How We Treat The Homeless

Super All Year

The holiday season is a beautiful time in New York City. Trees sparkle with twinkling lights, stores and businesses put up festive decorations, and the smell of roasting nuts fills the air. The people change, too. Shoppers bustle to and fro hauling bags of fashionable gifts, smiling at one another. Leisure time lends itself to cooking special foods or visiting distant friends and family. The general population becomes intoxicated with happiness, and life itself seems to improve dramatically. Then, the holidays pass, replaced by barren streets and frigid temperatures. The neighborly love that was the lifeblood of December runs dry, replaced by the snow and ice of January.

For the homeless, life returns to normal. The special attention they might have received as part of the "Christmas spirit" is gone, and finding a place to sleep where the police won't remove them becomes a matter of life and death. With the night temperatures dropping into the single digits, finding a warm spot in a city that has turned a cold shoulder to the homeless is a daunting task. There is a man who sleeps on the heating grate outside my dormitory; the exhaust from the laundry room keeps him from freezing. He has found a solution, at least a temporary one, but others are dying every night. Yet, the majority of the population does nothing to help these individuals.

Homelessness is a difficult problem which I have struggled to address and which no doubt is of concern to others. I believe that Michael Pollan, in his essay titled An Animal's Place provides a method through which this problem can be more carefully examined.

In An Animal's Place, Pollan discusses his philosophy on ethical eating. He proposes that society has "a right to look", or essentially a need to observe the killing and processing of meat animals in the American farm system. "This is going to sound quixotic, but maybe all we need to do to redeem industrial animal agriculture in this country is to pass a law requiring that the steel and concrete walls of the CAFO's and slaughterhouses be replaced with... glass." (Pollan 111) He claims that he will only consume meat and support meat farming if it is done in a humane and civilized manner, and that the only way to insure this is to bring the problems and horrors of the current system under public scrutiny.

He describes properly treated animals as "food with a face" (Pollan 110), believing that what the public observes directly links to their social decisions. "People see very different things when they look into the eyes of a pig or a chicken or a steer - a being without a soul, a 'subject of a life' entitled to rights, a link in the food chain [...] But figuring out what we do think, and what we can eat, might begin with the looking." (110) The "right to look" is his catalyst to the idea that the problem of animal ethics will work itself out properly if introduced into the public spotlight: "Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to do it [dehumanized animal farming] this way." (111)

This public eye means of social change can also be applied to the homeless situation in many metropolitan areas. The homeless are not completely out of sight, but they are most certainly out of mind. The common public has come to de-humanize the homeless in such a way that most can walk right by a man begging on the street and not feel more than a temporary twinge of sympathy, much like contemplating the life of a steer before enjoying a porterhouse at a favorite restaurant. Unfortunately, for some, this feeling is so fleeting, and the instinct to be selfish so great, that after walking a block they no longer remember interacting with that man.

Thus, simply observing the homeless and witnessing their anguish is not enough. The homeless are a visible problem in many cities today, yet their suffering continues. What purpose do glass walls serve if the observer can not overcome self denial? Pollan addresses this problem by suggesting that not only should the process of animal farming come under scrutiny, but the lives of animals in general be more visible as well, much like in earlier times before industrialization. As such, if the lives of the unhoused were taken into full account and not limited to stereotypes, society may better understand the true nature of the problem and the building blocks towards forming a solution.

Current solutions to this social dilemma predominantly include organizations which provide shelter and food to walk-ins and strays. Mostly run by churches or proactive community groups, soup kitchens and the like are sometimes good for a quick meal, but nothing more. Shelters have residence time allotments, and food pantries have very limited restrictions on the amount of food distributed to patrons, especially repeat customers.

Some organizations have taken different steps to assist those in need, among which is the Detroit Rescue Mission in Michigan. They have proposed an interesting relief plan: to host a three day party during the upcoming Super Bowl XL weekend, in which the homeless of Detroit will be given shelter, food, and new clothing. Four big screen televisions