HOPELESSNESS HAS SPREAD WITH THE VIRUS AMONG LESS FORTUNATE

I see this man. He’s standing in the middle of the street, now empty of traffic, on a cold Saturday morning. I don’t know him. I know him all too well.

It’s April 3 at the corner of Fourth Avenue and G Street in Downtown San Diego. He turns in quick, violent twists of movement at the center of the intersection. A speaker on a stage. It is very quiet.

He has just walked out from the curb — with fast quick strides that belie his age and infirmity — to address the many people around him, and pose for them the obvious question: “If this is a health crisis, why aren’t we being taken off the streets?”

Again, now with frustration, bitterness and a louder, more forceful voice.

“Why the hell are we still out here on the streets?” “On the streets!”

People are stopping and standing. Looking and listening. I am frozen in place.

The man is a commanding figure. Tall, heavy, once strong, with a great mane of gnarled hair, a beard and a fierce expression. He is old. And black. And alone. His clothes are ragged and torn. He is dirty and smelly. His cart and bags — old garbage bags — remain behind him on the sidewalk.

I help out at the Ladle Fellowship, an outreach program run by the First Presbyterian Church in Downtown San Diego for the homeless. I know the homeless, know personally what it means to be homeless. Over the years, because of age and infirmity, I’ve ridden a roller coaster near economic disaster. I’ve been helped and supported by the church myself, and now even the church is endangered by this novel coronavirus pandemic.

“If this is really an emergency, why don’t they come and get us?” he asks, almost in a snarl, with anger, shouting now, and raising up his arms. His hands are clenched in fists, in protest. And again he repeats the question. All eyes are on him.

He knows that this simple attention on him, as a person, is part of getting material help. And maybe saving his life. So he speaks with purpose and conviction.

There is an unstated indictment in his question of a government that does not care enough about its people to value their lives, protect them from danger or include them in solutions. No one on the street at this busy corner has moved, and everyone is listening.

This is not the raving of a bum, a crazy man or a druggie. This is the truth.

And those around him know it. Even those normally considered “better off,” who have homes, jobs and families, can see that now their chips are down, their lives threatened.

All these things that were taken for granted by all of us are now in danger — for all of us. It’s all of us who need help, who need food, clothing, supplies, medicine, counseling, support, and from those who can give it, compassion and care.

This must be what angers him. There was too much hopelessness before the pandemic began. Now it has spread.

Even as the city of San Diego houses hundreds of homeless residents at Golden Hall and the San Diego Convention Center, what this man has — what still too many homeless people have — is an empty street and nowhere to go.

The churches, agencies, rescues and charitable organizations that ordinarily help the homeless population are now constrained — as everyone is — by social distancing, increased need, cutbacks, and clinical and sanitary dangers. They are a mere shadow of themselves, struggling and fearing the prospects of a total lockdown.

As the confirmed cases of COVID-19 increase nationally, and jobs are lost and unemployment grows, so, too, will the number of homeless residents, living marginally now, paycheck to paycheck. Even government support cannot sustain a long-term absence of income.

These people will become the new homeless. And the effect may be at once, like an avalanche.

Historically, America has encountered virus, disease and plague in its history, notably and successfully at its most famous hospital — that turns no one away — Bellevue in New York, that has seen cholera, typhus, tuberculosis and AIDS — and treated them all with struggle and heroism.

America has to give people, like this man on the streets of San Diego, somewhere to go.