Give something back

Back in my day
    By Chris Clemens

Late last year, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley threw up his hands in a gesture of disgust and ordered the expulsion of the tiny city of homeless people that had resided under his city's Wacker Drive for generations. Most Chicagoans seemed undisturbed by the event—after all, it was bad business to have so many transients sleeping so close to the heart of the city's commercial district. The panhandling around storefronts and restaurants was keeping paying customers away. The city's idea: just get rid of 'em. Now there are chain-link fences surrounding the area where several hundred people used to sleep.

Once upon a time, there might have been a general outcry against the city's sweep-it-under-the-rug tactics—some sort of insistence that there must be a better way, that simply ignoring the problem or forcing it into another neighborhood wouldn't change things. This time, though, everyone seemed to think that ignoring the problem was a pretty good idea.

Most of us at Yale are not in a position to influence local policy on urban issues like homelessness. The factors that govern our daily interaction with New Haven's homeless community are entirely different from those faced by city officials: we're not trying to shore up the local economy or attract tourist dollars, we're just trying to keep our heads above water in our classes and lives. Most of us feel that the paltry contributions we can give the homeless won't really help them that much, and we realize that our money frequently goes to subsidize illicit activities anyway. We know that when a guy outside Krauszer's asks us for money but insists that we give it to him in bills instead of quarters or dimes, the money's on its way to his dealer, not to buy a steak and cheese.

Besides, many Yalies are mortally afraid of the homeless, and not just because they might be dangerous. Intimately exposed as we are here to the millions of ways in which our culture defines failure, we see panhandlers as a living model of what life is like when societal safety nets give way. They remind us that we're not as invincible as we think we are. So, for whatever reason, a lot of us adopt a personal policy that is Daley's writ small: we hang on to our money and mutter "get a job" as we pass.

The danger we face in adopting this attitude is that we carry it with us into life after Yale. The panhandlers we see around campus don't represent the entire spectrum of American homelessness—many of them aren't even homeless. There are plenty of homeless people out there who want to work, but—whether out lack of an opportunity or just the sheer difficulty of pulling oneself off the street and into the office—remain down-and-out instead.

In many American cities, local governments have coupled hard-nosed homeless policies with increased emphasis on education, as well as incentives for employers to hire formerly homeless people and welfare recipients. They also encourage companies to target entry-level employees to make sure they don't drop out after one or two months and suggest that new employees be appointed "mentors" who can see them through the adjustment phase. These efforts take time to materialize and even more time to have any significant effect on the homeless population, but they offer a reasonable hope that those homeless people who do take the initiative will be able to find lasting and productive employment. Ideally, these programs can be run independent of government assistance, although they rely on local job services to publicize the new openings they create.

We at Yale are, for better or for worse, the people who will have the opportunities to shape these programs in the future and to monitor their effects. Whether we work for a non-profit group or a major corporation, we will see our influence and our ability to effect change increase markedly in the next few years. It would be tragic if we allowed our experiences in New Haven—and the impressions left by a small but aggressive group of panhandlers—to deaden our impulse to give something back.

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