I know we’re all busy pretending that everything is OK, but a million people are dead, and hundreds of thousands more have been debilitated by long COVID. Conspiracy theorists who couldn’t accept that Trump lost the election stormed the U.S. Capitol. White-supremacist busybodies are trying to take over our schools’ curricula. Supply-chain issues and massive loss of life from the workforce are still making it hard for businesses to stay open and provide things to people. Plus, inflation.
Shit is bad out there. People are suffering. This is not some abstract thing to feel bad about. This is the reality that is shaping your life. And being well-off, sitting in you lovely West Nashville houses, on your large lots, with your lovely spouses and your cute families, is not going to exempt you from this reality.
Fox 17 has been running stories about how upset neighbors are at the Charlotte Heights Church of Christ for letting the nonprofit Shower the People use the church to care for people experiencing homelessness. The church is down the street from the park where unhoused people have been living. The latest story is a cringe-fest of quotes. Here are two of the worst:
“We’re not opposed to helping those folks over there. We’re not opposed to that at all. It’s not what, it’s where,” says [Bob] Parks.
“My husband last week asked my daughter to take the dog out before bed and she just broke down in tears saying I’m afraid to go outside,” says [Kimberly] Garner.
When I was a kid, I had to try to get out of chores by telling my parents it was one of my brothers' turn, or that it wasn’t fair that I had to do said chore. Or I just cried because I didn’t want to. I hope Garner’s daughter realizes how lucky she is to have an excuse that her parents will buy — one they’re willing to go to the news with. No kid in the history of the world wants to do chores all the time without complaint. But rare are the parents who run to reporters, open their mouths to say, “My daughter won’t do her chore because a person she doesn’t know might be outside, and I think the city should get rid of any people she doesn’t know who might be outside in our neighborhood,” and not have it dawn on them before they finish the sentence that they have been played by their kid. We are living in unprecedented times.
As for Parks and the neighbors who, as Fox 17 reports, think that the nonprofit should move to an industrial area — people are living in the park down the road from the church. They’re already in a commercial area. The Nashville West shopping center is right across the street from the church.
This is exactly why I laugh whenever conservatives insist that churches could and should be providing social services. Here’s a church trying to provide a needed social service, and people are trying to shut it down.
Listen, honestly, I get it. I feel uncomfortable when I see someone sleeping in the street, and not only because I feel bad for them, but also because I don’t like how it looks. My first instinct when I’m going over to Third Man Records and I see everyone sitting outside the Nashville Rescue Mission is to hope for very close parking. And, like, maybe 25 percent of that is justified, because women experience some bullshit in this world and we have to be on guard. But if I’m being honest with myself, and with you, dear readers, 75 percent of that is because I’m prejudiced. I’ve prejudged these people I don’t know, who have never done anything to me to make me think they mean me harm. And it’s an ugly thing to have to face in yourself. I would rather not face it in myself, but we can’t deal with the world as it is and make wise decisions if we don’t see ourselves and our own shortcomings clearly. And this prejudice is something that I, and apparently many people out in West Nashville, need to work on overcoming.
No matter how much politicians and talking heads tell you that we’re back, things are better than ever, etc., a ton of people who were barely hanging on fell off. Again, this is not some abstract thing.
You’re seeing more people experiencing homelessness in your neighborhood because there are more people experiencing homelessness. Nonprofits who want to help homeless people are setting up in West Nashville and Madison and Antioch and so on, because that’s where people without homes are. They’re not confined to the downtown area or “bad” neighborhoods. And you living in a “good” neighborhood cannot protect you from the effects of the moment.
People experiencing homelessness are more visible in your neighborhood not because some church has opened its doors to them, but because the bottom fell out and people are suffering, and your neighborhood is relatively safe for someone who has to sleep outdoors. That’s not just an annoyance for you — it’s a tragedy for them.
Our fear of some abstract thing that may happen to us should not outweigh our compassion for the very bad thing that has happened and is happening to the people who live in the park, or are hidden in the trees or sleeping in the tall grass.
The moment calls for us to be better than we are, and to not flinch from seeing the price that some of our neighbors are paying to live here.
