Homelessness – An Emerging Culture
By Pete Ketcham
It is becoming evident that the homeless crisis in large cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, and Portland is rapidly getting worse, and is also growing in the smaller towns.
I have personally seen a dramatic increase in the homeless population in the smaller town of Medford Oregon in the last five years. This increase is evident at the fast food restaurants, shopping malls, and about any street in the commercial retail area.
These homeless individuals, some pushing shopping carts piled incredibly high with “stuff” are mostly young to middle age men, but yet there are a good number of young to middle age women also. Medford had built a beautiful wide multi-use pathway through the town next to a small river, with trees growing on both sides.
This 18-mile paved pathway is called the “Greenway” connecting the communities of Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford and Central Point. This has now become a primary haven for the homeless, and I personally would never travel it after dark, nor is it that safe in the daytime.
The homeless nationwide constitute an emerging culture that is growing prodigiously in the cities and towns by the evidence of “tent cities” along freeways and in vacant land. The homeless are sometimes blocking business entrances, and occupying space in public libraries. As many of you know, San Francisco has now gained a reputation as Sh**t City because of the human excrement that is prevalent on the sidewalks.
I have listed just some of the characteristics of the homeless culture, but the major issue is, why is this culture emerging so rapidly, and what is the cause.
The major cities are now mostly controlled by Democrat mayors and councilman/women, and their efforts to deal with this homeless crisis for the most part have been a failure. They continue to treat the symptoms but not the cause. They fail to recognize this is a natural result of the godless influence that they themselves (the liberal left) have inflicted on the culture of this nation.
This godless influence in part is the increasing use and acceptance of drugs, single parent homes, failure of parents to impart character and responsibility to their children, (a case of unable to give what you don’t posses), resulting in a community of young men and women who are unable to cope with the responsibilities of a job, thus moving to the street with zero income, and in many cases stealing to support a drug habit.
The Christ centered gospel missions, including a few secular and christian organizations, have been able to help those that desire to change their homeless lifestyle and become productive citizens, but the vast majority of homeless do not posses “what it takes” to leave that lifestyle due to drugs and mental illness.
CONCLUSION
Unfortunately I see no end to this emerging homeless culture due to the increasing liberal degeneration of our nation’s culture. We no longer institutionalize the mentally ill, but just turn them out on the street to fend for themselves, give “clean” needles to the addicts facilitating their drug dependence, and overwhelm law enforcement in their efforts to keep the streets safe for both us and the homeless.
I sincerely wish there was a workable method to help those already on the street, and prevent more from coming, but the underlying culture of our nation has degenerated so much, that this emerging homeless culture is going to continue to grow exponentially till something brings our nation back under the guidance and protection of God.
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