How often do you ever talk to the homeless people on the streets of Clearwater? How do you go about understanding the issue and helping to solve it if you have no understanding of it?
Everybody has a story, and when you get people thinking, most of them have some inkling of how they might solve the problems that confront themselves and others. People want to help other people – it is a natural tendency; and a lot of people find it easier to help others than they find it to help themselves.
Wabamm, Local Life – Everybody Has A Story!
In a community, taking responsibility for a problem, means understanding it, and means understanding not only the role of the people in the community witnessing the problem, but the people suffering from the problem as well. People come together as a community because it is better for their survival – the infrastructure and interaction that it provides boosts the efforts that the individual might be able to mount by themselves.
Stepping over or around a problem, or saying that it isn’t your problem, does not mean that problem is going away – the daily avoidance of looking at it just means that it persists. If you look at the kind of problems which are daily solved in order to make a community function, the homeless issue really shouldn’t be so complex. But understanding how it happens, and what is going on with those who find themselves in the predicament is a first step towards handling the problem and helping the person. Having hope means there is a recognition of some kind of ideal scene, and if that can be really looked at, the steps needed to get there can be worked out.