Opinion: The growing hostility to homeless people is shameful

In a Sept. 14 article, The San Diego Union-Tribune investigated the death of a homeless woman in Lemon Grove who was found lying in a ditch near the trolley tracks and left there because she was a “transient” for five days. According to members of the public who found her and checked on her over that time, several police officers drove up, took a look and drove away. Her condition continued to deteriorate until she was finally picked up by an ambulance crew and transported to a hospital where she died.

I am part of a local volunteer outreach team that has been dealing with the homeless for five years. We deal with this sort of attitude all the time. The homeless are viewed by both some members of the public and the police as “subhuman.”

The attitude stems from the trash, open drug use and petty crime that are associated with homeless encampments. We have been cussed for offering the homeless food, water and clothing. Typical comments are along these lines: “You are making the problem worse by feeding that worthless human garbage. Stop it, they are destroying our neighborhood.”

A public space camping ban ordinance in San Diego was signed into law at the end of June 2023. The overall attitude has gotten worse among the police and other officials since the camping bans here and elsewhere have passed. There are some good, compassionate officers out there, but the general attitude has become cold, cruel and contemptuous toward homeless individuals.

The United States has no effective safety net to prevent someone who gets into financial or other trouble from falling all the way to homelessness on the streets. San Diego has been unable or unwilling to provide sufficient housing or temporary shelters or safe camping and parking locations to deal with the number of people in our city who become homeless every month. In July, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, 97 more people became homeless than found housing. This pattern, to a greater or lesser extent, has been the monthly norm for years.

Our job and the others who help the streets’ homeless population is to help them survive a system that is actively hostile to their existence and is unwilling to commit the resources needed to prevent homelessness from occurring.

Our group touches about 100 people per week. We have seen people turn their lives around and get off the street. We have also seen people whose addictions and personal devils got the best of them, and they died on the street.

There is no reliable way to tell which path someone will take. We therefore treat all we meet with dignity and respect, hoping that they will be the one who uses that moment to decide to turn their life around.

Just because the person in front of me is not young, beautiful and rich, does that mean I should abandon them to their fate? That is why even in their filth, drug use and addictions, our response to the homeless is, “Here, my friend, we have some food and water, we also have some clothing that may fit you. Keep the faith, you can make your life better.”

To me, the greatness of a nation is not measured by the grandeur of its monuments, its wealth and the class of its elite. It is measured by how it treats the people at the very bottom of society. Does it help them up or does it abandon them to their fate? Our group is there to extend the helping hand of care and compassion.

There are others doing the same thing — come join us.

Higgins is founder of Old Farts With Hearts, a volunteer homeless outreach team in San Diego, and lives in San Diego.