It seems appropriate, with another Christmas season winding down, to recall the challenges the Holy Family faced when Jesus was born. As Australian Jesuit priest and prolific author Father Gerald O'Collins has observed: "Jesus did not start life at home or in a hospital. He was born in a stable and his crib was an eating trough for animals. That's how his life began, as a homeless baby, born to parents who were sleeping rough. Jesus became a baby on the run, a homeless asylum-seeker in Egypt." Two millenniums have passed. Homelessness has not gone away. Instead, it persists as a continuing concern.
Our most familiar brushes with homelessness often occur when we see people, usually men, standing in tattered clothes at busy intersections, pleading for help with makeshift signs identifying themselves as homeless. Or we see them huddled near churches, libraries, parks, other public spaces. Yet the St. Paul-based Wilder Foundation, which oversees a statewide study of homelessness in Minnesota every three years, suggests that these unsettling scenes are not a representative picture. Wilder's most recent study, taken on Oct. 22, 2015, found that just over a third of the 9,315 people identified as homeless were children 17 years old or younger and their parents. The median age of these children was eight years old. A generation ago, children were a far lower share of our homeless population.
Wilder's 2015 study, which included shelters, found some good news. The state's homeless population fell 9 percent from 10,214 in 2012. Now for the bad news. A less comprehensive statewide survey, mandated annually by the federal government, found a 4.5 percent increase last January vs. a year earlier. Also, reports from homeless shelters and the prospect of deep cuts in government safety nets suggest homelessness is rising again. So come Wilder's 2018 census next October, the overall trend might not look so good. And even though Minnesota has been a national leader in dealing with homelessness, the state's homeless count tripled from 1991 to 2015.
Why has homelessness become such a seemingly intractable problem? Advocates say the safety nets protecting people mired in deep poverty have been weakening. Their rents continue to rise while their incomes fall; affordable rental housing is becoming harder to find. This is the squeeze confronting the poverty-stricken with stark choices: evictions, shelters, temporary housing from family and friends or in worst cases, riding buses or settling into public spaces overnight. Many need specialized services.
Starting in the 1970s, many patients in mental hospitals were "deinstitutionalized" -- discharged from these hospitals, often without permanent housing to turn to. Skid row hotels, which for all of their shortcomings offered rockbottom rent, were demolished to clear the way for urban renewal. Some blamed individual factors -- drug or alcohol addiction or having children out of wedlock, for the emergence of homelessness as a visible blot on the national psyche. Others stressed structural problems -- lack of education and job opportunities, mental health issues, racial discrimination. Today, many agree there is truth in both views. In any event, homelessness has turned out to be an enduring, tough problem with elusive solutions.
We have begun working with Habitat for Humanities, which guides homeless people into home ownership. But most of the homeless can't qualify for home ownership. For them, affordable rentals or shelters offer solutions. We can help them by donating our time and money to Catholic Charities, a leader in providing shelter and services to the homeless in the Twin Cities; becoming more familiar with the complexity of homelessness; and above all, showing mercy for the people caught up in such unfortunate circumstances.
Fr. O'Collins points out that when Jesus was growing up in Nazareth, he did enjoy a home to live in. But once he began his public ministry, he again became homeless. Speaking about himself as the Son of Man, Jesus said: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Matt 8:20; Luke 9:58)." Fr. O'Collins concludes: "At the end, Jesus did not die at home or in a hospital, supported by the kind of care that dying people can expect. Who is more homeless than a person nailed up on a cross?"
As part of our Faith in Action program, we will examine homelessness at a panel discussion next Sunday morning between our Masses, in Hofstede Hall. Please join us. Dave Beal, Lourdes Justice and Charity Committee