The number seems astonishing when you think about it for a moment: 130.
That’s the number of homeless camps that Columbus Code Enforcement located around the city through the middle part of December, The Republic’s Andy East wrote recently.
The number is more than twice as many as two years ago (63) and beyond a third more than the number local officials counted last year (93).
This record number of homeless camps — and remember, this is only those camps that have been reported on and responded to, and not even for the full year — should concern everyone in this community. Our fellow human beings lack shelter on a massive scale.
What can we do?
Old answers don’t seem to be working as they once did. Local officials told East that “they now believe more people are opting to live in tents rather than stay at a local shelter.”
City Code Enforcement Officer Fred Barnett told East “there is no place for these individuals to camp in Columbus, so they often wind up on private property and are forced to leave for trespassing. In some cases, they are found to be camping on public property, and officials try to ‘offer them all the services that we’ve got’ but generally give them 72 hours to leave.
“But a lot of them don’t want to take those opportunities,” Barnett said. “So, all you can do is push them from point A to point B. … (We’re) trying to help the individuals out, but we have to let them know that they can’t be on private property, and they can’t be on public property.”
So the camps’ inhabitants move along until the next time someone calls, and the process repeats.
It’s a frustrating situation for everyone, and that certainly includes the person whose home — temporary and transient though it is — is being uprooted.
We cannot offer a single solution to homelessness, because there are so many causes, and there are indeed unhoused people who simply want to be left alone.
But we can offer the suggestion that we act with grace and compassion toward those who find themselves living in a homeless camp. This we have within us to do, and it costs nothing.
We can also see homeless individuals as just that: Individuals. They are people who have a life’s journey in this world, and who even may listen to our offers of help if we can summon the right words.
This is an individual and a community conversation worth having, if we wish for fewer people to live in homeless camps, struggling not just against the elements but against the rules we have set for where someone may or may not lay their head.
We share more than we lack as humans, and the rarest and finest of our gifts include compassion and empathy toward our fellow man.
With the coldest months of the year upon us, we believe local officials should plan now to provide temporary warming space for those who, for whatever reason, are living at the mercy of the elements. The plan should be ready to activate based on cold-weather thresholds, and it should be widely known.
Record numbers of people in this community at this writing have nowhere to go to shelter from the cold. This is a foreseeable emergency that requires planning and leadership now to avoid the perils of the frigid days and nights to come.
