"While I am grateful that the region finally has a need for shared dialogue about homelessness, my plea is simple. "The answer cannot be, 'not here.' "When solutions stop at 'not here,' we yield unnecessary costs to taxpayers, create new challenges for service providers and increase despair among those affected by homelessness. Meanwhile, unhoused neighbors become the subject of growing resentment from the community when exhaustive efforts to move them along fail to make them go away." More from Meghann Cotter of Micah in Fredericksburg, VA: https://lnkd.in/etwS3fR6
If communities keep saying "Not here" and are deliberately cruel to homeless to make them leave or not come, it can result in homeless people dying as a result of being hounded to death like people in the past having their houses burned by an angry mob and then dying of exposure to the elements!
Strategic Property Management Leader | Empowering Communities with Expertise in Compliance, Operations, and Team Leadership
6dCommunities have been saying "not here" for years and stopping the ball locally (no matter where they are) in many a potential option. And when communities/programs focus on just putting the individuals in a house, and not helping them finish the process, they are still effectively sweeping them under the rug. We need to switch back to empathy where people are human beings that we cannot fathom being homeless. That would spark some action.