liberal western world, all of the poor seem to have become undeserving “losers” and the rest of us, especially the lucky rich, proclaim loudly our right to keep all we have: “how dare you tax what I have made all on my own?” I hope we will soon be turning the corner on these absurdist propositions and recognize at least some of our collective responsibilities including compassion and empathy.

Locally, we seem to have come to believe that some of the homeless are wholly “undeserving” and our sole responsibility is to protect the rest of us from them. Too often, the message is that we need to shove them into an inappropriate, inadequate shelter or – better – out of town. That “solution” will not work. 

The homeless do “wander”; they must; and, the poor “will always be with us,” as Christ said (the emphasis being on the word “with,” meaning inclusion, not exclusion).

A person cannot be expected to get her/his life together without first having a safe, secure place to live, with water, toilets, and some privacy. 

My wife and I say this as people who live just over one block from the now-to-be dispersed encampment. We are not opposed to the creation of appropriate shelter for the homeless near us nor are we alone in rejecting the “not-in-my back yard” reaction of some. 

We know many others in our broader neighbourhood who would willingly accept real attempts at mitigating the problem in whatever location best suits.

James Tagg

Lethbridge