There is a critical issue in South Florida impacting the Caribbean Diaspora, that begs closer attention and action from organizations within the diaspora. This is the issue of homelessness.
One of the most unwelcome sights of any society is seeing people wandering the streets, sleeping under bridges, under shop pizzas, on sidewalks, and park benches. Unfortunately. For various reasons, but mainly financial challenges, the problem of homelessness is worsening in Florida, including here in South Florida.
Various state, county, and city administrations, and several private organizations have been trying for decades to address the problem of homelessness and provide help for the homeless, but the problem persists.
In the recently concluded session of the Florida Legislature, the issue of Florida’s homelessness was debated, but instead of taking fundamental steps to curb the increase in homelessness, the Legislature passed a bill to prohibit homeless persons from setting up camp and sleeping on public property. But what this bill, now law, effectively does is to literally hide the problem of homelessness, without addressing and trying to solve the root cause. The law only makes it worse for thousands of homeless people, as now they have few places to sleep or stay during the day.
Although the general community is aware of the problem of homelessness, it’s arguable if the Caribbean Diaspora is sufficiently concerned that members of this community are included in the thousands without a place to live or even sleep.
Occupants of several local homeless shelters, provided by organizations like the Salvation Army and Camillus Home in Miami-Dade include Caribbean Americans. These unfortunate individuals were made homeless by various reasons, but mostly the inability to earn sufficient, or any, income to pay rent, or maintain the mortgage on their home.
One of the more poignant accounts of homelessness is of a 26-year-old Caribbean-American female, whose parents died while she was at college. After graduating, without parents or other close relatives, and unable to get a job, she was evicted from the house where she lived with her parents for some 12 years. After sharing residents with friends she eventually was forced to seek refuge in a homeless shelter for a few weeks before landing a job and, thankfully, could afford to rent an apartment.
There have been several other accounts of individuals and entire families living in their cars, and using restrooms in restaurants and public buildings for hygienic purposes.
An offshoot of the plight of homelessness is the adverse reaction it has on those affected. It’s a source of health problems, including mental illness; and safety problems. Several homeless people have been targets of beatings, robbery, and rape. To escape the adverse conditions, homelessness has forced male youth to join criminal gangs, and females into prostitution.
Homelessness carries a very powerful stigma, resulting in the stark marginalization of the homeless by the rest of society.
It’s election season, but as in past election cycles, one rarely hears political candidates, including Caribbean Americans, offering plans to directly address the homeless problem.
In the Caribbean diaspora, there are several altruistic organizations, but with several members of the diaspora experiencing or faced with homelessness, there’s a need to develop a formidable diasporic organization to seek solutions to the homeless problem. Granted, some churches and residents reach out to the homeless periodically with meals and clothing, but this isn’t a structured organization or an organized solution.
This is a diaspora problem requiring more than occasional food drives, or free meals at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It’s not enough to give the homeless handouts but to divert the real solutions to this problem to over-burdened public organizations.
It’s unfortunate there are many Caribbean Americans who are really one paycheck away from the plight of homelessness. The loss of a paycheck, and the inability to earn another soon, caused some people to live in their cars, seek homeless shelters, or wander the streets seeking shelter to sleep.
There are similarities in societies’ attempts to solve problems of crime and homelessness. Most societies build prisons to incarcerate criminals instead of developing programs offering pragmatic alternatives to crime. Similarly, societies tend to focus on building homeless shelters instead of developing programs, including job-training programs, offering those faced with homelessness pragmatic alternatives. There’s an urgent need for societies to explore the development of practical resources that make living in homeless shelters the very least of all options.
An appeal goes out to altruistic-minded people within the Caribbean diaspora to take leadership in developing organizational support that can pragmatically assist those within the diaspora who are threatened with homelessness, and provide safety nets to help those who are already homeless. There are many problems within the Caribbean diaspora that require strong diaspora leadership, but the problem of homelessness is one of the most serious. This is a problem the diaspora should not allow to escalate.
Unfortunately, there are people within the diaspora who feel safe and secure in their homes and are unwilling to render assistance to the homeless, but these more fortunate must always remember that for the grace of God, they too could be homeless.
Read: Florida bill seeks to ban homeless from sleeping on public property
