What Conservatives Get Wrong About Homelessness

It's very easy to think that a discussion concerning homelessness should be apolitical. It's easy to argue that those of us who fight for the homeless are above the fray: we're for whoever is for the homeless. Why waste time arguing, one colleague writes, when fighting homelessness helps everyone? Right. But a disaster far more immediate, desperate and far-reaching than relative poverty and homelessness in the United States reveals how mistaken we are when those of us who wish to help the homeless believe in the naive stance of political neutrality.

I'm talking about the earthquake in Haiti and the positively bizarre views of self-damning televangelist Pat Robertson. His comment that Haiti brought on its widespread devastation because of having made a "pact with the devil" reminded me of something that's heard all the time in the conservative American discourse on the homeless: blame the victim.

Hardly a novel sentiment, blaming the victim is a stance emblematic of a divide between the country's left and right. The conservative argument focuses on what the homeless have done wrong and how we can better correct these mistakes. The parallel "pact with the devil" myth concerning homelessness in the United States is about drug abuse, or poor financial decisions or whatever -- the point is to reduce a pervasive humanitarian disaster that reveals shameful truths about wealth disparity to something that can't be pinned on policy decisions that perpetuate poverty. Quoth Pat Robertson: it's because they messed with God, you see.

Politics matter.

It's not such a surprise that a representative of the far-far-right would argue that Haitians are at fault for experiencing an earthquake. Too often, I find, conservative views on social problems tend to gravitate toward this distortion of individualism. That's fine and good when it comes to personal responsibility in interpersonal affairs. I'm all for everyone owning their actions when it comes to what we actually control. What's more complicated is when you deal with the macro, the big stuff, things like homelessness or international disasters compounded by years of crippling poverty. These massive social questions can't be adequately addressed quite as well with an individualistic mindset that assumes we are where we are merely because of what we've done.

But that's often what you hear from some of those who are nevertheless passionate about helping the homeless: a simplistic, individualistic worldview that assumes homeless people are to blame for a culture and society that does not believe shelter is a human right. Pat Robertsons abound.

Jacqueline Dowd at The 13th Juror alerted me to one recent example of a conservative, blaming-the-victim approach to homelessness. She refers to a story in Wednesday's Panama City News Herald about a recent movement to create a camping safe zone to alleviate the suffering of the homeless in the city. The paper asked the head of the city's largest shelter to respond. Turns out he's against allowing the homeless a safe place to sleep. This Pat Robertson was quoted as saying, "If we always make it to where [the homeless] don't have to make a better decision, they will always make a bad decision."

Cue double take. What he's saying is that unless more suffering is created for the homeless, they will not find the motivation to help themselves. Wuh-wuh-wah? To carry this theory to its logical end would be to argue that the job of those who care for the homeless is to make lives positively miserable because, as this shelter head seems to imply, the very poor are too dumb and shiftless to figure out that not having a home sucks. I can not stress enough how harmful this punish-the-homeless sentiment is. The homeless with whom I've had the pleasure to work are most effective when they take responsibility for their own lives just like anyone else. But they usually could not do so with any lasting success without a strong network of public support and aid.

Homelessness is a political issue. There are sides.

One argues that persistent homelessness is not a given: what we create, we can undo. The other assumes that inequality and class disparity are created by the foibles of those who don't know how to manage their money. One assumes that there are systemic imbalances that stack the deck against the poor and create inevitable homelessness for an increasing few. The other says that the homeless have, figuratively speaking, made a pact with the devil. One is right and one is wrong.

To fight for the homeless in a real way means challenging ignorant assumptions. It's time to stop pretending we're all on the same side.

Photo credit: AP via CBS News