Yesterday, as I was walking around Philadelphia with my brother, I couldn't help but notice the amount of homeless people and it made me sad. Before moving to NYC, I had a typical reaction to seeing homeless people - sadness mixed with a little disgust. I am not proud of that. But I'm even less proud of the reaction I had after several years of living in NYC, which was a complete disregard for these people and outright anger at the government for not being able to help fix the situation. Mostly because I got tired of seeing it day in and day out and having to live with it. Again, not my proudest moment. The thing is: when you live in a city, homelessness becomes common place and you just try to ignore it. Because you can't help everybody, you end up helping nobody.
Now that I have been away from city living for over a year and I have much less contact with this societal issue, I find my humanity about the homeless has returned. I don't know what can be done, because smart as I am, I am not THAT smart. I'm not certain who can fix this issue, if anyone even can. But it just breaks my heart when I see people living on the filthy streets of a city, whether that be Philadelphia, New York, Boston or anywhere. It's just not right.
2 comments:
I know how to fix it. Collect all the homeless and redistribute them throughout the country in front of the homes of the rich and every government official in DC. See how fast the government fixes the homeless situation then.
Oh now that's a good solution. Re-house them right on Mitt Romney's front yard!!!
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