Living in a suburban neighborhood, it is easy to forget how hard it is for many people to find places to stay at night. Every night. Living in a city, we are confronted with homeless people every day -- on street corners, under highways and shockingly, out in the open. Living in a city and paying attention makes you realize how cities systematically attempt to deny the existence of homeless people.
In public parks, cities have removed the seating from benches purely so that homeless people will no longer aggregate in public areas. Police cars are stationed outside of these parks because of the high expectation that crimes will be committed by the homeless community. Homeless encampments are constantly being torn down.
Why do we have such an aversion to homeless people? Why do we insist on denying them the public spaces they are forced to inhabit to survive? Cities are rigged against the homeless. Cities are content sweeping the homeless under the rug, out of sight out of mind. Cities are more concerned with finding new ways to hide the homeless than with finding new ways to help the homeless.
As for the general populace, we are not much better. There are theories about the dynamic between city dwellers and the homeless. In the early 19th century, there was a transition from most of the population living in the countryside, to most of the population living in urban centers. In the countryside, social stratification was clear with the rich living in the towns and the poor living on the fields.
In cities, the distinction was not initially so easy. Everybody was crammed into poorly planned, small spaces. Then, with the introduction of the sewer system, the city was divided into the area above the sewers and the area around the sewers, with people being similarly divided. Therefore, the mixing of the upper and lower classes was seldom encouraged, for the upper classes did not want to physically and morally contaminate themselves. Instead, they haughtily observed the lower classes from the balconies.
Today, we shy from the homeless because we consider them filthy, morally and physically. We consider them drug abusers, mentally ill, criminals. We only are interested in watching the homeless in heartfelt philanthropic YouTube videos of rich people giving one homeless person some extra money, or a pizza or a makeover. The makeover videos especially appeal because it changes the physically dirty appearance of the homeless and makes them easier to look at, easier to relate to.
This country is rigged against the homeless. We must learn to separate our prejudiced preconceptions from our immediate senses and treat the homeless population like people.
