Compassion Deficit

[groovedaddy]

It’s far more than a local shame that a Pennsylvania pastor had to go to court to uphold the Bible’s mandate to comfort the homeless and needy. The minister, the Rev. Jack Wisor, won as the town of Brookville agreed to pay $100,000 and let him reopen the Just for Jesus shelter after inspectors had broken into the church in a harebrained attempt to prove it had violated zoning laws. The shame grows far beyond Brookville as more and more local governments respond to the recession’s hard times with similar variations on criminalizing homelessness.

New laws prohibiting loitering have increased 11 percent and bans on public camping are up 7 percent, according to a survey of more than 200 cities and towns by the National Coalition for the Homeless. Grass-roots meanness is too often on display. In Tampa, Fla., the Hillsborough County Commission backed away from a Catholic Charities plan for a fenced camp for the down and out. Politicians’ self-preservation trumped community charity when alarmed residents protested they were arming themselves in fear of homeless criminals.

Vox pop need not be so shabby. In Daytona Beach, Fla., the government works with charities to provide constructive shelter services in which the homeless help clean the city. In Cleveland, instead of the anti-begging and anti-loitering route being taken elsewhere, the city government coordinates with homeless advocates to make shelter and food programs more efficient.

The need for localities and states to opt for charity over enmity only grows as the recession swells the homeless ranks. The flow now includes a sizable cohort of innocent renters locked out by foreclosed landlords. Charity can only begin at home and must be extended through hometown government. “That’s what this country has been founded on,” one of the Hillsborough commissioners initially observed — before fearful residents had him switch his vote and disinvite the homeless.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/opinion/23fri4.html?th&emc=th