Commentary: Opportunity for a homelessness solution
Special to The Enterprise
With COVID surging and a stay-at-home order, most of us are sick and tired of staying home. But how would you stay safe if you didn’t have a home? As homelessness and the pandemic become more dire, we need creative, long-range community solutions, and an alliance has recently formed to invent them.
When I was 6, my grandmother Maybelle died. She grew up in a physically abusive household with few house rules. She was a brilliant pianist but two of her children died in infancy. Her husband repeatedly committed her involuntarily and later divorced her, and she lived in poverty with her two younger children. Later, she’d hitchhiked between west and east coasts to visit her children. But when arrested for vagrancy, she was committed again and died there. Each person experiencing homelessness has his or her own story, each unique and compelling.