What about Bob?
I wondered that last week. Wondered where he is and what he is doing and whether he is safe and well.
You see, I was writing an “In Our View” piece on behalf of The Columbian’s Editorial Board about homelessness. Clark County is adjusting how it assists people who don’t have the means or the wherewithal or the desire to have a place to call home, and the board members thought the issue warranted the sharing of our opinion.
That is because homelessness is a big issue in this community. It’s a big issue in every urban community. It’s a big issue because it is disconcerting that a nation with as much wealth as the United States could have people sleeping on park benches and in doorways. In October, a federal report showed that 578,424 people across the country were homeless last year, a number that is particularly indefensible when you consider that many of them are children.
As anybody who has spent time downtown knows, some of those 578,424 call the streets of Vancouver their home. And yet, the numbers are relatively small here. A visit to Seattle illuminates the problem; a visit to larger cities makes it appear epidemic. Nearly 1 in 5 homeless people in this country are in New York or Los Angeles.
For most of us, the issue of homelessness never, um, er, hits home. For most of us, it is easy to travel between our jobs and homes and schools and stores and never encounter a homeless person — save for the occasional panhandler on the side of the freeway exit. Why, the Clark County council has even tried to legislate that, last year passing an ordinance to prevent people from soliciting money from motorists in public roadways. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. But that doesn’t mean the problem has really gone away, even if it eases our conscience.
Which brings us back to Bob, a slightly bedraggled man who must have been about 60 and had a bushy white beard.
I met him at the Starbucks that I like to visit when I have to do some writing — which means frequently in this business. He liked to visit when he needed to get out of the elements — which meant frequently in his situation.
And as we got to know each other over months of brief conversations, he obliterated any preconceptions I might have had about homeless people. He was funny, he was intelligent, he was lucid, he was educated. At the end of one of our early discussions, when I said I needed to get back to the office, he looked around the Starbucks and said, “From one grindhouse to the other, huh?” Hey, I thought it was clever.
Basic human dignity
Anyway, Bob spent several months wandering around downtown Vancouver, pushing a cart containing his possessions, hanging out in Esther Short Park, and occasionally eating at Subway or Starbucks. I once bought him a gift card to Subway, and his appreciation was palpable.
I don’t mention this as some sort of humble-brag that I am deeply empathetic to the plight of the homeless, but rather as some insight into somebody I often looked forward to seeing. And when he stopped showing up at Starbucks, I lamented the fact that I didn’t learn more about him. You know, things like a last name or some understanding of his situation beyond an admission that, “I made some bad decisions.”
I think about Bob whenever I think about the difficulty of addressing homelessness in this country. I think about Bob when I ponder Seattle, which has spent $1 billion of public and private money fighting homelessness over the past decade and has barely made a dent. I think about Bob whenever I see homeless people who are prone to violence or battling substance problems or suffering from obvious mental issues. Those people need help, yet throwing money at the situation often has a negligible impact.
In other words, I don’t have the answers to the unanswerable problem of homeless people. But I’m pretty sure the least we can do is treat them with some basic human dignity.
