Homelessness an awful experience

Editor: Everyone experiences life’s ups and downs. Medieval philosophers expressed the process as “the wheel of life.” One day, you're on top; next day, the wheel's crushing you..

According to a July 21 report in the News-Sentinel by John Bays, someone engaged in a campaign to drive homeless folk from town:

“After Cheryl Francis, director of Grace and Mercy Charitable Foundation, found pamphlets on her porch telling Lodi’s homeless population to leave town earlier this month, she and other homeless advocates as well as the homeless themselves, were upset at what Francis classifies as hate mail. “The pamphlet reads: “‘Your homeless filth ... your illegal squatting in our parks, your pandering in public ... defecating wherever you are ... is not wanted in Lodi .... ’

“Lodi Police Sgt. Steve Maynard said that although his department has not received an increase in reports of homeless people being harassed, or of homeless people harassing others, officers are looking into the pamphlets’ origins ....

"Ian Cross was one member of Lodi’s homeless community who had something to say about the pamphlet on Tuesday afternoon.

“‘Whoever did that doesn’t know what they’re talking about,’ Cross said. ‘They probably go to church and who was Jesus? Jesus was one of the most famous homeless people of all time .... It’s not ‘homeless,’ it’s ‘houseless.’ This city is our home, our house is just bigger.”

I was homeless for a time before returning to Lodi from Florida three years ago.

I recall waiting in near-agony until the public bathroom opened at Tampa’s main bus station at 8 a.m., scrounging for recyclables to get money for something to eat, bathing in the bathroom’s sink. It was an awful experience, one of my own making.

By the time this letter may see print, the City Council will have acted on a proposed ordnance about tent structures in local parks. Let’s hope they chose compassion and concern over hate and ignorance.

LANGE WINCKLER

Lodi