Word: homelessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Treating homeless people with the basic dignity that all humans deserve" means granting basic rights of food and shelter. Our insensitivity to the homeless population does not begin and end in averting our eyes, but in allowing people to become destitute. Smith's attitude is typcial of those who not only accept homelessness, but take it for granted...
Laura Smith's editorial piece ["Just Say Hello," March 20] on treating the homeless like human beings in order to preserve their dignity touches on one of the most crucial issues of our time: the homeless problem and how we who have roofs over our heads should address it. It is difficult to look someone asking for spare change in the eye as you walk past on your way to lunch in a warm dining hall. The issue that needs to be addressed, however, is not "our" reaction to "them," but the existence of homelessness at all in the country...
What needs to be done is not to bolster the courage of sheltered Harvard students so that they can look a homeless person in the eye, but to question the system that lets people fall through the cracks into an underclass from which there is very little hope of return. Housing is a right, not a luxury. Attitudes like Smith's encourage the denial of basic rights of citizens in a country that prides itself on democracy and justice...
...addition to ignoring the basic issue of why people are homeless in the first place, Smith's case in favor of "giving the gift of a smile or a polite greeting" is limited and short-sighted. The desperation that impels people to beg for money is beyond being restored by a pitying greeting form passers by. Sleeping on grates wrapped in a ragged blanket involves the loss of more dignity than is redeemable through "just saying hello." Smith overestimates the power of a greeting if she really believes that it is "priceless" to the poor that she condescends to greet...
Passing a destitute person on the street is disturbing and sometimes frightening. But our fear and discomfort is nothing compared to that of the destitute person. Treating homeless people with the basic dignity that all humans deserve is costless to us, and priceless to them...