Page 7
April, 2004
CONONIE’S CORNER
My name is Sean Cononie, my job is a job I created for myself. My title, is the "Unofficial Homeless Czar of California" One problem, I live in Hollywood, Florida. I am the founder of a number of social services agencies as well a newspaper titled, "The Homeless Voice" that happens to be one of the largest homeless newspapers on the North American Continent. The reason why I chose the state of California to help is because I have visited it in the past and studied Skid Row in Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco area. I was completely shocked at what I saw. What I saw was about 45,000 homeless people living on the streets. I ask each and every one of you who are reading this letter. Are you shocked? Mr. Preacher, Mr. Politician, Mr. Homeless Provider, Mr. and Mrs. Doe are you shocked that this situation still exits? Yes, it is true that some homeless people live on the streets because it is just easier than trying to be functional. However, in most cases it is a multitude of problems, known as barriers that keeps a person on the streets; such as mental health concerns and other barriers that society, in general, forces on the homeless. Those barriers come from us the public, us the leaders, and us the property owners. In most cases we do not do it on purpose, it just happens that way. Let me first start off by stating that I am a Catholic Christian and I am not criticizing my own faith nor am I criticizing the religious beliefs of others. The purpose of this letter is a reality check. It is to open up our eyes so we don't just talk about it, but walk the talk and do something about it. For my brother Christians, I want to tell you that YES I commit sin daily but the sin that my fellow Christians commit is when we don't take care of the poor: a sin that can be corrected much easier than any of my own personal struggles. We may go to church daily, weekly, or some of us do not go at all, but we still keep a place in our heart for Jesus. Let me go one step further than Christianity. I do not think there is any one religion out there that does not tell us to help the poor. However, many of us do nothing even though we all have the resources to solve the very problems that exist in our communities. Now let me ask this question: How can we worship a homeless person on Sunday then ignore the other homeless people we know of on Monday? That's right, Jesus was homeless and we serve and worship him on Sunday but turn the other way on Monday when we see a hungry or homeless person. Maybe we are just too busy, or just look at the problem and say there is no hope, maybe some of us try but the government restricts our goals, or maybe we just don’t know our help is needed. For me, it is Jesus, for you it may be Buddha, but for all of us it should be whatever is required of us to take care of the poor. One of the first barriers of society is that we all say that we need to get the homeless off the streets and open more shelters but most communities do not open up zoning laws to allow homeless shelters the opportunity to open. Do you think governments across the USA leads us to believe we should out zone the homeless? Do they scare us into believing the big lie of what will become of our neighborhoods if we allow shelters to open up? Come on guys, look at the big picture. If we don't allow more zoning for homeless shelters the situation is only going to get worse and property values will go down anyway because more and more homeless people will be living on the streets. A simple way to get most of the homeless people off the streets is to open up God’s doors. But instead we have many churches that prosecute the homeless for trespassing on their property or for sleeping in their parking lots at night. Yes, you the religious leaders, your peers have practiced this type of a thing in the past. Yes, the homeless may destroy property, cause problems for your parishioners, and create an uneasy feeling, but for just moment put yourself in the shoes of a homeless person. Maybe you can go out into the streets and become homeless for a week and feel what a homeless person feels. Simply ask yourself. Could the problem easily be solved if the 4,000 churches in LA adopted 11 homeless people each, then the 45,000 homeless people in LA would become almost nonexistent? Furthermore, if only a portion of the homeless are helped we would at least be able to make a dent in the problem and get it under control. Getting control of the problem would be the first step at making it easier for existing service providers to handle the rest of the homeless problem. Yes, a lot of homeless people may not comply with the rules and yes some will vandalize your churches, but God does not care about that and He'll make the necessary adjustments for any problems that may arise. I am quite sure he would rather see us trying and He will protect your buildings. If we are going to teach faith, then we need to have faith and open up the doors. We also need to develop mental health teams to get mental health consumers the medication they need so they will realize that living on the streets is no way of life. We have to develop teams and work in conjunction with the social security administration to get homeless people the disability benefits they
so badly need for the multitude of health and mental heath problems they have. Beds must be available for d e tox if ic a tion from drugs and alcohol. We have to declare skid row a natural disaster and set up make shift communities to triage the homeSEAN IS OUT ON SICK LEAVE less into a better way of life. We have to ask families to adopt youngsters and the elderly who are currently living on the streets so that they have a safe place to live and rebuild their lives. We have to initiate a plan for homeless prevention that works to prevent new cases of homelessness. But most of all we have to work together as a team and solve these problems. Today, I give each of you the challenge. Don’t just occasionally glance at your Bible on the shelf like I am guilty of at times, pull it down, open it up and read Matthew 25: 35-46; learn why it’s our duty to help the homeless. To you who do not go to church or you who do not believe in God, try adopting a homeless family or a homeless person, work with that person until he or she becomes functional, just because they are fellow human beings. If we begin today and do these things, together we will help solve the problem of taking the homeless off the streets. And when that problem is under control then just maybe the shelter systems out there can work more effectively because there will be less clients to serve. This letter is not intended to make any one feel bad because I am quite sure there are many people out there who help the poor. It's to open the eyes of those who are unaware that the homeless need their help. It is to make all us in the religious community to do more. There are many more things I can personally do for other causes and I don’t, so I need to be more helpful as well. So I am not perfect and I don't want you to think I have all the answers. What I am saying is that we all just have to try our best. Let me give you an example of what we, as an agency must go though in order to keep our doors open. We have to raise about 100,000 a month on the average. Some months it’s 90,000 and some months it is $110,000.00. Churches use our facility because they don’t have homeless shelters. We take their referrals. We never say to them “ Why don’t you handle it, you are supposed to because God commands us to.” When we were trying to buy this shelter we sent letters to almost every church in the three county areas asking them to help us pay for the building. We sent over 1500 letters and we were just asking them for a small donation. We even asked for prayers if they could not give us a donation. We never got one response. Not even a card saying, “ we are praying for you” In this community we have a lot of churches and there are some churches that help us a great deal while others don’t at all. Just because they may not help us does not make them wrong. They may have their own ministries they support or other programs. If each church in the three county areas, gave us each $70.00 a month we would make our budget and never have to sell our paper. Then we could just hand out the paper for free at stores and churches. . It would save a lot of havoc because there are great numbers of people in the community who do not like the vendors approaching their cars. That is why most cities try to outlaw the paper vendors. In fact if the churches supported us, we would not have to spend about $20,000 a month on getting the teams of vendors out to the streets. It cost us an extra 20,000 a month to bring this paper to the public. If that were the case then each church would only have to give $56.00 a month. Not bad for only $56.00 a month a church can pay for over 300 beds for homeless people. If each church did a penny drive and only gave us their pennies then our problems would be solved. It only takes responsibility and teamwork to solve problems for communities. No matter what the cause is, it only takes teamwork. There are churches still out there that think we don’t even have a shelter. We hope that Skid Row changes and we hope that this article offends not one person.
A Lack of Concern cont. from previous page Mr. Regazzi nurses a beer, considering the totality One thin man tells Mr. Regazzi that it wouldn't hurt him to look, and Mr. Regazzi gets the feeling that this very of his life. It is growing dark outside. "I'm not like the man will someday be preaching on this very same cor- bums out here," he says. "I'm not born to it. I've never lived in a tent. I'm sure I'll look back on this when I ner. The police circle by, and the hustlers scatter. crawl out and say I knew what the bottom was like." A few duck into Crabby Joe's bar at Main and Sev- He finishes his beer. Ike watches him go out. A woman is howling under the street lights. "I been enth, and when a crowd like this enters, a little guy named Ike gives the twice-over before dispensing a in this neighborhood 30 years," Ike says, "and I don't see nothing changing. It's never going to change." drink.
—Sean Cononie, Advocate
