The Homeless and Litter
Homelessness is often associated with large amounts of litter. It frustrates people who are observant enough to notice that these people frequently return to the same spot day after day. Why would they soil their own nest, as it were?
There are different types of homelessness. Many involve what I call “disorganized thinking” that came as the result of drugs or mental illness, or both. They don’t see leaving massive piles of litter as hurting themselves because their thoughts are so disorganized that they can’t think logically.
Currently, in the United States, our most common method of dealing with the homeless is to use the police to move them out of suburban neighborhoods. With nowhere else to go, they end up congregating in our urban cities because they have nowhere else to go. While many of them are from Jackson, if you talk to the homeless in Jackson, you’ll find that the capital city has become a dumping ground for the mentally ill and addicted for much of Mississippi, and even Tennessee.
When the subject of the homeless comes up, I almost always hear, “Why can’t we just send them to Whitfield?” The legal environment involved in committing an indigent person is far more complicated than you realize. It’s often temporary, with the state unable to hold them involuntarily after a short period, frequently forty-eight hours.
While Whitfield once held over three thousand tuberculosis patients, its fortunes have diminished considerably since then. Moving as many as two dozen of Jackson’s homeless there would put them in a budget crisis. I doubt that the legislature would be inclined to increase funding for Whitfield, especially since they’re bent on these tax cuts with massive cuts in federal money looming on the horizon; it would probably be a bad idea.
In Jackson, Oceans Healthcare took over the mental health facility at St. Dominic’s. At the moment, this is Mississippi’s most advanced facility for acute psychiatric problems. While they’re well-funded, their resources aren’t boundless, and they still have to contend with the legal environment.
The Dominican sisters at St. Dominic’s, a few decades ago now, had a vision for a general health facility for the indigent to be located downtown near other resources for the homeless. The Sister Trinita Community Clinic on Capitol Street works in conjunction with Stewpot, Inc. to provide much-needed medical care for Jackson’s homeless, which, more often than not, is Mississippi’s homeless.
Many years before I was born, Mr. Kennington of Kennington’s Department Store came to my Uncle Boyd, who had a store a block away on Capitol Street. They were members of the first generation of Jackson’s Capitol Street gang. Jackson had an infirmary (which is now Baptist Hospital), but it was still woefully under-equipped to provide medical services for the growing city and its surrounding area.
Mr. Kennington had spoken to a friend who mentioned that some nuns from near Chicago might be able to help, so Boyd, Mr. Kennington, and a small group of central Mississippi businessmen traveled to Springfield, IL, to discuss the possibility of these nuns relocating to Jackson, which they did.
Without actual medical training, the nuns couldn’t be doctors or nurses, but they could be orderlies, maids, and perform any other tasks that needed to be done at the new Jackson infirmary. Through the years, St. Dominic’s Hospital and Baptist Medical grew, in competition with each other, but with mutual respect, to what we have today.
Many people are unaware that the excellent medical services available in Jackson today are a relatively recent development. I knew many men whose fathers were among the first doctors to work at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Providing adequate medical care for the middle and working classes in Mississippi was challenging enough; providing adequate medical care for the poor and indigent is still something we have to work on.
In America, only two people have ever made a significant impact on our national homeless population. They were both named Roosevelt. One is on Mt. Rushmore. They achieved this by addressing the massive inequity in wealth distribution within the country. It wasn’t popular then, and it’s especially not popular now, but the moves they made helped us emerge from some of the country's most severe economic downturns and laid the foundation for some of America’s most significant economic expansions. They also cleared out the massive shantytowns filled with the homeless and indigent that were growing around the country, sort of like they are now.
It turns out that the best economic plan for most people isn’t to let a few dragons hoard all the gold. Somehow, we’ve come to idolize people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. In reality, they might be our enemy.
A lot of people in Mississippi have a sort of “let them eat cake” attitude when it comes to the homeless. As long as they’re not in their neighborhoods, they just don’t care. There’s more than one city very near Jackson that has specific regulations to keep the homeless out of their borders. They don’t just vanish. Everybody who works and lives downtown knows stories about police cars from Madison dropping off their problem cases at Union Station.
Out of sight means out of mind, I guess. Hopefully, they’ll realize that things didn’t end so well for the last person who said, “Let them eat cake.”
Currently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are traveling the United States, delivering a message similar to the one the Roosevelt cousins conveyed decades ago. It’s pissing some people right off. Anytime Cortez opens her mouth it pisses people off, even though a lot of it is echoed by some of the best economists in the world. Some people hate her, and they hate Sanders, but holy moley! Have you seen the crowds they’re attracting?
The president, predictably, is claiming that liberal billionaires are paying people to attend these rallies. Fox News is echoing and amplifying that statement. They don’t offer any proof of it; they’re just saying it.
Mississippi, the poorest state in the United States, faces its own challenges with economic disparity. There are only about fifty neighborhoods in Mississippi that are worth living in. While they’re fairly well distributed around the state, there are still not very many of them. When there’s not enough to go around as it is, having a few thousand people hoard most of the wealth is an unstable situation.
Even the Mayor of Jackson, who built his campaign claiming to be a friend to the poor, bought a house a block from Eastover. Whatever he may have said to get elected, even he didn’t want to live in most of Jackson’s neighborhoods.
Jesus said that the poor will always be with us. So far, that’s proven to be true. There are people in the Jackson area who are really leaning their shoulder into the wheel to do something about the homeless and indigent in Jackson, and they’ve had great success, but it’s not enough.
It’s really hard for me to look into the eyes of the people who have done so much to solve the problem and say “it’s not enough,” so I’m gonna look at other people instead. It’s not enough. In case you haven’t noticed, the number of homeless and indigent has been creeping up for seventy years now. Blame the Democrats if you want, but sooner or later, you’re going to face a situation where the haves are greatly outnumbered by the have-nots, and that’s when the real trouble starts.
