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Article published Jan 29,
2006
Student
project changes one man’s outlook on homeless
Bunky Bruce
walked up to me at a City Hall meeting Jan. 11 and starting talking about the
homeless. He took a pretty hard line against them. He supports, as I do, a
proposal to outlaw panhandling, but also had some tough talk about how all they
want is $10 for a pack of smokes and a beverage of choice.
He called a
couple of days later.
“My attitude is completely different,” he
said.
What happened? While judging senior projects at Hoggard High
School, he’d heard Colby Rooks describe his project on
homelessness.
Bruce still takes a tougher line than I do, but, for him,
the experience was eye opening.
“I looked at the homeless and hobos as
the same thing,” he said. He still says many homeless people just don’t want to
better themselves.
But Rooks, 17, showed him that there are truly needy
homeless people, he said, people who’ve lost their jobs, families without homes,
mothers without child support.
Rooks is part of a group from First
Baptist Church that feeds homeless people downtown. Those are the type of
feedings that City Council is considering banning, at least on public
property.
Rooks has been doing it for more than two years. He’s gained
some insights into who the homeless are and how they got that way.
He's
seen people with bad dental problems who can’t afford care, and sick people he
suspects have AIDS.
“You love to help by giving them something to eat,”
he said. Part of his project was organizing a feeding.
But the project
bolsters that understanding with extensive research from solid sources. Some 40
percent to 50 percent of the homeless are high school graduates.
One
study found that 22 percent of the homeless in 10 major cities were driven out
of their homes by domestic violence.
About 20 percent have jobs, he
found. So “get a job” isn’t a very productive response to
homelessness.
Rooks says disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are
big causes of homelessness. The Sept. 11 attacks hurt the nation’s economy,
causing layoffs that increased homelessness, he wrote.
And declines in
the buying power of minimum wage has forced many families to devote a growing
percentage of their income to housing.
“It opened my eyes to the severity
of the problem” and its complexity, Bruce said. He wants to see a local task
force formed to explore solutions.
So Bruce will be happy to learn that
the Cape Fear Council of Governments is host of a meeting at 2 p.m. Monday on
the third floor of the New Hanover County Public Library’s downtown branch, 201
Chestnut St. Officials from New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties
have been invited, and representatives of agencies that serve the homeless will
be present.
Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency
Council on Homelessness, is coming to town for the meeting.
Wilmington
has joined more than 200 other communities in crafting a 10-year plan to end
chronic homelessness. This meeting is aimed at making it a regional
approach.
The need is there. The Tri-County Homeless Interagency Council
held its annual point-in-time homeless survey Thursday. The numbers are up from
last year, with 598 homeless people found in New Hanover County, up from 562
last year. Brunswick’s total rose slightly to 54 from 48 last year, and Pender’s
jumped to 65 from 17 last year.
We can ban panhandling and shoo homeless
people away from this or that block downtown. But until we attack the causes and
start moving homeless people into housing, we haven’t accomplished
anything.
Kudos to Rooks for his compassion and insight, and for the
counties that will join Wilmington’s effort.
Contact Si Cantwell at
343-2364 or si.cantwell@starnewsonline.com. You can read his columns at
www.StarNewsOnline.com/Cantwell, or his blog at
www.StarNewsOnline.com/CommonSense.