Homeless people face cold city
Paul Bowers, first-year print journalism student
Tagline: “Pleading the First”
11.19.07
Sleeping outside with the much-publicized Homeless for the Homeless program Friday night, I got a glimpse of the conditions that many people face daily in our town. When I awoke Saturday morning, shivering violently under a thin blanket, my first thoughts were not of hypothermia, nor of frostbite—although they did cross my mind soon afterward.
Rather, my first impression was that this was the morning wake-up routine for an estimated 1,753 Columbians. There was no pillow cradling my head, no twice-snoozed alarm clock and no awaiting shower. There was only the bitter cold of dawn and the uncertainty of a coming day’s plans.
During the day Saturday, I had the opportunity to sit down with dozens of homeless people and hear their stories, stories that I have heard frequently since arriving in Columbia.
Coming from a quiet suburb, I never knew the true extent of homelessness in our own country. There was one man who lived under a bridge on a bicycle path where I went running, but that was about it.
Here, I see these people on an almost daily basis, and I have found that each one has a haunting story to tell—if I will only stop to listen.
There is the woman from Kansas City whose boyfriend moved her with him to Columbia, only to beat her until she left his house. She walks the streets now, separated from everyone she trusts and searching for a bite to eat.
There is the man who wanders around Five Points begging for money to support himself and his sick mother. He lost his job in Charlotte and moved south pursuing a more fertile job market.
There is the man from Chihuahua, Mexico, who goes by “Migo” and floats from one construction job to the next during the day. At night, he wishes he could make some friends, but his broken English proves an obstacle.
“It’s not good to be alone,” he told me.
What it comes down to is that the streets are cold, but the temperature of the pavement is not the worst part. The thing that drives these people to despair is the coldness of their fellow humans’ hearts.
Sleeping in the courtyard at the Salvation Army, I felt the sting of the autumn nighttime. I felt what Christ meant when he said that “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
I was spared, however, the scorn of judgmental onlookers. Nobody looked down their noses at me, and nobody assumed I was a criminal.
And yet this is precisely what the homeless of Columbia face daily. I have seen it in their wounded looks, and I have heard it in the comments my classmates make.
Let’s not contribute to the coldness of the night. The next time you see a man living on the street, buy him a meal. Not only will you ease his struggles, but you will have the chance to hear his story. Just listen.