This week, in our latest installment of Life on the Streets, vendors share their thoughts about fear — being fearful and being feared.
“People either respond with fear, apathy or they respond with kindness out there,” said vendor Daniel Cox, who has known years of homelessness. “I guess it’s wired somewhere in us to be fearful of what we don’t understand.”
LIFE ON THE STREETS: Fear goes both ways
That’s undoubtedly true. We are naturally fearful of things we don’t understand. But this isn’t a shadow in the dark we’re talking about. This is homelessness. These are human beings going through months and years of the worst day of their life and among the most vulnerable population in our city.
We need to stop letting fear fill that void between retreat and taking action. As Daniel said, we have a choice: Fear, apathy or kindness. You don’t have to guess which one Street Roots believes in.
SCIENCE: Why empathy for homeless people is lacking
Almost on a weekly basis in the vendor office, we hear stories of people overcoming their fears. Some have fears of how sobriety might change their life and their relationships: Some fear ever losing it again. Some fear how their children will view them after an extended — and conflicted — absence. How they will be received standing on a street corner, selling a newspaper. Fears of yet another rejection, after getting their hopes dashed one more time. There are fears of what to do after losing their belongings, or how they will cope when their link to the world has gone missing or passed away. And then there is just surviving the night.
All of us at Street Roots take stock in the resiliency of our vendors to overcome their fears. We’ve seen what’s on the other side. There’s dignity in overcoming your fears, and there are solutions.
No fear is assuaged by pushing the shadow further into the dark, hoping it will just go away. It is only overcome by being honest about the situation, by understanding not just the what but the reasons why. That applies not just to homelessness but also addiction, mental illness, anger and isolation. It applies to housing market forces, wage stagnation and family instability, all of which play a role in creating the homeless crisis we see across this state and nation.
So when we think about a statewide “state of emergency” around homelessness, which state House Speaker Tina Kotek is proposing this session, we see an opportunity to look squarely at the big picture in all its complexity. Because we cannot properly address the problem without taking it all on board — all of it. It is far bigger than our current complaint-driven system, which, for all its good intentions, compels a narrative of fear to drive action at the street level. The problem is entangled in decades of missteps with fear-based policy, and we need to understand this. It is about a staggering 38,000 people who experienced homelessness in our tri-county area in 2017, and the tens of thousands of Oregonians for whom the same fate awaits.
DIRECTOR'S DESK: Yes to declaring a statewide emergency on homelessness
A statewide state of emergency has the potential to fast-track real solutions around immediate and long-term approaches to homelessness and housing instability. More than the placement of shelters, it’s an opportunity to create a space where we can better understand each other and how we should allocate our resources for greatest impact. It might force us to address our fears head on and see solutions and resources where we were once afraid to look. Without fear standing in the way, we have so many doors we can open.
Just as this paper was going to press this week, The Oregonian reported on the discovery of a calendar at Portland Fire Station No. 7 that, according to Portland Fire Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, featured images of camps that disparaged the houseless community.
The president of the union, the Portland Fire Fighters Association, wrote it off as dark humor, a coping mechanism, to deal with the situation on the streets. According to the report, the union president then brought up an act of violence to highlight the situation — a random act in a bar where a person, reportedly homeless and with a history of threatening people with knives, assaulted an off-duty fire lieutenant. While this incident had nothing to do with the work of the fire department, it becomes a sweeping representation of people experiencing homelessness. The victim is a vaunted individual, while the perpetrator is a surrogate for an entire population. This is stoking fear while accomplishing nothing to quell the suffering of people living in those camps — these camps that were held up for mockery as a coping mechanism.
Our fear won’t keep a single person off the street, but our kindness will. Imagine if we paused to see tomorrow’s homeless as the human beings they are today. How far are we going to get toward a solution if we’re too afraid to even say hello to each other? Our vendor, DJ, has the right idea.
“I always say, ‘Hi, how are you doing,’” DJ said. “So I can let people know that it’s not the end of the world.”