Novices and aficionados alike gaze up at the ceiling of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, mesmerized by the artistic renderings of Biblical scenes. Crowds of tourists from all corners of the world and all walks of life flock to stand in front of the Mona Lisa and eagerly take in DaVinci’s expert work.

I’ve seen people gaze with mouths open and eyes filled with tears. They come to experience the emotion that these pieces make them feel.

Art moves people’s hearts.

No wonder people pay exorbitant ticket prices, and sometimes wait in line for hours, just to spend a few moments with one of these famous works of art.

The same is true when a heart-wrenching tragedy occurs in this country. A mass shooting, a senseless kidnapping, a devastating storm, or an innocent child trapped in a hole deep beneath the earth.

We imagine ourselves in their shoes. What if I was the victim, or a member of her family? What would happen if my brother was shot? Or my daughter was kidnapped? Or my nephew fell into that hole?

When I was in that movie theater last weekend…

When my son was playing near that cliff at the beach…

Empathy moves our hearts. Devastating emotion. Disbelief. Broken hearts. It could happen to me. It could happen to us.

So, just like we willingly buy expensive tickets to attend an exhibit of a celebrity artist’s work, we are moved to give money to help people whose lives have been crushed. We mail checks, give via text, or click that “donate” button.

Empathy overwhelms our hearts, and opens up our wallets. We give because we can relate.

When the recent recession caused families to lose their homes, that empathy kicked in again. Many of us thought we might be next.

Homelessness became an empathetic cause. Not since the mid-1980s has the attention of this nation been so focused on helping people get back into housing. Jurisdictional plans to end homelessness have been created, business groups have joined the cause, and cities across the country have signed on with an effort to house 100,000 vulnerable people living on our nation’s streets.

But the economic state of this country ebbs and flows. Some years the bulls run on Wall Street, and other years Main Street is lined by boarded up businesses and foreclosure signs.

Today, after a seemingly endless recession, the country’s real estate prices are climbing and unemployment is trending down. People are starting to feel that the end of the recession is near, if not already here.

Will empathy for those living on our streets continue? Will “average” people still feel that a job loss or an inability to pay the mortgage is something that could happen to them?

Or will our country return to the view that homeless people are all addicts or extremely mentally ill? Will we go back to believing that they are nothing like us?

Sequestration may be the first sign of a trend toward reduced empathy. With our economy beginning to rev up its engines again, many of our country’s political leaders think it’s time to reduce government spending. No more billion dollar economic stimulus packages. Instead, it’s time to reduce the funds spent helping people in need.

Reductions of federal social service grants and housing subsidies are already happening. Housing and service organizations are redesigning their budgets with less revenue.

Will the private sector embrace the same perspective? Will private charities trend toward more empathetic causes, like bettering our environment, educating our children, and helping abused animals?

Our country possesses a limited attention span that’s largely driven by the media’s “story of the day.” It can be hard to continue moving people’s hearts toward giving to homelessness when there are so many other causes vying for their empathy.

But we keep going because, in the cause of ending homelessness, moving hearts means moving people into new homes.

Like most metropolitan areas, skyscrapers towered over downtown and rows upon rows of suburban stucco neighborhoods surrounded the city center. Gridlocked traffic, tired schools, and a handful of nonviolent crimes were the only issues this community faced.

Until the day the earth shook.

Who would have thought a shift deep below the ground would cause 20,000 people to lose their homes? City building officials spent days red-tagging houses and apartment buildings that were so devastated that they had become uninhabitable.

The response to this disaster was similar to the response to every major emergency in the country. Makeshift shelters were set up in local schools, churches, and community centers. Volunteers flocked from across the country to serve food and help rescue workers. For months, heroic compassion was trumpeted and camaraderie was the norm.

Then the volunteers returned to their normal lives and the country’s fickle attention turned to the next national emergency.

But thousands of people were still unable to move back into their homes, and the schools and community centers needed their spaces back. Gradually, people trickled out of their temporary shelters and ended up on the streets, in parks, under highways, and beside rivers.

So community leaders hosted a town meeting to figure out what to do. The city was broke, so they couldn’t afford to build their way out of the problem. The federal government provided loans to homeowners, but the thousands of renters still had nowhere to go.

Specialists hosted conferences. National experts flew in to present best-practice solutions. The Mayor and County Supervisors even chaired a blue ribbon panel of leaders to design a plan to end homelessness.

But that plan would take a decade to complete, and the Mayor would not say, “Just wait ten years, then we can help you.”

With no quick solutions in sight, some groups set up shelters in converted warehouses and large, empty homes. But the struggle to place these facilities in the community turned neighbor against neighbor.

“Not in my backyard!” people shouted. “You’ll ruin our neighborhood!”

When those living on the fringe of mainstream life ventured to the shopping centers and highway off-ramps to beg for food and change, faith groups set up public feeding programs to serve dinner to people in need.

Sometimes the lines stretched around the entire block.

Portable toilets were set up to help those living on the streets. Public storage units were provided to give people living outside a place to store their belongings.

Panhandling was not good for local businesses, so business owners installed “parking meters” that allowed tourists to donate money without encouraging begging. Then public officials banned people from sleeping on the streets of the business district.

The community struggled to create a system to manage homelessness. People could sleep outside, but not near businesses. They could eat, but had to wait in line outside. They could use portable restrooms if they needed them. They could beg, but not near tourist locations.

Addressing homelessness became a never-ending cycle, and only a few people were successful in actually getting of the streets.

Then, one day, a little boy living in car with his mom and sister was approached by a television reporter.

She asked, “What is your dream?”

Most boys his age dreamed of being professional athletes or pop stars. But this boy just shrugged his shoulders.

“I wish I had a home. That’s it.”

He became an overnight YouTube sensation. A million hits in just a few days.

That video began a movement to get people into permanent homes. The town had become HomeLess, but was now once again able to proudly reflect its name:

HomeTown.

These issues introduced the fear of homelessness to people who, in better times, would never have even considered such a fate.

During the most recent economic recession, those of us who work to prevent and end homelessness had to reduce traditional shelter and food programs because of declining donations. The government redirected funding away from homeless services and toward permanent housing.

With dwindling funds, it just made sense to double down on the “end game”: getting people housed.

But is helping someone living on the streets move into an affordable apartment really the end game? For those of us who have been working for decades to house people who are homeless, move-in day is the beginning, not the end.

On the day that a formerly-homeless person crosses the threshold of his or her new apartment for the first time, we cannot simply give that person a basket of cookies, a smile, and an enthusiastic “Welcome home!” That first day in a permanent home is often just the first step on the long and complicated road to recovery.

A home provides safety and shelter for people struggling with illnesses, addictions, or mental health issues. A home can even speed up the recovery process.

But a home, in and of itself, does not give a person’s life meaning.

Some people say a job gives a person self-worth, structure, discipline, stability, and access to community. Isn’t that exactly what we want to achieve when we seek to transform people’s lives from street to home?

Yes, some people have long-term disabilities and may never be able to clock in 40 hours a week. But part-time, or even volunteer, work can still give a person purpose.

We don’t want people to hole up alone in their apartments, isolated from society and stewing in their own dysfunctions. They may be safe and out of the elements but, on a deeper emotional level, it’s no different than when they were homeless.

I see transformation as a state of being, not just a residential status.

When that mean-spirited guy leans out the window of his fancy car to shout, “Get a job!” he may, ironically, be right. People on the streets need both a home and a vocation in life.

I think former President Bill Clinton said it best: “The best social program is a good job.”

Every so often, an elderly man could be seen pushing a shopping cart that was likely filled with all his worldly possessions.

This community had been gutted by neglect. It was the kind of area mothers warn their children to avoid.

Last week, I was standing on a corner in this run-down suburb talking with a local pastor who, for decades, has called the community home.

I looked up into the sky as a jetliner passed over, thinking about the many times I had flown over this pastor’s ‘hood in an airplane myself.

From the air, his community looks like any other Southern California neighborhood with its spattering of palm trees, the lights of automobiles cruising down the boulevards, and the sprawl of California life. From the air, tourists look down with envy as the California dream stretches for miles and miles, from the sea to the hills.

From the ground, however, the California dream is just a mirage for communities like his. In a county where one out of five people receive government assistance, this area’s numbers are closer to three out of five.

The pastor told me that, 10 years ago, the neighborhood was even worse.

“The gutters were filled with blood, and the air with smoke,” he said. “A result of gun fights between gangs of young men.”

But this church leader also told me that the neighborhood is getting better. He even took me on a tour to let me see the hope in his community.

Just down the street, there was a new charter school with avant-garde architecture that could easily have been built in a trendy Westside neighborhood.

And, for every home marked by a “foreclosed” sign, there were new units of affordable housing being built. These residential structures, with their modern designs and colorful facades, stood tall and proud on what had once been depressed lots.

New schools and housing developments that are actually affordable to the locals were symbols of hope for a neighborhood that had struggled through decades of economic recession.

The boulevard beside which we were standing had four lanes and an expansive median filled with dead grass and wilting trees. But Pastor told me what it had looked like many years ago, back when economic and human vitality filled the area with life.

He described a bustling thoroughfare where people walked to restaurants, teenagers proudly showed off their cars, and kids played in their front yards.

In the middle of the conversation, a teenage boy walked by wearing baggy pants and a backwards baseball cap. Pastor knew him, like he knew everyone else in the area. Their quick chat was about the boy’s search for work.

“Give me your email, and I’ll send you any job leads I can find,” said Pastor.

Another sign of hope.

Community centers, quality schools, employment programs, and affordable housing are the glimmers of hope needed to encourage struggling communities like Pastor’s.

That day, we both dreamed of creating more symbols of hope. Not only to help hurting people, but to re-build hurting neighborhoods as well.

Pastor said that we can never give up hope.

And, to that, I said, “Amen.”

Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the Detroit Police Department of kidnapping members of the city’s homeless population. Masked men, duct-taped mouths and wrists, and bodies thrown into trunks immediately come to mind. It reminds me of a James Rollins novel.

The ACLU paints a hauntingly similar picture of these alleged kidnappings. They say the city’s law enforcement forces people who are homeless to “take a ride” in a van, then drives them miles away from areas of the city popular with tourists and dumps them on the outskirts to fend for themselves.

The message is simple: You’re not welcome. Don’t come back.

Although labeling the alleged tactic as “kidnapping” is new, the accusations are not. Cities all over the country have been accused of sweeping their homeless residents into other cities.

In 2000, the Los Angeles Police Department was accused of sweeping the downtown area just before the Democratic National Convention. Likewise, cities that host the annual Super Bowl football game are inevitably accused of sweeping their homeless populations out of sight.

But it doesn’t always take a national event for such accusations to be made. Cities’ law enforcement agencies are blamed year-round for quietly picking up people who are homeless in the middle of the night and transporting them to other communities.

Most destination cities located along the coast, or other places that tourists flock, blame the surrounding cities – or even cities outside of their state – for giving one-way bus tickets to people who are homeless.

One-way bus tickets to destination cities at least seem favorable to heavy-handed law enforcement activities. I have heard other accusations, as well, like cities setting up public feeding programs in other communities in hopes that their homeless population will go there instead.

Are these allegations just urban myths?

Sometimes, I think these accusations are little more than exercises in finger pointing. After all, if you blame others for your homelessness problem, then you are not responsible for resolving it yourself.

“Why should we spend our taxpayers’ money on these people, when they’re not even from our city in the first place?” says the typical mayor whose budget cannot afford to help the homeless population.

But accusations of police sweeping need to be taken more seriously. Sure, it may be just an urban myth, but when people who have allegedly been picked up by the police and transported without permission make such claims, the allegations must be investigated.

What if law enforcement started picking up people who were a certain color, a certain weight, or a certain sexual orientation, and dumping them outside of the city limits? There would, rightfully, be an uproar.

So, whether we label it kidnapping or police harassment, let’s ensure that our society protects the rights of all people, especially people who end up living on our streets.

Photo by Andreanna Moya Photography.

Not even if I am a 66-year-old man, perched on the edge of the curb and looking like I should be in convalescent care. Or an anxious young mother, barely old enough to drive, sitting in a beat-up old car with a baby in the back seat.

I don’t need, or want, your pity.

You look down on me like I’m a failure who brought this situation on myself. Like I spend my days leeching off society because I don’t have the will power to lift myself up by my own bootstraps.

“How sad,” you briefly think to yourself as you walk into the supermarket. You feel sorry for me and my homelessness, my tattered clothes, my dirty face, my hair that hasn’t felt a comb in weeks.

I may look like the stereotype of homelessness that Hollywood and the media projects – dirty, ragged, inebriated – but your interpretation of that image is the most telling. You see me as lazy, a mooch, and an abuser of substances with no desire to change.

So don’t feel sorry for me. I know what you really think.

Sometimes, you might toss a few coins into my empty Campbell’s Soup can. The sound of nickels and dimes ringing against the metal soothes your charitable soul. You’ve paid your dues for the day.

Even if, afterwards, you wonder whether I will use that money to buy a sandwich or a fifth of vodka.

How many nickels and dimes would it take to get me off the streets and into a safe apartment? I’m guessing it would take years’ worth of loose change to end my homelessness for good.

It’s like tossing leftover coins into a five-gallon jar at the end of the day. We know it will take ages to fill, or even to save a meaningful amount, but the sound of coins clanking against the glass sounds good anyway.

I don’t need your coins of pity.

How would you feel if you knew that, during my youth, I fought in a war that damaged me forever? What if you learned that I have struggled with mental illness since I was a child, but grew up with a family that didn’t know how to handle me? What if you knew I had been locked out of my own home by a husband who decided he would rather have someone new?

Would your opinion of me change if I looked more like you? How about if my life experience matched your middle-class living? Would you still look down on me?

Sometimes I feel pity, too.

But I don’t pity myself, or even the others living on the streets beside me. I pity our society for allowing such depravity to occur. I pity those who toss coins in my can because they feel guilty. I pity those who believe their handful of coins can make a real difference in my life.

It’s time for a change in perspective.

The truth is: I am the product of a society that neglects its weakest members, and you are a member of a society that lets people suffer on its streets, despite being the richest country on earth.

I pity both of us.

Photo by Paula Steele.

He lived on the streets for almost five years, and made dozens upon dozens of visits to the hospital because of a chronic disease and a lack of health insurance. The nursing staff knew him by name, often giving him food and a few bucks to survive.

That urban health center was the closest thing he had to a home, until the agency I run was able to land him a rare Section 8 housing voucher that subsidized his rent for a new apartment. Jason was finally off the streets and in his own home, supported by a case worker and cocooned in a safe and healthy environment so he could manage his illness.

Who would have thought a bunch of polarized, powerful political leaders from both sides of the political aisle in Washington, D.C. could threaten Jason’s new home?

For many people like Jason, just the pronunciation of the word “sequestration,” let alone the definition, was difficult. But for die-hard political activists, sequestration meant longer wait times at the airport, reduced military spending, and cuts in healthcare.

The sequestration saber-rattling on the other side of the country pronounced the end of White House tours and the annual Easter egg hunt, cuts that would “never” affect Jason or the thousands of other Americans living in subsidized housing.

But when the federal government seized part of the funding for numerous important public programs, subsidized housing was one of them.

Nearly 140,000 impoverished families and individuals would be affected.

In San Francisco, $21 million of funding for housing was cut. They responded by no longer issuing new housing vouchers.

In Los Angeles, the funding reduction not only meant cutting housing vouchers, but also increasing rent for current voucher holders, like Jason, by $100 to $200 per month.

For the “working poor”—people who work low-paying jobs and need help to pay rent—a couple hundred dollars more per month hurts, but it may not force them onto the streets.

But for Jason, and others who struggle with chronic health issues, disabilities, or the lingering effects of being homeless for years, the rent increase is disastrous.

If sequestration becomes a permanent solution to balancing the federal budget, people like Jason will be forced back onto the streets. Cutting funding for subsidized housing has become a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster for people clinging to the government for housing assistance.

But in this case, the hurricane was caused by Uncle Sam, not Mother Nature.

Photo by Images_of_Money.

The problem today is that “homelessness” and “homeless,” as words or images, bring up such negative feelings for most people. Attend a local neighborhood meeting, like I have done hundreds of times, to discuss anything to do with homelessness and, inevitably, fear, hatred, and bigotry seep into the conversation.

“Those homeless people attract crime!” some say. “They are sex offenders that will prey on our community.”

There is not much hope in the words “homelessness” or “homeless.” Yet, for decades, community-based organizations (CBOs) working to help people who are homeless have been described as “homeless agencies” or “homeless service providers.”

Perhaps we should rename these CBOs so that hope is instilled in their very definition. This is especially important considering that, in some circles, homeless agencies are sometimes considered the problem, rather than the solution to homelessness.

When the Housing First approach—a model of addressing homelessness by providing permanent housing linked with supportive services (i.e. apartments with case managers)—was hatched, homeless agencies and service providers became the scapegoat for why homelessness hadn’t been resolved.

Homeless agencies worked for decades to help feed, clothe, and shelter people living on the streets. Yet, homelessness continued to increase, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. People saw homeless agencies as simply managing homelessness, not ending it.

Forget about the bad public policy that discharged thousands of people from jails, hospitals, and welfare systems directly onto the streets. Forget about wrong political priorities that directed funding away from social services.

It was easier to blame the homeless agency that was simply providing a compassionate hand to hurting people.

But homeless agencies are changing, both by choice and because of a need to survive. Shelters are becoming rapid re-housing programs. Transitional housing is being converted to permanent supportive housing. Social services are focusing on supporting housed residents.

In the agency I lead, our outcomes are based on how many people we help move into apartments, not how many mouths are fed or how many nights someone sleeps in a shelter bed.

Homeless agencies across the United States are prioritizing permanent housing. This evolution is a positive step on the path to ending homelessness in this country.

In our system to address homelessness, homeless agencies are becoming real estate agents, apartment managers, housing placement assistants, furniture movers, and housing counselors.

Larger agencies are effectively becoming the Home Depot within the system of ending homelessness. “Homeless agencies” are evolving into “home centers.”

The distinction is simple: “Home” is more hopeful than “homeless.”

Image by Jen Collins.

I’ve written numerous times about how, often, people and groups point fingers at each other instead of working together. Those blaming fingers shoot rapid-fire accusations like social assault weapons.

“Those homeless agencies in my neighborhood are attracting more homeless people!”

“I am going to go out of business because all of the panhandlers scaring away my customers!”

“Those lazy homeless people just need to get jobs.”

“My councilmember cares more about helping that homeless program than helping the people who live in the neighborhood.”

“My property values are going down because the tent city near my house is messing up our neighborhood.”

It sometimes sounds like a group of teenagers who refuse to admit their own faults.

What is wrong with society when, confronted with a significant moral issue, we spend our energy blaming others instead of resolving the problem?

Is our struggling economy the culprit? There just isn’t enough money to spend on helping people who live on our streets. We can barely fund our police officers and firefighters. Teachers are being laid off and city workers are being furloughed. Maybe it’s easier to blame others than to figure out how to fund more housing….

Of course, our blame game could be a result of entrenched political bias. Some people think that people are homeless because of something they’ve done. They’re all lazy or addicted to drugs. Other people think that homeless people are the victims. The economy has put them in a tight spot, they don’t have enough family support, and they lack a society that will help them.

Should homeless individuals pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Or should we carry them until they can stand on their own? Depending on our perspectives, we certainly know where to point our fingers.

Maybe our society keeps arguing about homelessness, and blaming others, because we are frustrated.

Helping a broken, hurting, or sick person is not simple. I wish we could press a button and their problems would just go away. I wish we could just call 911 and have an emergency service worker take each homeless individual to a new apartment.

Resolving homelessness is not that simple, and it is frustrating.

But imagine being on the other side. Living on the streets while dreaming of being in your own home. Watching passersby shoot indignant glares in your direction because they think you’re lazy.

Maybe people who are homeless should be pointing their fingers at us.

It took six years to get to this opening, from the formation of a vision task force in 2007 to the moving in of some of the city’s most chronically homeless citizens.

It took six years to create a center that tackles the growing issue of homelessness in California’s second-largest city. Six years to garner a majority of support from city leaders to allocate initial funding, and to find a qualified homeless agency and developer willing to risk public scrutiny and leverage additional revenue to build a multimillion-dollar structure. Six years to convince a leery neighborhood that such a facility would actually reduce homelessness in the area, not attract it.

Was six years too long? In this polarized environment, where anything that even hints at politics is delayed or shot down for being too extreme, building a structure to house hundreds of chronically homeless and disabled people rarely succeeds.

But in San Diego’s case, six years later, success has been found as the first person moves off the streets.

Still, many in the community will criticize this, and any homeless housing development, as not being enough given that the region is home to nearly 10,000 homeless individuals.

How can a development that houses 223 people solve the city’s homelessness problem? Connections Housing is not the sole answer to homelessness in the region; rather, it is one part of a larger strategy to address homelessness called the Ending Homelessness in Downtown San Diego Campaign.

City leaders, along with the San Diego Housing Commission and leaders of Connections Housing, have created a new approach to addressing local homelessness that doesn’t only help a few hundred people living on the streets, but actually reduces homelessness in the neighborhood that hosts the facility.

The hope is that other neighborhoods wanting to reduce local homelessness will replicate the approach.

Traditionally, when a homeless shelter is completed and the sheets are finally tucked into the beds, the doors open and thousands of people struggling with homelessness flock to the shelter like it’s a mad game of musical chairs. But, in many cases, it’s more like “musical beds,” resulting in thousands of people stuck on the streets with many still lingering in the neighborhood around the shelter.

In Connections Housing’s approach, however, outreach to those on the streets has been strategically targeted toward people sleeping in the area around the building and those who have been stranded on the streets for years, most of whom are struggling with long-term disabilities. For months now, outreach teams have been methodically preparing people on the streets for their new housed lives.

The goal is to ensure that the neighborhood surrounding the development benefits from a reduction of homelessness.

Integrated street outreach teams – including PATH’s case workers, Downtown Partnership’s outreach and the San Diego Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team – will continue to monitor the streets around the facility in order to prioritize people who have been homeless for years, encourage people to access Connections Housing’s services and make the streets safer by targeting criminal activity.

When people on the streets choose to access services at Connections Housing, they are literally embraced by 35 San Diego service agencies that will be based out of the PATH Depot, a multiservice center located within Connections Housing. Strategically linked to these services is a comprehensive, federally-qualified health center operated by Family Health Centers of San Diego, with a goal to reduce costs to public health systems by treating the most frequent users.

Long-term housing, rather than simply providing “three hots and a cot” (meals and a bed), is the real goal of Connections Housing, where Alpha Project and PATH will be providing intensive services geared toward moving people into permanent apartments.

Connections Housing is housing, not shelter, with an emphasis on finding permanent solutions rather than temporary ones. Although Connections Housing may look like a homeless shelter at first glance, the fact that outreach teams target neighborhood homelessness, that health care and permanent housing are priorities and that several dozen agencies are coordinating efforts on site makes this new approach a model for other communities in the region.

When outsiders think of San Diego, they envision a city filled with world-class universities, gorgeous sunsets and renowned tourist destinations. Let them also see a community that is making serious efforts to reduce its homelessness.

This article was first published in the San Diego Union Tribune on Feb. 28, 2013.