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I was born and raised in a small town in southern Illinois. There were a few people in town that had a little more than others, and there were a few who had less, but the better part of the community was middle class.  At least middle class from a 1970′s financial point-of-view.  It seemed easier then to consider yourself middle class when in fact, the majority was the working “poor” and still are!

If, and when, anything drastic ever happened to somebody or a family, most of the community pitched in to help them. Nobody asked for the help, it was just a given that it was there.

In the early 80’s there weren’t many job opportunities in the same Illinois area.  My husband and I decided to move to Florida, where he had family and the job market was booming. After living in a small town my whole life, moving to a huge city was a big change for me and my family. Just getting around was a whole new experience.  After all, we didn’t know the streets and traffic or where anything was.

My son, after being around familiar  friends and family his entire life, was having a difficult time adjusting to this new way of life.

Downtown he saw an old, shabbily dressed woman pushing a shopping cart full of odds and ends and asked me about her. I had to explain to him that she was what is termed, for lack of  a better term, a” bag lady”. He wasn’t familiar with what a bad lady was, and had never seen anything like it, particularly in our previous southern Illinois community.  I had to explain to him that she was homeless and lived on the street and that everything in the cart was all she owned. I could tell he was upset and almost started crying. For a six year old that was a very heartbreaking experience, and it didn’t set too well with me either.

That wasn’t the last homeless person he ever saw. At the time, you saw one here and there and if you had food or extra cash you stopped and helped them out if you could. Over the years, more and more of these people started appearing in the downtown area and the park in the center of town became a regular daily hangout for them. Pretty soon, it wasn’t just the park, but parking lots, alleys, abandoned buildings and anywhere they could find a place to hold up.

Now, 30 years later, the city is inundated with the homeless. They are everywhere. They wander the streets during the day seeing what they can find and staying out of the way of the police, who come by and tell them to move along. Towards evening, you can find most of them lined up outside St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen, where they can receive at least one hot meal during the day. When the kitchen opened it was only serving a small amount of indigent people, but now the numbers have increased where it looks like people lining up to get into a concert or event.

Across the street, in the median under the interstate, they have even set up what they call “tent city.” They can’t stay there all the time because the city won’t let them. Each evening after their hot meal you will find, those that have them, people pitching a tent or making a shelter out of the blankets they have in their carts or backpacks. It’s become so large, residents of the city started complaining and several times the police have come in and broke up their settlement.

If this isn’t enough evidence to people everywhere and our government that American is in crisis, I don’t know what is!

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