My heart is heavy as we once again confuse homelessness with criminality. When we punish poverty, we don’t solve a problem, we multiply it. A community of people who are already carrying the weight of trauma, illness, mental illness, lost opportunities, and sky-high housing costs are pushed further to the margins, made less safe and less seen as fully human…no longer “one of us”.

Criminalizing survival: sleeping in public, resting on a bench for too long or without having somewhere to go when they stand up again, or asking for help; does not create stability. It creates fines people cannot pay, court dates they cannot keep, and records that shut the door on jobs and housing. A citation becomes a warrant, a night in jail becomes a lost ID or lost spot on a shelter list, and the spiral tightens. We label the symptom as ‘a threat’ and the person as someone that we should fear all while ignoring the causes that landed them in the situation in the first place.

Real change comes in the form housing, not handcuffs; from mental health care and substance-use treatment that people can ACTUALLY access; from wages that cover affordable rent; from shelters and services that reduce barriers instead of raising them.

Compassion is not naive. Nor is it something that can be handled by law enforcement alone. It takes finding ways for existence, where dignity remains at the forefront of each conversation. It is looking for the most practical path we have available to us as a society. Communities that invest in housing and practical care will spend less on emergency rooms and jail cells and then from there will see more people return to stability.

I want to live in a place where:

-Our first question is not “How do we move people along?” but “How do we move people forward?”

-Where we see neighbors, not nuisances; stories, not stereotypes.

-Where we remember that no one’s worst day defines their worth.

If this matters to you too, consider supporting local outreach and housing programs, listening to those with lived experience, and for the love of whatever is important to you or whoever it is that you pray to, SPEAK UP when policies mistake poverty for criminality. We can choose dignity over dismissal. We can choose solutions that heal. This is a society problem, NOT a law enforcement problem. There. Is. A. Better. Way.