Can we be neighbors to our community’s homeless?

I love the stories I find in the Bible. Every Bible story has been preserved for some significant reason. The reasons for preservation can be good, twisted or even bad, but the reasons are always significant. When I read stories, I ask, “Why was this one preserved?”

At the top of the list of my favorite stories are the parables Jesus told. I know of no scholar who denies that Jesus was a master storyteller.

The stories (or parables), most everyone agrees, are the most authentic material we have from or about Jesus.

Read and ponder his stories, and the Jesus devotee is far down the road in understanding what he was all about. One of my favorite parables is the story of the Good Samaritan.

The story was told as commentary on the commandment to love your neighbor. A listener extended the conversation by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus told the Good Samaritan story and in the process changed the question. The question is not “who is my neighbor?” but, “to whom are you willing to be a neighbor?”

The scandal of Christian churches is that they pick and choose the people to whom they are willing to be good neighbors.

I am a founding member of the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness. I remain active as the coalition pursues its task of developing a 10-year plan for meeting the housing needs of homeless people. The 10-year plan is to be updated annually as we gather more information and better understand the homeless populations. We set priorities. Foundations and government agencies read our reports and are influenced in the way subsidy monies are granted and given.

The housing coalition has identified the two top priorities for housing of homeless people. The first is housing for homeless youth. The second is housing for people who are re-entering society. The largest group of those re-entering society are those being released from prison. In doing its work, the coalition has identified two groups of people who few people want in their neighborhood. We find few people who are choosing to be neighbors to these populations.

I volunteered to serve on the Homeless Youth Task Force. There are different ways of defining what makes a youth homeless. Each definition is useful in particular situations. For the purpose of this column, I will use one that is flawed, but useful. A homeless youth is someone under adult age who does not have a permanent address and has no relationship with a supervising adult.

Some statistics about homelessness are kept by the school district in our area. The statistics are shocking and are probably understated. Around 10 percent of the students who attend our area high schools are homeless. Our largest alternative high school’s student population is about 50 percent homeless.

The coalition has no access to statistics for the high school dropout population and homelessness. In our borough with about 92,000 total population, we suspect there are upwards of 1,000 homeless teenagers.

A definitive description of the homeless teen population of our area is not available. No disciplined, scientific study has been made of the teen population in our borough. No verifiable profile of our homeless teenage population exists. I suspect that the same is true in the entire state of Alaska. We do know a good bit about our homeless teenagers, but it is anecdotal information. Here are some of the realities that become apparent.

1. Homeless youth, no matter how they have been separated from a responsible family, have been forced to assume decision-making that is usually reserved for adults. Some are making surprisingly good decisions. Some are making very poor decisions. Whether they are good or bad, they are adult decisions. In my experience with homeless youth, I have yet to find a single one who is willing to relinquish adult decision-making.

Housing solution proposals that impact their freedom to make decisions is doomed to failure.

2. Homeless youth are nearly all sexually active. I do not personally know of a single homeless youth who is not sexually active. Once a young person becomes sexually active, that pattern will not change. Any housing proposal that impinges on the homeless youth’s sexual activity will not succeed.

3. A disproportionate number of homeless youth are gay. While gay acceptance in our society is on the rise, there is a constant stream of gay young people who are being kicked out of their homes. Any gay teenager with any residual self-respect will not go near housing that does not respect his or her sexual orientation.

4. Sexual activity among poorly informed teenagers result in pregnancies. There are an abundance of homeless teenage mothers. There is a fresh group of pregnant homeless teenagers that keep appearing.

Shelters? Supervised group homes? Foster homes? They have been tried and found woefully unsuccessful. They have not produced satisfactory outcomes and are financially unsustainable, especially with the size of the problem with which we are faced. Many successful social programs succeed when they empower the client.

What does it mean to empower homeless teenagers so they can take their place among us as healthy, productive citizens?

We need new and creative proposals. In many ways our homeless teenage population is unseen, but believe me, we rub elbows with them every day. As the homeless coalition is discovering, homeless teenagers are our neighbors. They are here in abundance. They may well be a difficult population.

The Jesus question is, “Who will be their neighbors?

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in retirement in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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