Lexington, we know how to help our homeless neighbors but lack the will to do it

How’s your housing? If you’re reading this excellent, but not-free, newspaper, chances are your housing is fine. Same with your employment, and probably your healthcare. If you’re a parent of school-aged children, things are challenging (even more so if you’re a parent and a teacher), but overall, if you have the time and resources to read the paper, you don’t lack for what we in the U.S.A. generally acknowledge as basic needs: Food, water, shelter. (Healthcare, notoriously, is only considered a basic need by some of us.)

The same assumption cannot be made for many of our neighbors, especially those without housing or with insecure housing. Lacking the time, money and data plans to access and read this paper, they’re instead engaged in a near-constant hustle to stay ahead of problems related to money, housing, food, interpersonal violence, where to go to the bathroom, how to stay warm, whether or not to try and get healthcare for this or that ailment, how to score drugs or alcohol to keep pain and the DTs at bay, etc. If you’re almost anywhere in Lexington these days, you’ve seen them — during the day, some fly signs asking for money. At night, many sleep in doorways along the Limestone and Main corridors. Some of them sleep in the hedgerow where my husband and I farm. Some of them cash disability checks at the front of the month and stay eight easy nights in a crummy motel with no thoughts about what they’ll do when the money runs out, since their check won’t cover rent and utilities anywhere in Lexington, anyway. Some walk all night long to stay warm and to avoid being hassled by the police should one of the housed complain about them — their packs on their backs, their fingers stiff with cold. Others are not visible at all, staying in crowded and precarious situations with acquaintances or family, one mistake or argument away from being put out on the street.

Aren’t there shelters? Yes, but since COVID-19 their policies have changed. The result has been COVID-19-free shelters and a curtailing of people’s ability to come and go. But even before COVID-19, our shelter options were not sufficient to meet our city’s needs. We don’t have a single “wet” shelter in town, which means neighbors who use alcohol or drugs are not welcome and cannot stay. (And if you’re of the mind that these neighbors should just quit using or drinking or that they deserve their lot, I encourage you to Google, “Is addiction a disease?”) Unhoused families and couples are not allowed to stay together in any shelter, although women and their children can stay together if there’s room at the Salvation Army. If you’re an unhoused dad with his kids? Forget about it.

Here’s the thing: We know how to help these neighbors of ours. Other cities in the U.S. and around the world have programs in place that work, reducing homelessness and offering the stability needed for folks to address their challenges. We also know that those programs are a lot less expensive and a lot more kind than the constant barrage of police and EMT interactions, street and shelter and interpersonal violence, drug overdoses, deaths from exposure on cold nights and other traumas. Whether it’s a true Housing First initiative (Google it.) or council and mayoral action that prioritizes a fully funded affordable housing trust fund and more safe places for survivors of domestic violence to stay, our city has a lot of positive options to consider. Call and email your representatives on council. Call and email the mayor. Tell them to quit wasting money reacting to problems that need to be faced up front. Remind them that our neighbors are cold and in need of shelter, and that they have the power to do something about it.

Reva Russell English is an organizer, farmer and artist in Lexington.