I was taking to a friend about anti-homeless laws, and he put it perfectly:
“It’s a huge issue in our society - at the individual level and at the community level - that so many people genuinely believe it’s harder to exist near those who are struggling than it is to BE someone who’s struggling.”
If you're living alongside homeless people it's much more difficult to believe that they're fundamentally different than you, and that reminds you you could easily become homeless yourself, and that forces you to confront the terrifying precarity of your life, and then you might have to do something
some years back, pre-pandemic, I was living in the unfinished basement of a house directly across the way from Lents Park (PDX).
i had an epiphany there. only thing separating me from the folks living in/around the park was a pane of glass. that’s it.
we are the same.
