by James Glaser
October 14, 2005

I always have to ask that when I read or hear about something outrageous here in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) did a national survey of 460 American localities and came up with 727,304 homeless people.

Philip Mangano, who is the executive director of the White House's Interagency Council on Homelessness, said this number of people living on the streets of the United States "absolutely matches up with the (previous) research," and "that is certainly well within the range that the researchers have indicated over the last several years."

So, close to three quarters of a million Americans living on the streets, is no surprise to Washington.

I remember back in the early 80s, I was working at a Day Activity Center for handicapped adults, and we had a real influx of clients, because the state closed all, but one of the State Mental Hospitals. They kept one open for the criminally insane. To save money, they sent all mentally ill patients home to their county of birth. Sent them "home" even if they had no relatives living there any longer.

Many of these people had been institutionalized for decades and the State put them out on the street, with welfare benefits to live on. The State claimed that new drugs made these people better able to handle life on the outside and to a point that is true. What happens though, is that without supervision, these people do not take their medicine, they start acting crazy (because they are) and they get booted out of where ever they are living, and they hit the streets.

This practice of closing State Mental Hospitals went Nation wide. I'm not talking about just a few patients. In Minnesota it was several thousands, and Minnesota does not have a great population. You look at the population of mentally ill people living on the streets, and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, many of them very vulnerable.

So, here is where my "Christian" question comes into play. We saved, probably billions by booting all of these mentally ill people out of supervised living facilities, and what did we do with the savings? Did we set up new ways to help these people? Did we figure out a way to track where these people went or if they stayed on this new medication that we say allows these people to live on their own?

No, these people have become a big part of the homeless problem in America. Do you think these people might be the "least of our brethren"?

Every year, we can come up with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on killing people all over the world. Every politician talks about our Christian values, and how our way of life here in America is an example for the world, and they are right. The way we treat the least of or brethren, is a very good example of our Christian values. Drive around whatever city you live in, take a look at our churches, and see where Christians put their money. Take a look at our federal budget and see where our values are.

Yes, there are some people who have chosen to live on the streets of America. Some people choose to drink and do drugs to the point that they really don't care about anything else, but there are hundreds of thousands of American citizens, who do not have the ability to choose if they want to live on the streets or not.