DC Homeless Crisis Over! [Somebody tell the homeless.] FWD
Tom Boland (wgcp@earthlink.net)
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 01:01:36 -0400
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http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-10/09/010l-100998-idx.html
FWD Washington Post - October 9, 1998; Page A27
THE HOMELESS CRISIS IS OVER! SOMEBODY TELL THE HOMELESS.
By William Raspberry
Where are the plaques, the awards, the Nobel Prizes? Where is the
acknowledgment -- even a simple announcement -- that the nation's capital
has solved the once-crisis-level problem of homelessness? Can it be that
they don't even know the crisis is over?
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. It's hard, after all, to walk along the
streets of Washington, or through its lovely parks, and see the evidence
that the problem has been solved. I came by my evidence to that effect
simply by counting newspaper headlines.
In 1990 The Washington Post had 149 headlines in which the word homeless or
homelessness appeared (excluding the stray story about a homeless pet, a
fire that rendered so many families homeless, or homelessness caused by
hurricane or typhoon outside the United States).
Just five years later, the number of "homeless" headlines in The Post --
including stories about homeless activists and homeless suspects -- was
down to 45. And there it hovered -- 46 in 1996, 41 in 1997. Now,
three-quarters of the way through 1998, I count: 14. At that rate, we
should finish the year with 18 or 19 stories about the homeless. Surely the
crisis is over.
Well, maybe not. Journalistic old-timers used to say you could have a crime
wave any time an editor decided to have one. You'd just take the
run-of-the-mill police reports that often never made the paper and report
them fully. Maybe you'd keep a running total of assaults to accompany the
daily stories that demonstrated (you would say) how unsafe the city has
become. Maybe you'd lump a variety of small crimes -- muggings, thefts,
assaults -- under a headline calculated to show how dangerous things were.
And readers, most often, would start to feel unsafe. Instant crime wave.
Maybe, in similar fashion, we've accomplished an instant cure to the
problem of homelessness -- not by hoking up stories about progress but by
losing interest in stories on the "crisis."
I'm not suggesting manipulative intent. Reporters mostly report what comes
to them. If activists make a big deal about homelessness, officials tend to
respond with new outlays and initiatives, and journalists cover the whole
thing. Washingtonians shouldn't be surprised when I point out that 1990 was
the year Mitch Snyder died. A lot of our homelessness coverage that year,
and in the years before that, was driven -- created -- by Snyder, whose
Community for Creative Non-Violence put homelessness on the local map.
But it wasn't just Snyder and the other activists. Something real was going
on. There really were more homeless people sleeping in parks and on steam
grates, more demand for shelters and soup lines and homeless hotels, more
homeless families -- a new phenomenon in America. Without the reality, even
Mitch Snyder couldn't have created a homelessness "crisis."
Does the dearth of homeless stories similarly reflect an underlying reality
that the problem has abated?
It's hard to say, homelessness being extremely difficult to keep count of.
All I know is that the soup kitchens and the shelters keep running, that
the vacant-eyed and occasionally menacing street people seem about as
prevalent as always -- and that I hardly notice them anymore.
Isn't it awful that a lunch-hour walk that might have left me depressed and
upset over our neglected men and women -- and families! -- a decade ago
hardly registers on my consciousness today? Or is it simply a fact of human
nature that after a long enough time of enduring traffic tie-ups, dreadful
schools, dirty streets and homeless "bums," these things become just so
much background noise?
A part of what has happened, of course, is that we've gotten beyond our
naive notion that homelessness is primarily a problem of inadequate
housing, fixable by infusions of caring and cash. It's a lot more
complicated than that, and its very complexity induces a sort of
indifference.
In the months before he left office nearly two years ago, former HUD
secretary Henry Cisneros told several times of his encounter with a
homeless man he'd seen sleeping on a grate not far from HUD's central
headquarters. Embarrassed by his own apparent indifference, he said, he
decided to approach the man just to talk to him and see how he might be
helpful.
"Basically, he looked at me in a very agitated way and told me to mind my
own business," he said. The encounter, and the sense it evoked of his own
helplessness, clearly made an impression on Cisneros.
Do you suppose he's long since adjusted to his inability to do much about
homelessness? Is that what has happened to the rest of us?
END FORWARD
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **
HOMELESS PEOPLE'S NETWORK <http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/> Home Page
ARCHIVES <http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/archives.html> read posts to HPN
TO JOIN <http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/join.html> or email Tom <wgcp@earthlink.net>
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Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii"
http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-10/09/010l-100998-idx.html
FWD Washington Post - October 9, 1998; Page A27
<paraindent><param>right,left</param>THE HOMELESS CRISIS IS OVER!
SOMEBODY TELL THE HOMELESS.
By William Raspberry
</paraindent>
Where are the plaques, the awards, the Nobel Prizes? Where is the
acknowledgment -- even a simple announcement -- that the nation's
capital has solved the once-crisis-level problem of homelessness? Can
it be that they don't even know the crisis is over?
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. It's hard, after all, to walk along
the streets of Washington, or through its lovely parks, and see the
evidence that the problem has been solved. I came by my evidence to
that effect simply by counting newspaper headlines.
In 1990 The Washington Post had 149 headlines in which the word
homeless or homelessness appeared (excluding the stray story about a
homeless pet, a fire that rendered so many families homeless, or
homelessness caused by hurricane or typhoon outside the United
States).
Just five years later, the number of "homeless" headlines in The Post
-- including stories about homeless activists and homeless suspects --
was down to 45. And there it hovered -- 46 in 1996, 41 in 1997. Now,
three-quarters of the way through 1998, I count: 14. At that rate, we
should finish the year with 18 or 19 stories about the homeless. Surely
the crisis is over.
Well, maybe not. Journalistic old-timers used to say you could have a
crime wave any time an editor decided to have one. You'd just take the
run-of-the-mill police reports that often never made the paper and
report them fully. Maybe you'd keep a running total of assaults to
accompany the daily stories that demonstrated (you would say) how
unsafe the city has become. Maybe you'd lump a variety of small crimes
-- muggings, thefts, assaults -- under a headline calculated to show
how dangerous things were. And readers, most often, would start to feel
unsafe. Instant crime wave.
Maybe, in similar fashion, we've accomplished an instant cure to the
problem of homelessness -- not by hoking up stories about progress but
by losing interest in stories on the "crisis."
I'm not suggesting manipulative intent. Reporters mostly report what
comes to them. If activists make a big deal about homelessness,
officials tend to respond with new outlays and initiatives, and
journalists cover the whole thing. Washingtonians shouldn't be
surprised when I point out that 1990 was the year Mitch Snyder died. A
lot of our homelessness coverage that year, and in the years before
that, was driven -- created -- by Snyder, whose Community for Creative
Non-Violence put homelessness on the local map.
But it wasn't just Snyder and the other activists. Something real was
going on. There really were more homeless people sleeping in parks and
on steam grates, more demand for shelters and soup lines and homeless
hotels, more homeless families -- a new phenomenon in America. Without
the reality, even Mitch Snyder couldn't have created a homelessness
"crisis."
Does the dearth of homeless stories similarly reflect an underlying
reality that the problem has abated?
It's hard to say, homelessness being extremely difficult to keep count
of. All I know is that the soup kitchens and the shelters keep running,
that the vacant-eyed and occasionally menacing street people seem about
as prevalent as always -- and that I hardly notice them anymore.
Isn't it awful that a lunch-hour walk that might have left me depressed
and upset over our neglected men and women -- and families! -- a decade
ago hardly registers on my consciousness today? Or is it simply a fact
of human nature that after a long enough time of enduring traffic
tie-ups, dreadful schools, dirty streets and homeless "bums," these
things become just so much background noise?
A part of what has happened, of course, is that we've gotten beyond our
naive notion that homelessness is primarily a problem of inadequate
housing, fixable by infusions of caring and cash. It's a lot more
complicated than that, and its very complexity induces a sort of
indifference.
In the months before he left office nearly two years ago, former HUD
secretary Henry Cisneros told several times of his encounter with a
homeless man he'd seen sleeping on a grate not far from HUD's central
headquarters. Embarrassed by his own apparent indifference, he said, he
decided to approach the man just to talk to him and see how he might be
helpful.
"Basically, he looked at me in a very agitated way and told me to mind
my own business," he said. The encounter, and the sense it evoked of
his own helplessness, clearly made an impression on Cisneros.
Do you suppose he's long since adjusted to his inability to do much
about homelessness? Is that what has happened to the rest of us?
END FORWARD
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **
HOMELESS PEOPLE'S NETWORK <<http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/> Home Page
ARCHIVES <<http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/archives.html> read posts to HPN
TO JOIN <<http://aspin.asu.edu/hpn/join.html> or email Tom <<wgcp@earthlink.net>
--============_-1303867594==_ma============--