The City of Las Vegas has this week banned soup kitchens from its parks: Anyone feeding homeless people now risks a $1000 fine or six months in jail.
In other words it has made feeding the poor a crime.
There are good reasons to discourage soup kitchens — indeed several cities both in the US and elsewhere have implemented policies which have done just that, insisting that providing food only deals with the symptoms and does not touch the underlying causes; preferring instead to put in place programs in hostels and specialist centers where the homeless are provided with shelter, advice, healthcare and support — but discouraging something is one thing and making it a criminal offense is another.
Homeless people are the most vulnerable people in society. They are the people who have slipped through the net. Not only are they the poorest of the poor, but they are quite often the product of difficult childhoods: Physical and sexual abuse, parents with alcohol or substance abuse problems and broken homes are common among the personal histories of people who find themselves homeless. A substantial proportion is also mentally ill. The homeless are the members of society who have the least access to resources and support and yet the ones who need it most.
Homelessness leads to disempowerment and isolation and reinforces the cycle of poverty. It is a terrible thing. I find it no surprise that in Arabic one of the most offensive insults is to wish someone the destruction of their home — and the word home itself, in this instance the Arabic word beit, includes not just the physical bricks and mortar that make up a home, but the family household and the sense of well-being, inclusion and security that comes with it.
Homelessness is something I find hard to envision. From my position of comfort it is the most terrifying prospect, a cause of great affliction, one that happens to other people. But how do we the rich — and I use the word rich in its most global reach — deal with our collective responsibility to look after the vulnerable? How do we deal with the people sleeping rough on our streets? Or the families living crammed together in temporary accommodation? Or the children living scared for their safety, their lives and health constantly at risk?
Poorly is the answer. How many of us walk past a homeless person on the street as if we were passing an inanimate object? How many feel annoyance at the beggar who asks for loose change as you come out of the theater or a restaurant? How many feel threatened or repulsed by the sight of people sleeping rough on the street? How many blame the homeless for their plight and feel not pity but anger and irritation at their existence?
Of course there are also many good Samaritans out there who run the soup kitchens that Vegas has banned for instance. Even those of us who do not get directly involved in helping the poor will dig deep into our pockets and donate generously to charity. The issue is not a lack of good will but an inability to relate to people whom we see as different. There is a barricade mentality, an urge to propel homeless people out of sight and to focus our attention on people whom we think of as more like us.
Part of the reason the City of Las Vegas has banned the soup kitchens from its parks is that it puts off “normal” people from going to the park, it disrupts the peace and tranquility of those who have done relatively well out of life.
I do sympathize with the citizens of Las Vegas who would rather not have homeless people congregating in their neighborhoods. I understand their instinct to insulate themselves, to protect themselves from the grim reality of life on the street, to avoid facing the misery of others as they lead their lives of relative plenty. I too feel it, I feel it on a much grander scale whenever I switch on my television set and see images from the Middle East — be it Iraq, Palestine or Lebanon, the images are relentlessly violent and heart-breaking. Part of me wishes I could push those images out of my consciousness; then I could barricade myself in my pleasant life and forget about their suffering.
But insularity, protectionism, barricades, security — these are all barriers that give the illusion of safety and distance. They make us observers to the problems of others and take away our sense of responsibility. They also make it easier for us to feel threatened and to justify actions that are detrimental to others on the grounds that we are protecting our own interests.
This latest legislation in Nevada is an example of such a barrier. It gives the citizens in the park the illusion that homelessness does not exist. It also shows a worrying lack of empathy for the most vulnerable members of society and points to a propensity to identify with the strong to the detriment of the weak and dispossessed.
Within this context, perhaps we should not be so surprised at the lack of empathy for the plight of Lebanese civilians, hundreds of thousands of which have become homeless, their livelihoods and homes destroyed. After all what does it say about contemporary American society when feeding the poor in its parks can become a crime but the killing of innocent civilians in a distant land is not?
