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Our problems aren’t as big as we think? They’re one person at a time.
Address homelessness and addiction one person at a time. Lasting change begins with individuals, communities and practical compassion — not bigger bureaucracies.
By Morf Morford | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
Are our big problems really big?
Every social problem — homelessness, addiction, crime, domestic abuse — starts with a single individual. We call them “social” only once they reach a critical mass and multiply from there.
But what if we tackled them one by one, in what the poet William Blake called “minute particulars”? Homeless encampments cannot exist without homeless individuals. Keep individuals from becoming homeless, and the corollary issues — graffiti, petty crime, sanitation and health problems — disappear with them.
Yet most homeless programs spend money, and homelessness increases anyway. If you know anything about bureaucracies, the better question isn’t how that happens. It’s how it could not.
Budgets and programs grow larger and more self-perpetuating, and, for better or worse, come to depend on the problems they exist to solve.
A better model
The college I attended had an effective system for emerging issues: Disappearing Task Forces. The principle was simple — the group formed to confront a specific problem, then disappeared. No mission creep. Dissolution was the goal from day one. Most DTFs lasted only a few months; if one lasted longer, it was considered not working and was dissolved, with a new one formed in its place. No legacy organizations, no alphabet soup, no self-perpetuation.
Could a community run on problem-solvers like that? Instead of a permanent, budget-eating conglomeration of agencies, what if each locality had a rotating team of advocates focused on solving one specific problem, with an eye on its own dissolution?
“Make the world a better place” philosophies sound inspiring. But good intentions rarely filter down to the person who needs practical, immediate, sometimes life-or-death help.
A modest proposal
Hospitality is one of the oldest religious obligations there is — welcoming the stranger, sheltering the traveler, treating the person at the door as if they might be sacred. Nearly every faith tradition carries some version of it. Somewhere along the way, many congregations outsourced that obligation to agencies and case files.
What if, instead of a bloated bureaucracy — staff, rent, overpaid directors — neighborhoods, churches and individuals pulled together to adopt a person or family in crisis? Listened to them. Did whatever it took to lift them out of homelessness or addiction?
Even one family a year, taken in by each church or group, could make a massive difference community-wide. But massive differences, like massive problems, don’t start large. They start like seeds — tiny and barely noticeable.
Saving the world is an inspiring sentiment. It is rarely a helpful one.
As Blake put it: “He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”
Those in crisis don’t cry out for programs or case workers. They need what we all need: a community around them, people who speak to them respectfully, not condescendingly. A reminder that they belong — that they are not so different from any one of us.
Imagine if every church took its own tradition of sanctuary seriously — not as a metaphor, but as a practice — and took in one family a year, offering refuge, safety and a foundation for the next step into a stable life. What they need isn’t complicated or expensive. It’s re-entry into a life without the restrictions so many of us are eager to impose on people we’ve never met.
Our problems — as societies and as individuals — reflect our deepest selves: our aspirations, fears and hopes. Addiction, homelessness, any of it, isn’t best addressed by grand schemes. It’s addressed one day, one decision, one individual at a time.
And every decision is crucial. Very few are final.
We can all make a difference. But the only difference that matters is in the life of the person we impact directly. And that impact, often small to an observer, can change a life forever.
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