McMullen: Nobody decides, 'Oh, I think I'll be homeless'

“I am wondering why PROP or anyone else is going out to look for the homeless, because no one in this town wants a homeless shelter. So I don’t really see what the good is in it, other than to give them a blanket and tell them to leave Sedalia,” said one caller in the most recent edition of Sedline.

I was raised with a particularly rosy view of my hometown. I used to think that the fine city of Sedalia was the sort of place that was free of the sort of crushing poverty that is robbing more and more people of their homes each day.

Homelessness only thrives in cities that have populations two or three times bigger than that of a Sedalia, or a Warrensburg, right? We don’t have people roaming the streets looking for a warm place to sleep, right?

But I know better now, unfortunately. But it is still a little jolting every time the periodic homeless count comes out. Our local economy is not perfect, but it was relatively well insulated from the problems that have been plaguing the larger and more interconnected economies for a few years now.

Our crash was a little softer than the crash that other cities across the country had to deal with, and it seems that we just shouldn’t have as much crippling poverty as we do. I guess I’m just being rosy again.

It feels almost dirty to type the word “homeless” because of the venom that drips from the lips when some people use it. It’s become a dirty word in modern America. Why can’t they just aspire their way out of it? Why don’t they just get a job?

Well, it’s just like Charlie Kelly from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” once said, “Oh, get a job? Just get a job? Why don’t I strap on my job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into job land, where jobs grow on little jobbies?!”

We collectively do what we can, in that our local assistance network is fairly extensive. The Open Door, Salvation Army, Community Cafe and United Way, among others, do great work in Sedalia and Pettis County when it comes to assisting the less fortunate.

We can help those people survive, mostly, but the problem that Sedalia and many other communities face is helping them thrive in a modern job market that is increasingly more hostile toward people who might have a gap or two in their professional or educational experience.

The spiral of poverty is relentless, and it can be severely difficult to fish anyone out of it, but let’s get one thing straight: Nobody makes a conscious choice to be homeless. Nobody has ever got out of the bed that they own in the house that they own and thought, “I think I’ll turn homeless; they don’t have to pay any taxes.”

But we do still need to figure out what can be done to help them, which is one of the toughest problems that mankind has ever faced.

We need more jobs that don’t necessarily require a resume, or an application. We need some paying jobs where the only requirement is a name and a body that is willing to work. We need something of a modern, local version of the Civilian Conservation Corps. We might need to employ some Great Depression-era tactics to prevent another depression from happening right under our noses.

Anyone who will turn up will be given a modest wage to build and maintain installations throughout Sedalia. Nobody will be forced, or enrolled, or tied down or anything like that, but I think if we made the opportunities available, then the appropriate people would respond.

I bet Sedalians at every financial level would show up to build a homeless shelter right now if they had the material and the land.

Many are homeless because we continue to drive them out of the places in which they are trying to live.

I’d rather see a foreclosed or neglected home get inhabited by a homeless family rather than sit empty. It’s a strange society we live in when peopleless homes and homeless people coexist separately.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to foreclose in the first place. Maybe we shouldn’t assume that the man with the cardboard sign had so much say in where he ultimately ended. Maybe we shouldn’t punish people for being victims of society.

I’d like to see a Sedalia without any homeless people — not because we shipped them out, or pressured them out or locked them up but because we found them a place to live, maybe even a place to work.