Homeless in RI: Imagine there’s no bottom – Rev. Duane Clinker, (video)

by Rev. Duane Clinker, Pastor, Open Table of Christ, United Methodist Church, Providence (written on Christmas Eve, 2024)

The freezing happens slowly at first. There are no shelter beds open to you. Your tent and meager belongings were destroyed weeks ago by the authorities in violation of the RI Homeless Bill of Rights. It is night and you are cold. You try to just keep moving to stay warm. Then a sharp wind begins. It quickly cuts through anything you have found to wear. It goes right to the bones. The shivering starts, spreads quickly. You can’t stop it. Your whole body shakes. You’ve got to get inside, but all doors are closed to you now. There is no rescue.

Then the whip of the wind begins its final work, lashing at you. Your feet and hands hurt and then go numb. Your fingers don’t work. Then the shivering stops and you realize your body is freezing. You have already tried everything. You couldn’t walk it off. That doorway didn’t help stop the wind. That dumpster is locked. You can’t break into the back of that truck. The terror and disorientation takes over. The heart slows, it seems the nerves themselves freeze, in what almost feels like comfort before the end.

We who are older remember what young and middle-age adults have never experienced: a time when unhoused persons were rare on public streets; a time before people begging at intersections were a common sight. It was in those days there was still a kind of safety net for the people. If the unthinkable disease, or job loss, or disability happened, your economic fall might be stopped before you hit the street. You might at least be able to rent a low cost public housing unit to help you survive.

Now, such things are all but forgotten. Today, the historic and economic causes of the housing crisis are ignored. Cuts in government housing programs began in earnest in the 1980s. In the 1990s perhaps the biggest fell quietly. The US government banned new HUD public housing units from being built, basically leaving things to the “free market.” But free-markets seek the highest profit, and there are more profits in expensive housing than in poor.

Now, mega-wealth balloons at the top while any effective actions on the problems at the bottom are endlessly postponed in avalanches meetings with no action. And so, the wealthy gain new power to take even more.

Today most young working people cannot even dream of affording a home. (When did that become acceptable)? Now, any of us who experience a job loss or health failure may find ourselves caught in economic free fall. Prices for rentals skyrocket.

Our supposed moral compass as a society has been reset by government by the rich to navigate us away from the “common good.” Instead it points to the right of excessive wealth by the few at the expense of the all. A kind of moral cord, a certain human and social obligation, (always frayed in the best of times), has completely snapped.

Our state is in moral free fall. There are not nearly enough shelter beds for the unhoused and the waiting list for new homeless seems endless, and the Governor refuses to act.

Even the few new shelter beds already built are left unoccupied as people huddle in the cold, because of pointless delays. The governor won’t work to cut the red tape. With nowhere but the street left, the governor permits the raiding and seizing of personal property and the destruction of temporary tents. The governor refuses to enforce the Homeless Bill of Rights.

Vacant public buildings are available for remodeling as emergency shelter that could provide the hundreds of extra emergency shelter beds needed now. The Governor refuses to act.

In the midst skyrocketing rents, and evictions. Families live in terror of losing the ability to find housing of any type. Cities and towns refuse to open up zoning to allow more real low income housing and the governor fails to act.

The housing shortage threatens the life and well being of thousands. People will freeze and will die from sickness made worse by the street. Living without shelter can take decades off the lives even of those that survive. The Governor’s Department of Health doesn’t even identify and count the deaths caused by the crisis.

Is it we who have gone numb?

RI Governor McKee won’t declare a state of emergency to give him the power to effectively address this problem. This RI wealth-system pushes new people onto the street daily. We are in a time of great danger, and not just for those now unhoused. The governor won’t act.

We are all at risk unless WE do.
And, if not there will soon be no bottom to how far we can fall.

___

Rev. Duane Clinker, Pastor. Open Table of Christ, United Methodist Church, Providence