“Where do you live?”  That’s a simple enough question.  It’s one we often use at social gatherings where we’re just getting to know people.  The response may be something like, “Oh, I live out near Cave Spring” or “I live on Mt. Alto” or some other such statement.  But what if the person you ask  is homeless?  You’re probably thinking, “Those kind of people wouldn’t be at the kind of parties I attend.”  And you may be right.  But the fact is that people who may be homeless now may well have been at your social gatherings in the past, because they weren’t always homeless.

On our last trip to Kentucky I had my note pad out and was trying to get my ideas together for a blog about homelessness.  I looked up and saw a sign over the road that said  “Entering Fog Advisory Area.”  I thought the sign was an appropriate one for what I was feeling as I contemplated writing about homelessness.  You might think that since I am married to a man who has his name on a homeless shelter( and who spends most of his time trying to help hungry and homeless people) that I would have very well-defined ideas about the homeless and could crank out volumes of material about the subject.  But that is not the case.  I struggle with what is the most helpful way to talk about this subject because the fact is that homelessness includes a vast array of problems, a wide assortment of people, and multiple attempts to solve the problems. 

As I tried to list ideas to write about, I realized that my thoughts were mostly along the line of how we view the homeless, and my mind always goes back to a brief scenario a few years ago.  Bill and I were driving down Second Avenue.  When we got to the red light at Broad Street, he rolled his window down and spoke to a scraggly-looking man walking down the street (not an uncommon occurrence).  They talked a minute until the light changed and we drove on.

“Who was that?” I asked.                                                                       

“Oh, I used to know his dad, who worked at------.  He had some trouble, got into drugs or something, lived outside a while, stayed at the shelter a while, ---------and you know, he’s just a friend of mine.”  Bill always seems to see more than just “a homeless man.”  He views homeless people in the same way he views people in other segments of society.  Most of us have trouble getting past the “homeless” part.

In our society being homeless means much more than simply not having  a place to sleep.   In my next blog, I will plunge into the fog to explore some of the issues related to not having a permanent residence.  My goal is to clarify my own thinking about the subject as much as to challenge readers to understand what it means not to have a home in a society where the worth of a person is often tied up with home ownership.

I invite you to join me each week as I attempt to challenge our thinking about different aspects of homelessness.