The Man in Plaid

February 17, 2014

Driving though Waco this week, I came across the second hitchhiker I had seen within a three block radius in seven days. Normally, I feel pretty compassionate towards the homeless or “poor” people I encounter. For some reason this time, however, I felt annoyed. Maybe because it was the second time within a few days I had been confronted with someone else’s discomfort when I was simply trying to take a break from my already emotionally draining internship? I am not sure. At any rate, I was annoyed until I took a closer look and noticed something about the way he was holding his arm: he was cold. Immediately the sense of annoyance disappeared and tears welled in my eyes as I drove past him feeling completely helpless.

cold homeless man

I prayed for my cold neighbor and continued to the Chick-Fil-A parking lot where I drove past him, again, and saw him making his way towards a Walmart parking lot. I briefly wondered if he was going there to beg for money before I parked and went inside. After I had been seated for about 10 minutes, the same man came into the restaurant and sat at the table next to me. Super. Now my heart was sad and worried again…I kept looking to see if he had money to eat or was simply sitting to get warm for a few minutes. After a little time passed, I was pretty sure he did not plan on buying any food. I wrestled with whether or not to give him money, how much, when, etc.  Before I could decide whether to give him money while I was still eating, or on my way out, a woman sitting at a table on the other side of him motioned her head towards him and gestured for him to follow her to the counter where she bought him lunch. His lunch was taken care of, and maybe a meal for later, but I wondered as I left what he would do tomorrow…And the next day…And the day after that.

And he’s only one person.

In an effort to put a number on how many homeless there are in the United States, who is homeless, and why they are homeless, cities across the U.S. give out the Point-in-Time Survey (PIT) on a single day in January of every year. While this survey gives us valuable information about the homeless persons who are interviewed and counted in the survey, it cannot possibly give us a reliable count of just how many homeless there actually are (“Suncoast Partnership”,  January 27, 2014).

I don’t think you’ll ever get an accurate count of the number of homeless people, especially if they have children. They tell their children, ‘You can’t tell anybody we’re sleeping in the car, because that means you’ll be taken’  (Garner, as cited in Ellis, 2014).

How many are homeless in Waco?

This year’s Point in Time survey in Waco counted 30 chronically homeless persons, and 250 currently homeless persons (Hammons, 2014). These numbers may not look exactly staggering, but I have to wonder how many more homeless there might be in our city who avoided or missed being counted in the survey. And when you think about finding and funding housing, food, medical services and transportation for 250 plus persons, you start to get a real grasp for just how much money might be involved.

Tent City

How do we begin to make a difference?

I believe that the only way to truly make a difference is to act and to act now. As humans, it is so easy to do one of three things when confronted with human suffering. First, it is easy to let our hearts become hardened in an effort to cope as we continue to be confronted with the suffering of our brother. Second, it is easy to become hardened and blame the person for causing their own situation. For some reason, we feel better if we can say “They brought it on themselves.” As if we have received everything we ever deserved. Third, it is easy to remain tender and tell ourselves when confronted with suffering that we will help…when we have more money, more time, more…? The hard part, which often is not nearly as hard as we originally thought once we get started, is to act, and to act now. Jimmy Doreell, founder of Mission Waco says it this way:

There is a big step from general caring to knowing the names of       people. There is nothing more life-changing than knowing the names of other folks. The reality is when you know someone’s name, they become more real, more special (as cited in Wallace, 2014).

As people preparing to work in the helping profession, the suffering all around us can be overwhelming. We are students with little time, but if instead of becoming hardened to the suffering of those around us in an effort to deal with the pain that we see, we instead allow the pain aroused in our own hearts to spur us into action, we can be part of a real solution. How many problems could be solved if each one of us got involved? This is my challenge: to get involved in something outside of your internship responsibilities to help bring change to the poor in Waco. Let’s get close enough to know people’s names, and to let knowing them change our hearts and show us how to help. It doesn’t have to be a huge time commitment, but most of us can find a little time to do something. There are a lot of cold people in Waco waiting for rides.

Homeless waiting for ride at bus stop

References

Ellis, B. (2014). Counting the homeless in America’s poorest city. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/12/pf/homeless-count/

Hammons, A. (2014). Federal grant helps pay $39k annual cost for Waco homeless. News channel 25 HD. Retrieved from http://www.kxxv.com/story/24593516/federal-grant-helps-pay-for-39k-annual-cost-for-waco-homeless

Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness. (2014, January 27). Point in time survey. Retrieved from http://suncoastpartnership.org/about-homelessness/point-in-time-survey/

Wallace, D. (2014). Mission Waco: Caring for poor means knowing their names. The Baptist Standard. Retrieved from http://www.baptiststandard.com/news/texas/16098-mission-waco-caring-for-the-poor-means-knowing-their-names

 

 

 

 

 

3 Responses to “The Man in Plaid”

  1. Gaynor Yancey said:

    Adreanne~this is a great blog. Sometime, I will tell you and maybe the class of my similar experience with a homeless man. It is definitely an insight into our own behavior and practices, isn’t it? We have 10% of our 15,000 children and youth in WISD who are considered to be unaccompanied, unattended, or “homeless.” I wonder where their families were on the day of the count.



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