IMPORTANT NOTE: Humanity for the Homeless is now in archive mode. There is no fancy text, layout, images, animations, etc. The purpose of moving the site content here is to help save money, while at the same time preserving the content of what happened during my trip. All images have been very compressed for page speed. Some edits have been made and are marked with an "EDIT: mm/dd/yyyy". I have not re-read everything I wrote during this trip, and do not plan to at the current time. I probably do not agree with everything I wrote, but will keep it for the sake of truthfulness. Enjoy!
Houston, Texas is a very polarizing city. Those who were born and raised there, love it. Those who visit will spend most of their time trying to figure out how to navigate its roads, all the while cursing the traffic. In fifteen minutes one can drive past a multi-million dollar home, cash-for-gold stores, strip clubs, a major oil company headquarters, slums, and a Whole Foods. It is a city that has grown up, out, and is bursting with life. It is home to six professional sports teams, a mecca for energy giants, and a melting pot of Texan, Hispanic, and African cultures. As of 2010, 6.3 million people called Houston home, and in summer 2015, so did I.
I was living in the midtown area (a hip conglomerate of upscale apartments, restaurants, bars, and arts, about a mile south of downtown). At night, the neighborhood was ablaze with action. Thursday night turtle races at Little Woodrow’s, home Astros games three nights a week, and deals on drinks every day to help worn-out office dwellers get out for a little socializing. As the nights wore thin, the dawn brought the light, and the light to a different story. Every morning, around 6am, the hoards of marginalized masses made their way back into the Midtown area. People set up make-shift tents out of cardboard in the bushes, women with mangled hair pushed around shopping carts which contained the sum of their worldly possessions, and many scavenged for something to drink as the sun rose on the hot Houston asphalt.
These things, unfortunately, became common sites, and I tended to overlook them after having lived there for a week. However, one image did stick with, and disturbed me. I witnessed a homeless man having, what appeared to be, a mental breakdown on the side of the road. He yelled obscenities, ripped his dirty shirt, and paced the street corner as if he was trying to stomp the ground flat. After watching, mesmerized, for about a half-minute, I saw a woman who had just finished working out unknowingly walking in his direction (she had her headphones in and was playing with her phone). I was in my car, and, conscious of the situation, pulled up to a parking spot where I could help the woman if she was accosted. Much to my surprise, she ignored the man, still in the middle of yelling, and he ignored her. She walked past him, into her apartment building. It was such a common occurrence, that it didn’t even bother her.
In retrospect, this act of passiveness is more disturbing than the act itself. From this point forward, I became much more cognizant of the homeless issue around Houston, and around the country for that matter. No matter where I went, small towns to big cities, the plague of homelessness followed. I began looking at these people for what they were… people. Once this veil of remote, abstract misfortune was torn, I could no longer sit and watch. I felt the call to action.
Over the past few months, I have been sketching out a trip that will take me to towns with some of the largest homeless populations in the nation. I will be on the road from the beginning of February, starting in Milwaukee, and ending in April, with San Francisco as my final destination (this is my plan, but locations may change). I am just one person. I know any real world impact I have on this trip will be minimal. I know I will probably not change anyone’s life. I do not want to adopt a “savior complex” mentality, because this is not about me. I do not want to fall into the trap of the “feel good mission trip”; on the contrary, I want to experience the reality of the situation. I know that there are people who are more qualified than me to do this.
Though I don’t consider myself a bad human being, I had times of partying in college and my church attendance record would maybe get a “C+”. In reality, I have been exposed to a problem, I have felt a calling, and I will try to understand the problem by comparing and contrasting the specific issues that exist for homeless populations throughout the country. If I do nothing more than to raise awareness, change someone’s opinion about homelessness for the better, or even give a voice to someone who needs to be heard, my journey will be well-spent.
This blog will play an integral role in my journey. Though I have resisted putting my words out in public (I write software, not essays), I felt that it would be important to have a medium to communicate the stories of the people I meet, the things that I see, and the information I learn. I will try to keep it regularly updated, and keep the entries short in order to be digestible reading material.
EDIT: 06/02/2019 My understanding of Christianity, the person of Jesus, prayer, works, and acts of God have been more refined since this was written, but are still imperfect. The problem at the time of originally writing this, was that I didn't realize how imperfect my views were. I thought I understood the depths of my faith, when, in reality, I was deceiving myself. At this juncture, I will not attempt to add nuance to the following paragraph, but please read it with that in mind.
Many times we find ourselves trying to pray problems away. We pray that God will act on our behalf, or host a miracle for us out of some divine sympathy for our problem. I believe, if you claim to be a Disciple of Christ, it is you that are the answer to prayer. We speak of being able to do all things through Christ, but what is the impact of those words if they are never put into action? I’m not talking about the prayers we pray for medical miracles, or the prayer to land a plane safely, or other things that we cannot control or have no expertise. When we see a problem that we can act on, however… poverty, homelessness, natural disasters, hate between peoples, etcetera… we are the instruments of God to make that change. Christ sets the example of faith in action. Though he spent time in prayer everyday, we focus on, love to talk about, and praise his actions, yet many times will only practice the prayerful nature of Christ. God provided us with literal strength to carry out works. Prayer, in my opinion, is a means to supplement our works with spiritual strength.
I have theorized, read about, and discussed why homelessness exists in our society, but I feel that I will never really understand, and my witness will be hollow, unless I live and work among those who live without a home. To quote Confucius, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” By involving ourselves first-hand into the issues of the world, we gain an understanding of a problem that is abstracted by news, statistics, and hearsay. When we burden ourselves with understanding, we make the first step to truly solving a problem, and we bring humanity back to poverty, crime, hate, and, yes, homelessness.