To the editors:
Again on p. 20, Sr. Connie refers us to “good economists . . . and financial wizards” who must surely know how to get people off of welfare for good. Are we to take this seriously?
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Once more on p. 20 Sr. Connie tells us that 61% of people in shelters are there because they’ve been evicted (no source for this statistic). Two non sequiturs follow. People are evicted because they don’t pay their rent, not because they can’t. People don’t pay their rent because they are substance abusers or otherwise irresponsible. Honestly, Ms. Miller, didn’t this rash generalization raise a few doubts?
I don’t pretend to have enough information to judge whether Sr. Connie’s work here in Woodlawn has been as extraordinarily successful as she and Ms. Miller think it has been. I do object to her neatly categorized worldview, though. On one side is Sr. Connie, on the other the left-liberal “advocates” who don’t know what the homeless are really like, and therefore have the nerve to demand housing instead of moral uplift. On one side is Sr. Connie, on the other her charges who have to be taught responsibility, or her tenants who destroyed the beautiful home she gave them. The world is not so simple. I spent three years working at a shelter in St. Louis, living under the same roof with our guests, and I daresay I could swap war stories with Sr. Connie for several hours. I know all the crazies, alcoholics, drug addicts, and compulsively violent people Sr. Connie seems to think constitute nearly all of the homeless, but I also know that each one of them is not only mentally ill, not only a substance abuser, not only violent. God forbid anyone should sum me up by my unlovely traits. I also know other people: a University of Chicago graduate on the way down that we weren’t able to reach; a perfectly sane, responsible, educated mother who was on the streets all day, every day, for two months looking for a job and housing–and who still had to go on AFDC and move into the projects; a Vietnam vet fighting off cancer (probably due to Agent Orange) who lost his job and home due to his illness, but not his self-respect, or the respect of anyone who met him. I could go on, but I won’t. Ms. Miller may have been dazzled by her subject’s energy, charisma, and bluff self-assurance. The editors may have gotten lazy and let a bad article by a regular contributor slip by. I hope few readers will be taken in by the latest street-wise hero with all the answers.
Mr. McIntyre’s real complaint is not of inaccuracy or credulity but of sociopolitical heresy. Had he exercised a reasonably critical intelligence, instead of clinging blindly to his articles of left-liberal faith–the received wisdom concerning the homeless population–he might have considered that apartments can be rehabbed for a lot less than the usual cost when most of the labor and materials are donated (fairly common for charities), and that razor wire might be put around a fence to protect the people inside (it was installed after twin children were abducted).
