Letter to the Editor

Today The State paper, the daily statewide distributed newspaper in South Carolina, ran an article titled, "Are the Homeless Hurting Columbia's Downtown Businesses?"The article from title to content appalled me. When I was a child and my mother told me to go clean my room, most of the time I admittedly stuffed everything in my closet or under my bed, giving the perception upon first glance that I had cleaned my room. To me, it sounds like downtown businesses want to sweep a very real problem that has to do with living, breathing human beings under the rug, giving the perception that Columbia does not have a homeless problem. We do have a homeless problem; it is a problem that the city and it's citizens have failed to successfully address at the root of the issue which goes beyond providing food, shelter and clothing. While such programs are good and meet basic needs, somewhere we are not working together to effectively put into place preventative programs that help people not get to the point of homelessness. Homelessness is a community problem that we should be concerned with not just for the sake of protecting businesses or out of self-interest, but we should have a genuine concern for and desire to help our fellow human beings, beginning by investing in education, mental health services, financial counseling and other proactive services that help people before they find themselves and their children on the street. I suggest the downtown businesses put their heads together on ways they can help the people at the heart of their issue rather than simply complaining and disregarding the homeless problem in Columbia as someone else's problem. If you aren't a part of a real, sustainable solution then you're only perpetuating the problem. People's lives are at stake, and I'm not talking about the life and livelihood of the business owners. The homeless problem in Columbia is greater than an annoyance or eyesore for downtown shoppers. When we begin to see the homeless problem as much as our problem as those who are experiencing homelessness, then maybe we will more than put a bandaid over a problem that a bandaid cannot fix or hide.