
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 10, 1990                   TAG: 9006110179
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOHN A. SABEAN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOT BUMS, BUT BROKEN PEOPLE

AN ARTICLE in April told about meal coupons given to local merchants to be handed to homeless and otherwise detached persons in our community. These coupons could be exchanged for meals at a location specified on the coupon. This, on the surface, seems like a good idea. It is being used in other cities with some success.

Unfortunately, beneath the seemingly beneficent surface is an attitude I believe is a betrayal of all the good intentions. It is an attitude hostile toward and fearful of all those untidy wanderers in our midst. How otherwise explain nine references to "panhandler"? (What ever happened to imagination, variety? Where was "wino"? Have we forgotten "bum"?)

First, there is an easing of fear and hostility from handing out a small yellow coupon, redeemable only at one specified location, conveniently out of sight for most of us. Then they are all dumped into a handy category: panhandler. A phone number on the coupon, presumably for making reservations. How many will be in your party? For lunch? Supper? And what time will you be arriving? Smoking or non-smoking? And finally to be declared legitimate and worthy only by making the right choice: the little yellow coupon rather than money.

These are not panhandlers, winos, bums. They are human beings: homeless, sick, disabled, broken human beings. Many of them are, in addition to all their other problems, mentally disabled. But they all have names. They all have family histories.

Most, before becoming irretrievably lost and damaged, have at one time or another been loved, welcomed into the warmth and comfort of home and family, wept over and laughed with.

Their untidy, sometime staggering presence among us ought to remind us how irrelevant and inadequate are our human services. Their hungry and often angry presence on our streets ought to remind us of how irrelevant and inadequate are our housing and employment policies and practices.

So what is required as we confront one another? Well, for one thing, not less but more guilt. We are the more guilty because we have already taken the easy route. And for another, we must stop consigning them to a category that makes it easier to blame them than to confront the issues that make it necessary for them to be so starkly in our midst.

by CNB