It's disturbing because there are some in our community that will complain about damned near anything if it involves the homeless. Hell, even the homeless sometimes complain about helping the homeless!
Case in point: at a recent Homelessness Commission meeting, a man who also likes to consider himself a "homeless advocate," although he has no credentials or background to do so other than the fact that he himself often claims to be homeless, argued against Lt. Swisher's efforts at helping the Homeless in the course of her duties.
Say what?
You read it right.
The man, who is known by many in these meetings for his often factually incorrect "assessments" of current policies and programs, as well as his argumentative and blame-laying discourses whenever a new program or service is to be offered in the homeless community, stated that she should be out solving crimes instead of referring homeless people for help.
Interestingly, the man often rails against these services, yet he uses many of them on a daily basis. The unfortunate aspect of this is of course is that while he doesn't actually appear to need these services, he continues to use them, which then lessens the net available services for others who are in far more dire straights than this gentleman appears to suffer from. As one of my homeless clients observed, "he's one of the best-dressed homeless people I've ever known!" Now I don't mean to imply that the Homeless are generally bad dressers, they aren't, but there is no doubt that it is difficult to maintain one's wardrobe in tip top condition when one lives on the streets....but I digress.
What was particularly disturbing about the comments this man made this time is that for one, it's typically not the beat cop who does this type of work but instead the department's detectives. To be sure, beat cops often do solve crimes, but typically speaking, detectives are the ones who investigate them. Additionally, the beat cop who interacts and responds to the needs of the Homeless can often obtain information that helps the detectives solve crimes, since many Homeless individuals see things that occur in public simply because they are in it on a constant basis.
Beat cops are also often the first person the Homeless individual interacts with when in need or in danger, which makes providing them referrals to service providers a top priority for the officer, provided the individual is not invloved in the commission of a crime at the time of the interaction. Oddest of all about the comments from this man is the strange backtracking he seems to have taken regarding improving relations between the police and the Homeless community. The Homeless and their advocates - him included - have literally been screaming for better relations with the police.
It's obvious that the man isn't thinking clearly, which may also at least partially explains why he apprently seems to remains homeless year after year. Many of us feel terribly sorry for the man and have offered assistance at a number of levels, but unfortunately, his behavior, like that of a small number of other homeless individuals, have that "one bad apple" effect. In this case however, it is particularly problematic, since those who don't know any better can be misled by the persuasive nature of of the gentleman's arguments and seemingly real passion for assisting the Homeless. It is only when behavior or argumentative demands like this one arises that people begin to recognize there may be a disconnect between logic and reality for the individual.
I imagine that uninformed individuals will almost certainly find something wrong with Nashville's upcoming Project Homeless Connect, scheduled for December 2nd and already booked at the Municipal Auditorium. However, while it wll probably generate its share of naysayers, I'm hoping the voices of support - and there are a large and continually growing number of them, coming from places one wouldn't ordinarily expect support for homeless assistance to arise from - will drown out the wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who don't understand the difficulties so many homeless men and women face.
So I guess there are no homeless people in Sanford
Project Homeless Connect has been moved from downtown Sanford to a Longwood church after several people complained the program should not be held at the city’s civic center.
Northland, A Church Distributed, agreed to host the July 30 event.
Last year, more than 350 people attended the Sanford event. About 200 volunteers offered medical services, employment counseling, food, showers, mental health assistance and other help. Because of the change of location, the number of homeless participants is expected to decline this year.
The move was made at the request of the Sanford City Commission, which apparently is less troubled by guns shows than help for those in need. Despite the council's apparent belief that there are no homeless people in town (do they really think we're busing them in?), Sanford is the logical place to hold the event because a significant number of Seminole County’s homeless population live there.
Read the Sanford Herald reports here and here. And check out the forum on this at the Florida Social Justice Network.
And stay tuned: Apparently the Kissimmee Civic Center has backed out, too.
