Group label minimizes the homeless problem 

This is the holiday season of goodwill, gift-giving, and family togetherness that characterizes American culture. Exchanging gifts is fun and harmless. However, the best gift we can give to others is to recognize them as individuals.

The idea of humans with individual identities, characteristics rights and responsibility is fading or has disappeared in American culture. Instead, government and social institutions destroy the individual by classifying and referring to people as faceless group members.  

The submersion of individual identity into group labels is so complete that few Americans describe themselves independent of those labels.  I doubt they have a self-image or image of others independent of group stereotypes.  “I am or they are working class Irish, conservative middle-Americans, first generation Asian immigrants, alcoholics, drug addicts, black, white, and Latino or homeless people.” Why does it matter if we think this way?

It matters, because self-images based on group stereotypes produce a society of people with fuzzy self-images.  I have yet to find a person who can describe particular group characteristics that define their self-image. Nevertheless, they rate those group stereotypes as a distinguishing part of them. In addition, people who self-identify as a stereotype see other humans as stereotypes. How could it be otherwise?

Homelessness is the new group label. Too often Americans group people without permanent shelter under this common label. It serves as a convenient label for charity givers and for people who protest their presence.  It is easier for them to talk about group statistics than about individuals. In addition, talking about a faceless group makes it is easier for them to ignore the seriousness of this and other social problems.

The Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC) reported 1.5% of the people in its area of responsibility are homeless. The problem seems small and easily ignored when presented this way, because 1.5% is a tiny part of the population. Therefore, people can drop a few dollars in the kettle and genuinely feel they helped reduce the problem.    

However, the perspective changes when CoC moves one incremental level from the general toward the particular by reporting homelessness as numbers rather than as a percentage. The number figure for 1.5% homeless is about 73,700 individuals in Los Angeles County on any given day without shelter.  This is an astounding figure of human suffering. 

This is about 61,200 individuals, including 10,000 children under age 18, who sleep in Los Angeles County streets, alleys, autos, encampments, overpasses and doorways on any given day.  Only about 12,500 lived in emergency shelters or transitional housing supplied by charity and government support.  Those numbers although still faceless suggests the presence of individuals.

You almost begin to see faces when the report tells us that many women end without permanent shelter because of domestic violence. Other people lost homes because of medical expenses. Some are mentally ill and some have alcohol and drug abuse problems. Some of them work, but do not earn enough for permanent shelter. Now it is clearer that homeless describes individual situations and not a group characteristic.  

Finally, you see the individual when you talk with them about them and not about their lack of shelter.  You see that homelessness is a situation that people endure. Often it is a result or symptoms of other problems, but it is not a human characteristic. They live on other peoples’ charity, but many of them want others in the community to see them as more than begging hands. This is a curse of pure charity.

Charity without a demand for responsibility is as corrosive to the individual as are the circumstances that brought them to poverty or homelessness. Charity rescues the group, but it degrades the individual. 

Financial aid or grocery programs should never be pure acts of charity. Charity programs should always require some work or reciprocal act from the receiver, no matter how small the requirement. General assistance programs in any form should require individuals to work on a plan to improve their situation.  This is the only way society will rescue downtrodden people and itself from their degradation.  

Society should support empowering programs along with aid that help individuals to become or to regain productive member status in society. It will not succeed by treating low income and people without shelter like a herd of animals that only need feeding and bedding down. Instead, it empowers them by including their work effort in the project according to their circumstance.   

Empowering individuals requires more money and effort than just giving partial aid to the group. Does the group with homes believe the homeless group is worth the effort? 

Contact Kenneth Brooks  at P.O. B 882, Vallejo, CA 94590, Opinion@ethicalego.com