Robert L. Terrell

The current crises threatening stability in virtually every sector of U.S. society should be all the proof sane and balanced people need in order to understand that we are hovering on a precipice between extraordinary achievement, and dramatic, unalterable decline.  Given that, we all need to remain alert and aware regarding all the best things we can achieve, individually and together, as we move forward with great uncertainty, into a largely unknowable future.

We also need to think long and hard about the serious financial, social, spiritual and political crises that plague our society.  Permit me, if you will, to cite our escalating chronic homelessness problem in order to elaborate the point.  It has been obvious since the late 1960s that homelessness is a serious, debilitating national problem.  And since that time, the number of people involved has grown exponentially such that chronic homelessness is common in U.S. cities.

That is why it is commonly referred to these days as a chronic problem, in much the same manner as are prison recidivism, violent crime, and constant warfare of the sort required to maintain the U.S. Empire.  Our use of the term “chronic” in relation to homelessness is important because when we use we are more or less acknowledging that the problem has become a standard component of normal life here in the United States. Therefore, the term may also be interpreted to mean that at this point we accept widespread homelessness as a problem that probably will not be eliminated.

Whether this admittedly bleak interpretation of the term “chronic” in relation to homelessness is accurate or not, we are still faced with the thoroughly depressing fact that our efforts to cope with the problem over the past 40-odd yeas have been totally inadequate.  Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars, and the implementation of numerous local, state and national plans and programs designed to eliminate homelessness, it is arguably a larger, more persistent, problem today than it has been at any time since the Great Depression.

Given this ignoble record of abject failure, we obviously need to adopt comprehensive, new strategies based on different thinking.  My best sense is that the search for new and better ways to deal with chronic homelessness needs to take place within context of a broad, national dialogue about the kind of society we consider normal and appropriate.  We are not engaged in such a dialogue at this moment, but we desperately need to begin the process.

Some may allege, and rightly so, that the recent presidential election, was a step in the recommended direction.  Unfortunately, it is already apparent that it wasn’t sufficient. Even though the new administration is more liberal than the one it replaced, it is already clear that homelessness, and other serious social problems are not at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda.

In any event, much of the failure associated with our efforts over the decades to eliminate homelessness, and other serious social problems, is due to the fact that we do not possess anything even remotely resembling a coherent consensus regarding the characteristics and priorities of a healthy, normal society.  Given the absence of such a consensus, we are depending on an uncoordinated, haphazard, collection of inadequate services to deal with homeless. None of it is expected to actually eliminate homelessness, or any other serious social problem.

Moreover, far too many of us have come to believe that overall societal health can be achieved in the midst of massive squalor, and largely unrelieved suffering, by millions of our fellow citizens.  It can’t. And far too many of those who currently dominate public discourse pertinent to the nation’s best interests are committed to policies, priorities and traditional systems of privilege which ignore this fact.  One way or another, we are all required to pay dearly due to their ignorance and biases.

In any event, the recommended dialogue should include participation by citizens from every sector of society, and the consensus achieved should be used as the blueprint for establishing priorities and policies designed to eliminate every one of the nation’s chronic social problems, including homelessness.

One of the most important issues that should be addressed via the recommended dialogue is the destabilizing amount of wealth that people at the top rungs of our society have amassed during the past two decades.  That wealth, and the national priorities which have assisted its accumulation, is inextricably linked to chronic homelessness, and other forms of endemic poverty experienced by millions of U.S. citizens.  Steps clearly need to be taken that facilitate a coherent, reasonable, and effective redistribution of wealth in ways that provide substantive economic enhancement of the lives of those at the bottom of our economic pyramid.

I am not advocating class warfare, nor am I interested in demonizing those who are “filthy rich.”  Wealthy people are not the problem; they are simply the beneficiaries of an economic system, which provides them more affirmative economic assistance than is good for the nation as a whole.

Healthy, appropriately balanced, societies provide employment options sufficient to make it possible for their citizens to live honorable lives via employment in meaningful jobs.   Healthy societies also provide comprehensive, social safety nets for citizens who are unable to work in order to ensure that they do not end up homeless and destitute. The fact that we will need to enact major reforms in order to meet these obviously minimal standards is indicative of the degraded nature of our social order.

In any event, in order to close the gap between the situation in which we currently find ourselves, and the one we must create in order to acquire a healthy, balanced social order, we will need to place more emphasis on human beings, and less on economic fixes designed to protect the wealth and privileges of the nation’s elites.

Unfortunately, there are few indications at this point that those who dominate the nation’s political and economic affairs are thinking in the ways necessary for us to implement appropriate reforms.

Moreover, there are even fewer indications that most of the nation’s political leaders are willing to acknowledge that absent the implementation of major social, political and economic reforms, a huge segment of the current middle class will become more personally familiar with chronic homelessness than most of them ever imagined.

As indicated above, we are in dire need of a massive makeover, and the sooner we get about the business of implementing one, the better off every single one of us will be.  Without such a fundamental reformation of the nation’s social, economic and political trajectory, we will almost certainly continue our precipitous slide toward the dark side of the abyss.