Dear editor,
Mr. Erbert has a perfect right to express his opinion, as do we all. Personally, I see the debate between him and Tracy Keagle of Humanity House as a metaphor; an encapsulation in perspective between the haves and the have-nots.
Truth is seldom black and white. There are endless grey areas, especially when talking about the spectrum of human behavior. Why are some people homeless? Well, worldwide there’s a host of reasons ranging from wars and famine, to natural and man-made disasters, to plain old bad luck, none of which are the fault of the victims themselves.
Poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Poverty is a condition that can crush a person’s will to live. Grinding poverty, when suffered alone and no hope or help, can make life hell on earth. America has a lower number of citizens living in extreme poverty than many other countries, but they do exist here, and many of them are homeless for reasons specific only to themselves.
Advanced technology, although good, has some consequences: It takes away jobs and money from human workers. You can’t blame a company for using robots that require no retirement benefits, no health care and no daycare. It’s all bottom line with corporations, but in the process more and more people are competing for fewer and fewer jobs.
One long-term solution — stop unwanted pregnancies and reverse population growth. Short-term, feed and shelter homeless people while they re-educate themselves to find new jobs. And who’s doing that? Humanity House is one such organization.
Many of the people Humanity House cares about and cares for are under-educated, thanks to generations of our nation’s politicians who have lavished spending on defense and ignored the basic fact that our public schools are underfunded to the extreme. Educating people comes with an actual cost and not educating them comes with an even higher cost. You cannot get great teachers to work for minimum wage (unless they are saints, and many of them are), and under-funding schools also means using outdated books and equipment and having huge, unmanageable class sizes where learning and respect are almost impossible.
At the end of his letter Don Erbert strongly advises, “Don’t ever start a homeless shelter in this town.” Really? What if you’re a veteran who has run out of options and finds himself or herself on the street? There are tens of thousands of them in our country. What if there was a disaster that somehow destroyed 30 percent of Iola’s houses? What should we do, Don? March them to the edge of town and physically bar them from entering Iola because they no longer have an address?
Fortunately, we have Humanity House and givers like Tracy Keagle who are actually making a difference and helping to find solutions. They don’t just give free stuff to people in need, they guide and advise them, they educate them on how to improve their lives. Many of their clients have never had a parent or friend who was not on drugs or alcohol or knew what honest work for pay feels like. We ignore their plight at our peril. As a society we cannot lock and load our way out of our responsibilities toward our fellow human beings. The “me” generation must evolve into the “we” generation.
Tom Ellis,
Iola, Kan.
