Homelessness is not a distant epidemic that solely resides in developing countries. It’s an epidemic that resides here, on our campus grounds, and quite comfortably. It lives on the very front yard of Georgia State and our neighborhood of Atlanta where, according to www.homelesstaskforce.org, more children live in poverty than any other city in the U.S. Although we share its home, we have become largely desensitized to it.
Homeless people have become the décor of downtown Atlanta. The sea of homeless chess players in Woodruff Park has become a sort of spectacle for tourists and natives alike who view them in the light of fixtures—ones that are necessary to the vitality of downtown’s atmosphere. The stench of urine has become an accustomed aroma, likened to the cloud of cinnamon and apples that embraces you upon entering your grandmother’s home.
There isn’t a better testament to the detachment we’ve developed than what I witnessed just a few weeks ago while walking along Decatur St. I saw a man, wrapped in worn blankets, lying along the sidewalk. I watched as students, one by one, stepped over the man’s protruding feet, effortlessly and seemingly subconsciously. It was as if his feet were kin to the concrete, a fixture of our busy walkways.
There is a homeless person in just about every area on our campus grounds (with exception to the courtyard), and now that we are on the cusp of winter, they’ve taken shelter in every corner and punctured building where any warmth presents “suitable” living conditions.
Has this fixed presence of homelessness sealed its normality? It has and this is very problematic. Why? Because the Georgia State student, out of every citizen that occupies Atlanta, should possess the organic duty of aiding the homeless of downtown Atlanta.
Given our continued campus expansion endeavors, it seems appalling and, quite frankly, embarrassing that, according to www.homeaidatlanta.org, “more than 10,000 people in Atlanta experience homelessness on any given night, with more than 40 percent being women and children.” They went on to reveal that Atlanta’s homeless shelters have a shortage of 1,700 beds and that the average age of a homeless person is just a mere nine years old. A child will seek shelter tonight on the brisk streets of downtown Atlanta while we ponder the direction of our construction conquests.
So what can we do? What is the student, with limited resources (money, political power, etc), capable of doing?
A lot.
With over 30,000 of us [students], three times the amount of homeless people on any given night in Atlanta, the impact of our unified aid could be powerful enough to cause a dramatic decrease of homelessness. How?
It costs thousands of dollars annually to shelter a homeless person, and these shelters are nonprofit agencies that are funded by churches, charities and private sponsors. The pockets of these philanthropists only go so deep, which would explain Atlanta’s shortage of beds for the homeless. That’s where our pockets come in.
Consider Atlanta’s ratio of three students to one homeless person. With each of us donating even a few dollars every week to a homeless shelter, we would increase the number of beds and decrease the number of men, women and children that are sleeping in bridge holes and under wet cardboard sheets. We could stand to sacrifice a pumpkin muffin from Einstein’s and a drink at Anatolia’s to provide a fellow human being with a place to sleep.
With homelessness comes hunger and health issues as well, so there are several other ways you can aid. Once a month, along with about 20 other people per shift, I volunteer at Atlanta Community Food Bank where we thoroughly examine donated food products that are later given to these homeless shelters. The feeling that I get when we’re given the number of people that’ll be fed off of the number of food products we cleared is unmatched. Now, imagine the impact of what 30,000 students could do.
Change is only possible when you are uncomfortable and we’ve got to start feeling uncomfortable about the presence of homelessness in our front yard. We’ve got to be uncomfortable with being deemed the “poorest city for children” in America. We’ve got to feel a churn in our stomach and an ache in our hearts at the sight of a fellow human being sleeping on our sidewalks. We’ve got to do everything we can to make homelessness unwelcome in our homes.
