After a semester and a half of writing on local issues, I’ve noticed some recurring themes. One is protesters and the other, occurring almost as often, is protesters getting arrested. Friday of last week, six protesters were cuffed at City Hall for refusing to leave after hours. They were there with many other community members to voice their objections to a policy that limits the homeless to sixty days total per year in a shelter. I agree with these protesters that sixty days is far too few.
While this sixty day limit doesn’t apply at some shelters during winter, the shelters are often overstuffed on the coldest nights. And some people are still spending the night outside. Winter in Wisconsin is cold. Basically, if I can’t walk a hundred feet outside without a hat, no one should be spending the night there. I’m sure the numb ears and fingers of every UW-Madison student agree with me. The human body is simply not meant to live outside in Wisconsin’s winters and I find it unacceptable that we as a society allow it to happen when we have the means to do something about it. The solution is simple: better homeless shelters. Yes, it would be costly. I guarantee, however, that more government money is being spent on stupider and more useless things. Not to mention the money would be going toward saving potential lives.
At this point, the fiscally responsible reader may be shaking his or her head. “Our society can’t afford to fully support the living of those who don’t contribute to it,” they may say. An understandable point, but it is too often forgotten what our society supposedly can afford. To name one example, the U.S. government spends more money on tanks that never get used than most of us will earn in our lives. There’s also bureaucracy, war, nuclear weapons, tax breaks for the rich, enforcement of drug laws and teaching children to write in cursive to name a few other things we pretend are more important than people. There is enough frivolous spending in government to house and feed every homeless person in the country. It’s simply not true that we can’t afford to take care of them.
Madison’s homeless shelters simply don’t have the space or means to support the number of homeless here. If this is the case, the solution is simple: better homeless shelters.
The only reason homelessness is even allowed to exist in America is that the homeless are a voiceless minority. It’s so easy to marginalize people when they can’t do or say anything about it. It’s hard to admit to ourselves the people sitting out in the cold are humans like us, so we allow ourselves to ignore them so we don’t have to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes from our desire to be good people while also not lifting a finger to help others.
There are exactly zero members of government who directly represent the homeless population. They have absolutely no say in making the policies that affect them. I’m not suggesting we start putting the homeless in government offices, but it’s time we began taking more time to think about the needs of those to whom fortune was not as kind and who cannot speak for themselves. Apathy toward others is, in my opinion, the greatest problem in the world today.
Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
