Who are we as people when we scorn homeless?

We have certainly witnessed how quickly thousands of residents can become homeless. Too, we witness how the homeless and their encampments are often treated here on Maui.

How are the homeless, our trash and our flushing toilets the same? We want them to go away. Often, we don’t care where, just so we don’t have to see them.

Why won’t our county government create healthy, safe environments for the homeless?

Make a “homeless town” away from neighborhoods.

Provide social, medical, mental health and security support services.

How about old buses becoming dormitories? A central kitchen with bathrooms, laundry facilities and lockers and easy transportation for shopping?

These people are part of this community who for one reason or another are on the street, mostly not by choice. When they’re chased away by police, where are they supposed to go?

Yes, I too, have witnessed erratic and sometimes scary behavior, drug use, garbage piling up, dangerous and unhealthy situations.

Some areas I now avoid. But if we disown these people and turn them into the “others,” close our hearts and turn away, who are we as a people?

Rev. Bodhi Be

Haiku

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