For years, the City of San Diego has conducted
semi-military operations against the homeless. Using
police harassment, ticketing, closing volunteer
feeding programs and jailings in a futile attempt to
class cleanse downtown.
Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood,
developers and speculators build high rise condos and
office towers; while politicians and city officials,
skimming the profits, instruct the police to prey upon
their fellow human beings, like jackals in the jungle.
April 15th marked the beginning of an insurgency
against San Diego's war on the "least of those among
us" as over 450 people gathered at the concourse in a
rally to urge the city to stop ticketing the homeless
for the human need of sleep and to create a safe area
where the unhoused can camp. Over half those attending
the rally were homeless: dragging their belongs, lying
on the cold pavement, looking up at the empty offices
of city hall (knowing, everyone who works there was
home enjoying a hot meal, a shower and a warm bed).
Yet, like a match struck in a solid dark, scary,
room, listening to the speakers; pastors and
professors, and, particularly Larry Milligan, whose
recent fast, led to this rally, the homeless there,
that night, began to understand that homelessness
should not be a crime. Called bums, scum, trash and
treated worse than stray cats and dogs, realization
began individually, then in discussions among
themselves, that, in fact, they were, indeed, victims.
When many homeless speakers took to the microphone
to tell their stories of police human rights abuses,
the quiet murmur among the unhoused grew to shouts as
reports of harassment, sleep deprivation, starvation,
verbal and physical abuse were given.
However, when the rally was over, like true
"liberals" who flock to most progressive events for
information (rarely transformation) and a modest sense
of guilty support (solidarity?), they returned to
their comforts and warm bed for the night.
Councilwoman Donna Fry accepted a invitation to speak,
then backed out; probably realizing that her integrity
and compassion would meet the demands of her political
future as she would be drawn personally to these
victims of San Diego's militarized economic processes
which benefit the rich and powerful downtown
developers.
Eight Quakers, from San Diego and La Jolla
Meetings, had previously decided that enough was
enough. They had contacted the media, the police and,
most importantly, their fellow members of faith, to
say that this war on the homeless must end; that they
could not, in good conscience, continue to exist in
safety and comfort while others were
attacked, demonized, starved, beaten, jailed and
killed.
Noting over 89 homeless folks died on city streets
last year and over 100 the year before; that police
gun down the homeless with impunity - one in Ocean
Beach for carrying a stick - these 8 Friends (as they
prefer to be called) bedded down for the night after
the rally. They were joined by 3 students of
conscience from Point Loma Nazarene University
(bringing not only our newest generation to the
struggle against this city's war of greed but,
perhaps, the greatest Nazarene of all time?)
About 50 homeless people bundled in with the small
human rights group as it bedded down for the night;
many out of a beginning sense of solidarity, others
out of sheer tiredness and inertia (the city's winter
shelter had closed the day before and there was simply
nowhere to go). When several dozen police officers
arrived just after 11:00 p.m. they gave everyone 10
minutes to disperse or they would be arrested for
"illegal lodging."
Like mechanical constructs out of a Disneyland
exhibit, they moved about the crowd, reading from a
prepared card, ignoring the questions of "where can we
lodge, legally?" Told by several organizers that all
the shelters were contacted and were full, the police
remained silent; their humanity and conscience tucked
safety in their lockers back at the precinct
headquarters. The Quakers present exchanged sad
glances; it had been but several months since they
held religious services outside the main police
station on Broadway to ask God's forgiveness for the
individual police persons forced to slice away at the
humanity and personal decency of the homeless. They
recognize that each time a uniformed person assaults
another, more vulnerable and helpless, they,
themselves, chip away a little of their own humanity,
their own connectedness to a spiritual source, and
become pimps and whores for the rich and powerful who
seek that space known as "downtown" for their own
pleasure and profit.
As the police waited their ten minutes, most of the
homeless gathered up their belongings, grumbling, and
departed. For most, this harassment was so routine
that no one questioned their own victimization; they
simply moved on, the new negroes and jews, outcasts
from a gentrified, new world order that rewards those
that serve the corporate interests and attacks those
who refuse or who are too fragile to compete in the
savage, competitive economic jungle of greed based,
corporate owned, capitalism.
Yet, seven homeless folks (one, a Vietnam veteran
in a wheel chair) drew strength from the housed
people of faith and from Larry Milligan who joined
together in a circle of mats and sleeping bags, held
hands and sang "Amazing Grace" as they waited to be
arrested. One by the one, the homeless joined the
circle of trembling hands (only one of the group had
ever been arrested before). Truth, love and human
goodness sat in defiance of power and greed as the
lights from tv cameras illuminated another one of
those historic, finest hours in human spirit and
community. There was no wealthy or poor, no young or
old, no women or men, no straight or gay, no black or
white; only people who held hands, singing, loving one
another, believing in the value and dignity of one
another, prepared to suffer the punishment of the rich
and their bought politicians, who demand and depend on
the power to determine who is worthy and who gets the
benefits of this world.
The police used to pouncing on the individual,
powerless homeless person were stunned with this show
of defiance and moral strength. The faltering look in
some of their eyes gave testimony that, perhaps, for
the first time in their professional lives, they
questioned their orders to feed on the misery of their
fellow human beings. For every action there is a
reaction, as they begun their own spiritual healing,
sensing that they make this system work, to reward
rich crooks like John Moores, greedy landlords like
Mayor Murphy and, everyone else, who relies on them to
do their shit work, victimize the poor. The Quakers
there, sitting on the cold pavement, understood and
shared the hope; that if we can free the police
officers conscience from the increasingly class-based,
militarized, totalitarian government that serves
corporate CEO's and rich investors, we move closer
toward a just world.
After 12 minutes the police retreated. From around
midnight, when the waiting paddy wagons were pulled
away, until 4:30 a.m., when the morning shift
commander decided that police power must at least be
shown, if not enforced, there existed in the City of
San Diego, at the base of City Hall, a safe place for
the homeless to sleep. A small victory in the least,
but a beginning nonetheless.
This small group of insurgents in San Diego's war
on the homeless, say they will return again and again,
until the city quits criminalizing the homeless,
ceases issuing tickets for the human need of sleep and
creates a zone for the homeless to camp.
What we must do, as human beings and citizens of
this community, is to look ourselves in the mirror,
searching for that inner compassionate, loving core
and question whether we can continue to eat good food,
enjoy our pleasures and sleep in a warm bed; while our
government hunts down human beings, like wild animals.
If we fail to act on the side of the homeless; to
prevent the suffering, the pain of personal valueness,
hunger, sleep deprivation and even death, then what
kind of human being are we? Are we any better than the
sick, twisted terrorists and corporate CEOs who would
carve out their view of reality for their own selfish
reasons?
Facing arrest, sitting on the cold pavement,
holding one hand with a shaking young college student
and the other with a housewife (whose best friend is a
police officer), one homeless woman said, "this is the
first time in years that I have felt like a person."
Let us work to make sure it is not her last.
--Rocky Neptun
(Rocky Neptun is a former elected member of San
Diego city government - mid-city planning board and a
member of San Diego Friends (Quaker) Meeting)
- e-mail:: rockyneptuno@yahoo.com.mx
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right now hillcrest has so much heat!!!!!!
28.04.2005 03:05
i've been stopped by the cops 3 times this week for nothing.not to mention the roughly 10 times they drive by and give me the evil eye.what the fuck?ever since they shot jake faust they have been going crazy.the expieriances have been so humiliating.when they stopped me last night and ran my name i had no warrents.the cop sacasticly "so what your telling me is your a model citizen?" i said "not really".....
brian donovan
Home/Hope-Less in ParaDyse!!!!
11.05.2005 11:06
COMPLIANCE law of March, 2002 is against the POOR!
Does not CHRIST Himself say: "Blessed be the POOR; for THEY will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven?" and did not Jesus say :"Acursed is any that OFFEND these little ones who believe in me?"
Therefore, I CALL UPON the HOLY ONE, blessed is He, TO BRING PLAUGES, FAMINE, DISASTER, DEATH, PAIN & eternal DAMNNATION in the FIRES of TORMENT-NOW, TODAY: upon LANCE HUBNELL, MAYOR, LARRY SELIG, GARY ASHCRAFT, all POLICE, all CITY COUNCELLORS, ALL enforcers of the SATANIC CODE LAWS, especially upon the JACKSON HOUSE, MELISSA GASSOWAY, and THE EVIL WOMAN at the SALVATION ARMY who told me I WAS LESS THAN HUMAN; and CALLED THE POLICE on me FOR ASKING for a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT! To wit: TO USE THE BATHROOM! I CALL UPON CHRIST to RETURN UPON THIS SHAMEFULL HATEFUL CITY 10-fold, ALL the HATRED it PERPRETATES upon the POOR! AMEN & AMEN! And MAY THEIR EVIL BLACK SOULS BURN in ETERNAL UNBEARABLE AGONY, Amen Amen, FOR EVER & FOR EVER.
Please JOIN WITH me in these prayer....PERHAPS Our Merciful Saviour who HEARS the POOR ( Ezekiel 22:29 "The people of the land have used opression , and exercised robbery, and have VEXED the POOR and NEEDY...therefore have I poured out mine INDIGNATION upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my WRATH: their OWN WAY have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the LORD GOD!) will DO WHAT HE HAS PROMISED ME...(Malichi4,5-6: Behold, I [have] sen[t] YOU, ELIJAH[radioprophet] before the coming of the great and DREADFUL Day of the LORD; And he shall TURN the HEART of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, LEST I COME AND SMITE the [city of Hot Springs] WITH A CURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")
Showing these UNREPENTANT MONSTERS (our City Fathers and Mothers) the LOVE of JESUS will avail NOTHING! THEY MUST be SHOWN the TERROR of GOD! As The LORD shewed Himself AWFUL IN KILLING to the -ASSYRIANS in ISAIAH 37:36.."Then the ANGEL of the LORD went forth, AND SMOTE..of the ASSYRIANS a hundred and fourscore and five thousand, and,behold, they were ALL DEAD CORPSES!* Let these INHUMAN CRETINS, these CALLOUS MONSTERS and ABOMINATORS have a VISION, then perhaps they will REPENT & CIRCUMCISE their MONEY GRUBBING SOULS!
In THIS City (Rev.2:13) even where SATAN'S SEAT is...I see POOR PEOPLE treated WORSE than BEASTS, and TERRORISED!
Under FEDERAL LAW, in the PATROIT ACT, these POLICE are ELIGABLE for THE DEATH PENALITY! (Any crime that threatens life...is PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!) Being TERRORISED makes me SUICIDAL! This is a CRIME that THREATENS MY LIFE! Therefore, POLICE, MAYOR, CITY OFFICERS, GARY ASHCRAFT, ALL CHRUCH MEMBERS, ALL PREACHERS, PRIESTS, et al ARE SUBJECT to EXTERMINATION. God & The PRESIDENT, Geo, Walker Bush, has SPOKEN! The SUPREME COURT has UPHELD this ruling! Amen, Amen!
right now hillcrest has so much heat!!!!!!
28.04.2005 03:05
i've been stopped by the cops 3 times this week for nothing.not to mention the roughly 10 times they drive by and give me the evil eye.what the fuck?ever since they shot jake faust they have been going crazy.the expieriances have been so humiliating.when they stopped me last night and ran my name i had no warrents.the cop sacasticly "so what your telling me is your a model citizen?" i said "not really".....
brian donovan
Home/Hope-Less in ParaDyse!!!!
11.05.2005 11:06
COMPLIANCE law of March, 2002 is against the POOR!
Does not CHRIST Himself say: "Blessed be the POOR; for THEY will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven?" and did not Jesus say :"Acursed is any that OFFEND these little ones who believe in me?"
Therefore, I CALL UPON the HOLY ONE, blessed is He, TO BRING PLAUGES, FAMINE, DISASTER, DEATH, PAIN & eternal DAMNNATION in the FIRES of TORMENT-NOW, TODAY: upon LANCE HUBNELL, MAYOR, LARRY SELIG, GARY ASHCRAFT, all POLICE, all CITY COUNCELLORS, ALL enforcers of the SATANIC CODE LAWS, especially upon the JACKSON HOUSE, MELISSA GASSOWAY, and THE EVIL WOMAN at the SALVATION ARMY who told me I WAS LESS THAN HUMAN; and CALLED THE POLICE on me FOR ASKING for a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT! To wit: TO USE THE BATHROOM! I CALL UPON CHRIST to RETURN UPON THIS SHAMEFULL HATEFUL CITY 10-fold, ALL the HATRED it PERPRETATES upon the POOR! AMEN & AMEN! And MAY THEIR EVIL BLACK SOULS BURN in ETERNAL UNBEARABLE AGONY, Amen Amen, FOR EVER & FOR EVER.
Please JOIN WITH me in these prayer....PERHAPS Our Merciful Saviour who HEARS the POOR ( Ezekiel 22:29 "The people of the land have used opression , and exercised robbery, and have VEXED the POOR and NEEDY...therefore have I poured out mine INDIGNATION upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my WRATH: their OWN WAY have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the LORD GOD!) will DO WHAT HE HAS PROMISED ME...(Malichi4,5-6: Behold, I [have] sen[t] YOU, ELIJAH[radioprophet] before the coming of the great and DREADFUL Day of the LORD; And he shall TURN the HEART of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, LEST I COME AND SMITE the [city of Hot Springs] WITH A CURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")
Showing these UNREPENTANT MONSTERS (our City Fathers and Mothers) the LOVE of JESUS will avail NOTHING! THEY MUST be SHOWN the TERROR of GOD! As The LORD shewed Himself AWFUL IN KILLING to the -ASSYRIANS in ISAIAH 37:36.."Then the ANGEL of the LORD went forth, AND SMOTE..of the ASSYRIANS a hundred and fourscore and five thousand, and,behold, they were ALL DEAD CORPSES!* Let these INHUMAN CRETINS, these CALLOUS MONSTERS and ABOMINATORS have a VISION, then perhaps they will REPENT & CIRCUMCISE their MONEY GRUBBING SOULS!
In THIS City (Rev.2:13) even where SATAN'S SEAT is...I see POOR PEOPLE treated WORSE than BEASTS, and TERRORISED!
Under FEDERAL LAW, in the PATROIT ACT, these POLICE are ELIGABLE for THE DEATH PENALITY! (Any crime that threatens life...is PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!) Being TERRORISED makes me SUICIDAL! This is a CRIME that THREATENS MY LIFE! Therefore, POLICE, MAYOR, CITY OFFICERS, GARY ASHCRAFT, ALL CHRUCH MEMBERS, ALL PREACHERS, PRIESTS, et al ARE SUBJECT to EXTERMINATION. God & The PRESIDENT, Geo, Walker Bush, has SPOKEN! The SUPREME COURT has UPHELD this ruling! Amen, Amen!
Homeless in paradise by Lawrence Solomon
In the 1960s and 1970s, homelessness was virtually unknown in North America, the term not even in public parlance. In 1964, Columbia University researchers scoured four Manhattan parks to count those sleeping there: They found one man. Likewise, in Chicago, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Montreal, and other major cities, homelessness was the exception and not the rule. In the 1960s, big city newspapers rarely ran stories on the homeless, unlike the last decade when they averaged one homeless story every two days. Until the 1980s, the homeless were not part of a widespread phenomenon; they were exceptional hard-luck cases.
Then these exceptions became the rule. Not because poverty suddenly increased — it didn't. Not because welfare was drastically reduced — generally welfare became more generous. Not much because mental institutions suddenly released their patients — the deinstitutionalization of mental patients that took place in the 1960s and early 1970s explains a small fraction, perhaps one-tenth or one-twentieth, of the torrent of homelessness that engulfed our major cities in the 1980s.
One factor, and one factor alone — changes in housing policy — accounts for the immense rise of homelessness: Governments outlawed much of what was then the bottom end of the housing market — the derelict apartment buildings, seedy hotels, and rooming houses — while legalizing vagrancy. In this way, and with only the best of intentions, governments replaced a vast supply of substandard, but low-cost housing with a much vaster, much more substandard, and much lower-cost supply of housing in the form of our streets, back alleys, and parks.
Before the government inadvertently converted our public spaces into sleeping quarters, poor people — including alcoholics and the mentally ill — lived in low-rent districts, muddling along as best they could. Those poorer still doubled up with them, or sublet rooms in exchange for cash or household services, typically babysitting for women, odd jobs for men. There was nothing particularly noble about most of these arrangements: The poor who put up still needier relatives on their living room couches would have preferred the space for themselves; those put up often felt dependent and unwelcome, and, had they the wherewithal, many would have left their position of servitude. Nevertheless they made do, keeping up appearances and maintaining relations, however poorly. Relatively few people relied on shelters.
Then came urban renewal, a euphemism for slum clearance that levelled much of the low-quality housing stock across the continent. Newark and New York City lost almost half of their low-rent housing between 1970 and 1990; New York City's Bowery, with 10,000 beds in 1965, had but 3,000 in 1980. In the 1970s and 1980s, Chicago lost 20 per cent of its low-rent housing; of the 10,000 spaces in the Loop area's cubicle hotels, 600 remained. By the early 1980s, Toronto lost virtually all of its 500 flophouse beds; by the end of the decade, it had lost one-third of its rooming houses. Between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, the number of unsubsidized low-cost units fell 54 per cent in the typical large U.S. metropolitan area. Public housing — once a shining hope — failed utterly in housing the very poor.
While the stock of low-cost housing declined, the cost and difficulty of living on the cheap increased. Welfare recipients who doubled up with family members faced benefit reductions, giving them and their families reasons to drift apart. Rent control legislation, which stopped apartment building construction, backfired on the poor. While it kept rents low, a surplus of apartment seekers gave landlords the luxury of picking and choosing tenants: In competition with stable tenants able to pay rent on time and unlikely to damage property, the down-and-out had no chance. The housing shortage and rising land prices also spurred gentrification of old neighborhoods that housed the destitute, leading to their eviction. Even tenant rights legislation backfired. Because it prevented landlords from evicting the prostitutes, drug dealers, and rowdy tenants who caused good tenants to leave, they stopped renting to anyone with the potential to be troublesome. When governments extended rent control and tenant rights to rooming houses and single-room occupancy hotels, and tightened housing regulations to force landlords to better maintain the dwindling stock of decaying housing, the landlords themselves vacated. Much of the low-income housing was lost to fires, often arson was suspected.
With so much low-rent housing demolished, and so much of the balance reserved for respectable tenants, the poorest of the poor had no place to go but the streets, newly freed up through the repeal of vagrancy laws. To those with addictions, this dark cloud had a silver lining: Without accommodation costs, they could devote more of their meagre income to their habit.
Those we call homeless are not a homogeneous lot and, often, not even homeless. In many cities, the majority of panhandlers, squeegee kids, and other street people that we come across have fairly conventional abodes. Meanwhile, the majority of the truly homeless escape our view: In a 1989 study of Chicago's homeless, interviewers found most to be "neat and clean" and only 20 per cent to panhandle or take handouts. Most homeless do not make a career of it: They find themselves on the street following some unmanageable stress — the death or illness of a loved one, the breakup of a relationship, debt, and legal problems top the list — and then they pull out of it. Yet most remain deeply disturbed. According to a recent study of Toronto's homeless by the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, two-thirds have a lifetime diagnosis of mental illness, and two-thirds suffer from alcohol and substance abuse. Only one homeless person in seven in this highly vulnerable population suffers from neither.
Although most are mentally ill, few are seriously so. Only about 10 per cent of the homeless population has suffered from some severe mental illness, most often not the schizophrenia we associate with the homeless but a dark depression. While most of the severely ill lack proper treatment, few belong in institutions. The vast majority of mentally ill people, today as before deinstitutionalization, live in the community. Only today we've made the pavement the only practical housing choice for all too many of them.
The more important characteristics of the homeless — whether or not they're mentally ill — are that they have fewer work skills, fewer social skills, and less resourcefulness than the housed population. They have difficulty maintaining relationships with friends and family. Almost half reported that they could rely on "no one" in their lives. Only four per cent were married or in common-law relationships. All this speaks to their lack of community and numbing sense of isolation — conditions that, above all, explain much of the social pathology that is homelessness. Being society's least valued members, they are the first to be fired, the last to be hired, those most shunned in civil society, modern lepers.
Those who live on the streets do not appear as a line item in government books, except for the odd outreach program. Neither do taxpayers take a direct hit. Some resent, others pity, the panhandlers; some fear the talkers and ravers that they encounter, but most see the homeless as an unsettling but cost-free fixture on the urban landscape.
Failing to deal with homelessness is a false economy, quite apart from the great moral costs of turning our backs on this defenceless population. The homeless cast a pall on our use of our cities, prompting parents and their children to abandon the public parks they frequent, pedestrians to avoid places they might be accosted, and merchants to relocate. The homeless show up big time in our penal system — 30 per cent have spent time in police stations or jail in the previous year — and in our health care budget.
As shown in a study published in June in the New England Journal of Medicine — the first extensive documentation of the impact of homelessness on the health care system — the homeless have been exacting a silent toll on a society that ignores their plight. The homeless at New York City's public hospitals stayed an average of 4.1 days longer, and cost an average of $2,414 more per admission, than low-income patients who had homes. One group of psychiatric patients, whom clinicians believed couldn't be discharged safely, averaged 70 days more than otherwise called for. At the city's flagship Bellevue Hospital, nearly half the admissions were homeless. "The homeless account for less than one-half of one per cent of the city's population, but they are having a huge impact on the health care system," said Sharon Salit, the report's lead author. "The extra costs for a single hospital admission are as much as the annual welfare rental allowance for a single individual in New York."
About half the homeless admissions required treatment for mental illness or substance abuse, and half for skin disorders, respiratory complaints, trauma, and parasites – problems generally regarded as preventable among other populations. "For want of a place to clean between their toes, change their shoes and socks, and elevate their feet when they get swollen, homeless patients get infections in their feet" that often become a chronic condition called cellulitis, said Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, Bellevue's director of emergency medicine. "We almost never see that among people who have homes." A 1996 study of Los Angeles's homeless warned that TB could reach epidemic proportions.
The homeless need medical care, especially psychiatric care. We must generously fund outpatient programs: Just as nobody would release Alzheimer's patients onto the streets without adequate treatment and supervision, we cannot let these vulnerable people fend for themselves. We must also ensure that those few who are a danger to themselves or to the public receive compassionate care inside an institution. But most of all, the homeless need homes and an end to their alienation, without which their condition cannot improve. Most homeless advocates, while understanding the need for more housing, too often seek quick-fix solutions in government housing, forgetting that the last thing the homeless need is to be warehoused in anonymous public housing supervised by a faceless government bureaucracy. We must require the homeless to engage the rest of us.
The way out of homeless begins by backing out of the same path that created it. We must restore vagrancy laws, both to safeguard the public sphere for us all and to require housing for those unable to properly look after themselves. To shelter those evicted from the streets, welfare must provide the down-and-out with housing vouchers that can be used anywhere, not just in shelters but in exchange for that couch in a relative's living room. (To discourage a black market, each voucher should identify its recipient and be dated, and the landlords, rooming houses, and others who accept vouchers without housing the voucher recipient should be liable to fines.) Generous vouchers will minimize substandard housing.
To encourage friends and relatives to take the homeless in and other landlords to re-enter the business, we must throw out rules preventing easy evictions of tenants who disturb the peace or otherwise fail to meet their obligations to their neighbors and the landlord (even publicly funded hostels and shelters routinely evict or refuse to admit disorderly occupants). This accountability will prod some of today's homeless — whom the Clarke Institute found to be more aggressive, antisocial, moody, irritable, and less open to taking responsibility for change — to get along with those around them, as their counterparts once did.
While the government re-regulates the use of public spaces, it should deregulate the housing market to let the homeless find inexpensive housing niches for themselves. The largest sources of appropriate housing — ones that many municipalities wrongly ban — are basement apartments and other occupancies in residential districts.
Because most homeless individuals are neat, clean, and nonviolent, many would find shelter in middle- and lower-class residences willing to set aside some space in exchange for the housing voucher. Such a relationship would especially appeal to homeowners on fixed incomes, who find themselves single and perhaps frail in a large home, and who themselves need a little income and an occasional helping hand with household chores.
We live in times of plenty, with the means and the obligation to humanely look after our most unfortunate members of society. In helping others, we will also help ourselves through more hospitable streets, a healthier society, and the personal gratification of doing our share to help people who have fallen on hard times, and not always from sins of their own making.