Our neighbors

Gene, age 59, lives in the toney Park Slope area of Brooklyn.  A chemist, he earned his Ph.D. at Wisconsin, and did post-doctoral work at Columbia.  He worked for many years for a major pharmaceutical company, where his work resulted in over forty patents.

Park Slope has leafy streets lined with fashionable row houses.  Gene doesn't live in one of them.  He lives in an SUV parked along the curb, where he sleeps on a mildewed futon.

The New York Times carried his story today in a lengthy feature article.  The thrust of the article was to show how his neighborhood gradually shifted from being appalled by his presence to acceptance, and ultimately became willing to help him out -- both financially and, to some extent, otherwise.  Gene has finally qualified for disability payments -- based on arthritis in his ankle -- which are keeping him afloat.  He no longer has to collect cans and bottles for their deposits, or hunt for nearby soup kitchens.

He still lives in his vehicle.  His daily search for appropriate restrooms and showers presumably continues.  But he's planning to move back to Wisconsin, where costs are lower.

In Seattle, we have been confronting the problems of homelessness.  An area beneath I-5, as it passes through the city, has been taken over by a diverse collection of unfortunates -- from criminals and drug abusers to people, with their families, who have been recently and unexpectedly laid off from legitimate employment.  Unless we avert our eyes, we can see straggly tents, damp sleeping bags, piles of debris, as we pass by.  Closer inspection, according to authorities, also reveals human waste, garbage, and syringes.

The area, appropriately, is called "The Jungle. One observer remarked that, within the enclave, you don't even feel you're still in the United States.   The London-based Guardian recently provided Seattle some unwanted international attention in its study of the problem.  And The Jungle is only one facet of the homelessness problem in Seattle.  Widespread squatting in vacant buildings is another.

No one has proposed a total solution to the problem.  No such solution exists, I suspect.  Tent cities, which Seattle sponsors, offer some temporary relief.  Cheap long-term housing is needed, but where?  Seattle, like San Francisco, is a small geographic area, hemmed in by bodies of water.  Zoning changes permitting increased population density are probably necessary, but everyone's immediate reaction is "Not In My Backyard."  It's a selfish reaction, but it's understandable.  It's my reaction.  Increased density -- whether allowing taller buildings or smaller lots -- changes the character of neighborhoods, and of the city itself. 

Increased density probably would decrease property values.  But those of us lucky enough to have bought property when it was less expensive have profited greatly by the inability of others who arrived later to do the same.  The calculus of fairness is complicated.

Unable to figure out a solution -- to either the root causes of homelessness or to its immediate symptoms -- many of us donate money to food banks and other services for the homeless.  Many of Gene's neighbors -- impressed by Gene's educational and employment history and by the complicated history of his descent to his present plight -- have done the same.  But the problem isn't just lack of money.  The homeless also need personalized help just to manage the chores of day to day life.

Mr. Wiener [a Park Slope neighbor] said getting money was simple — in all, about $5,000 was given by 10 people, and some of it remains unspent — but the nuts and bolts of helping someone with layers of problems took more attention than just writing a check: medical appointments, the motor vehicle agency, the disability application. “It wasn’t that hard to do — you just had to be willing do it,” Mr. Wiener said. “It turns out that people who mean well aren’t actually willing to do much.”

Who can blame them?  Gene may be a pleasant exception, but the homeless, in general, are often smelly, sometimes disoriented, often ungrateful, and just hard for many of us genteel folks to relate to. 

Right?

When the Good Samaritan, in the biblical parable, saw the robbed and assaulted victim lying beside the road, he could have just called 911 and even perhaps left the poor fellow some money. That would have been a lot more than the priest and the Levite did.  But the Samaritan did more and, the parable suggests, simple humanity seems to require more.

How much more, and whether -- in our more complex society -- we, as individuals, can delegate all our personal responsibility for others to the State, are the questions we need to consider.