In her article “Does Poverty Cause Homelessness?” Marchauna Rodgers argued that the United States has misdiagnosed the problem of homelessness, equating it with a lack of resources, or specifically one resource – a home. As a result of that misdiagnosis, she wrote, government programs and social services have focused on addressing symptoms rather than root causes.
It’s easy to see how we went astray. It’s right there in the word: home-less-ness. If someone is home-less, it would seem we could rectify that situation by providing the thing s/he is lacking.
But what if that person is also friend-less, job-less, without a family or the social and life skills one is supposed to learn in a family? What if that person is severely depressed, suffering from trauma, domestic violence or severe anxiety? What if that person aged out of the foster care system and doesn’t really know how to do life on her own? What if that person can’t read or dropped out of high school? What if she keeps getting fired because of angry outbursts that have nothing to do with her job? What if he is coping in the only way he knows how – self-medicating with drugs and alcohol? What if that person is not only home-less but hope-less?
A home in and of itself doesn’t seem to address any of those deeper issues.
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The goal of Spokane's new homeless encampment approach is two-sided: to clean up the camps and to provide help to those who need and want it.
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Treating symptoms without correctly identifying the cause can be fatal. If we're going to end homelessness, we have to solve the right problem.
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Robert is a new man. Hearing the gospel at UGM, his relationship with God has changed. His view of himself has changed, and his attitude toward other people has changed.
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Homelessness has reached a crisis point in Spokane. What does the Gospel have to do with this important issue?
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What in the world do the Union Gospel Mission and an extreme Spartan race have in common? Jonathan Bonetti. He's motivated in his fitness goals by the chance to truly help the homeless people he sees downtown every day.
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This World Homeless Day, we're turning the blog over to UGM residents to explain what homeless people experience and what they need most.
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Matt Lewis works in a homeless shelter because he loves to be with people who appear broken, hopeless or weak. He relishes the chance to share the power and hope of our identity in Christ and watch God's love transform others for his Kingdom.
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Almost three decades of relationship-building at UGM has made Dave Wall the man with countless stories. He recently wrote one of his oldest ones down.
