Thursday, December 20, 2007
Homeless debate requires empathy
Shanna Flowers
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The plight of Roanoke's homeless has been in the news lately.
City council members have worried aloud from the podium whether homeless people from other areas were piling into Roanoke because services are too plentiful. On Friday, Mayor Nelson Harris is expected to announce a regional, 10-year plan to end homelessness in the city.
But what you might not remember is that this isn't the first time city leaders have had a serious discussion about the homeless.
Then-Mayor Noel Taylor called a homeless summit 21 years ago. In 1986, he summoned the heads of city social services, The Salvation Army, Roanoke Rescue Mission and Roanoke Area Ministries.
Joy Sylvester-Johnson was there. On Wednesday, the head of the Rescue Mission reflected on the effort led by Taylor, a minister.
What comes foremost in her mind is the one empathy the participants shared for the homeless: compassion.
"I remember how compassionate everyone was," Sylvester-Johnson said as she sat in her office. "How concerned they were about being compassionate to the people."
She said Taylor wanted to create a day shelter so that the homeless would have a safe haven during the day after leaving the Rescue Mission in the morning.
Equally important, Sylvester-Johnson said, the participants wanted to make sure that the homeless had access to resources they needed to improve their lives.
Because of the effort, the RAM House day shelter was established a year later in 1987. It celebrated its 20th anniversary two weeks ago.
In RAM House's early years, advocates for the homeless had an office on site and helped them access services.
Eventually, that ended, Sylvester-Johnson said, presumably because of financial cuts.
Interdiction was implemented to help homeless alcoholics.
Under that practice, homeless people who were arrested 10 times in a year for public drunkenness and sentenced to 12 months in jail qualified for treatment through Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare.
That program relied on the participation of the court system, police and sheriff's department. Sylvester-Johnson said some judges didn't want to sentence defendants to a year, the time necessary to complete comprehensive treatment.
Again, Sylvester-Johnson said, she believes money for the program was redirected to something else.
In the past 20 years, Roanoke's homeless population has grown 363 percent, according to a report prepared by the Roanoke Valley Alleghany Regional Advisory Council on Homelessness. The annual increase in cities across the country ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent a year.
That three-digit increase over the past decade caught city council's attention last month and pushed the issue into the spotlight again after all these years.
Good.
As a community, and Roanoke is no different from any other, the homeless are invisible to everyone except those who work with them.
Having the expertise of people such as the leaders of Rescue Mission, RAM House, Trust and other agencies should help the Roanoke officials as they discuss the issue.
And while I'm on it, Roanoke is all about attracting people from all over Western Virginia to shop at its malls, take advantage of its cultural activities, work and eat here. With prosperity comes poverty. So city officials shouldn't welcome one without preparing to deal with the other.
That said, homelessness is not just a Roanoke issue. City council members lacked tact and compassion in how they raised the issue.
But it's on the table, and other communities need to be there in upcoming weeks and months as a strategy is devised to help the area's homeless.
A strategy needs to be devised. One idea that has come up is establishing a clearinghouse to keep homeless people from falling through the cracks and to make sure they get the services they need or that services aren't duplicated.
It's worth exploring.
The dust-up last month at council ruffled feathers throughout the community. But Sylvester-Johnson said she sees the exchange as an opportunity to discuss the issue.
"It's not a good conversation if it just ends with talk. It needs to end with action."
