Who Is My Neighbor?
The 28 minutes of Who Is My Neighbor? is packed with questions and pauses for reflection, creating a virtual community conversation about the effects of the housing crisis. The video does not provide solutions, but demonstrates a process of asking powerful questions to restore connection and trust, questions that allow solutions to arise organically from the people affected by the housing crisis, which is all of us.
Questions about the housing crisis (PDF)
The conversation is intended go back and forth like this:
• A variety of people are interviewed with a series of questions about their experience of being unhoused.
• After a few minutes of sharing on a question, the video will be paused by the facilitator.
• The community audience will then be divided into small breakout groups and be invited to think about the same question asked of the interviewees.
• Sharing is both encouraged and optional.
We are all homeless
Those of us who have a “legitimate” place to sleep, even those who rent their space, feel entitled. We paid for our space, it belongs to us, we own it, we control it. We do not often acknowledge the gifts of others that made it possible for us to have “ownership.” In retrospect, however, everything our parents and family, our teachers, our mentors, and even our employers have done for us was done because they believed in us. They believed we would become a benefit to the world. They saw a potential in us. Do we “own” that potential, do we own or control our genetics, do we own or control a social mixture that has made it possible for US to have a place to sleep? I think the answer is obvious, and we have much to be grateful for.It is difficult for us to imagine ourselves perpetually camping in secret hiding places, to live a life that is “out of control,” chaotic and somewhat hopeless. Empathy for those of us who have fallen into such despair is a very frightening prospect, perhaps even more frightening than facing our own death because we don’t have healthy skills for dealing with despair, so it appears endless. Most of us avoid it with overwork, sex, drugs, alcohol and rock ‘n roll, or any other means of escape that we can find. When we see a homeless person, we pretend we don’t see them because the pain of knowing them as real human beings is more than we think we can bear.
I sincerely believe we must become acquainted with the homeless person within us. We are all homeless, in a manner of speaking. Nothing that we “own” is truly ours or truly in our personal power to control. We are perilously close to a life of chaos, and we know this intuitively. The daily news repeats the looming dangers of disease, starvation, war, banditry, natural disasters, and economic collapse. I doubt that any of us, even the most alert and wealthiest survivalist, has an emergency preparedness plan that will guarantee their being in control of all contingencies, especially a series of cascading crises.
When we realize how fragile we are, we are more likely to support each other. We are all in this together. How well we take care of each other is the measure of how well we take care of ourselves. The separation we may feel between us and the person with the cardboard sign is an illusion that we create to protect ourselves from feeling our own fear. Fear will not kill us, and denial of fear will. The heroes of our culture are the ones who face their fears and take action that benefits others, not themselves. Be a hero, or find one to follow. Most of all, acknowledge the homeless people for being the heroes that they are — for not giving up, for having the courage to ask for help (when have you asked for help — really big help — lately?), and for giving us the opportunity to see ourselves for who WE really are.
~~~ David Hazen, July 18, 2012
You have probably never put yourself in the shoes of a homeless person. You might have said, "I can't imagine
living like that" once or twice, but you have never really experienced what it is like. And we hope you never do.
Our answer to breaking down at least some of the barriers between housed and homeless Americans is the
Homeless Challenge where the streets become your teacher.
They survive on rice or bread, without coffee or chocolate, they consider a cigarette a luxury, and luxury an extravagance.