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.

It’s a word we often use to describe the clients our programs target—individuals who have serious health, mental health, and substance abuse challenges; who are frequent utilizers of hospitals and emergency rooms; and who are at high risk of dying on the streets. Veterans, seniors, families, and youth also often fall into that category.

But, when we’re talking about more than 650,000 homeless people in our country, what does “vulnerable” really mean?

“Vulnerable” means the 78-year-old blind veteran who was homeless for 30 years. He passed away after just three months in his new apartment, a victim of cancer that went undiagnosed while he lived on the streets.

The only family he listed on his hospital forms was his case manager from PATH, who ultimately tracked down his estranged family. They were grateful to know that he passed away with dignity, no longer homeless.

“Vulnerable” means the father who lived under the 101 freeway with his 19-year-old son. He worked to recover from alcohol abuse, both he and his son found decent jobs, and they moved into their own apartment. But 25 years of severe alcoholism ultimately caused liver failure, and he passed away five months after moving into his new home.

The community had rallied around this family, and the proud father died knowing that his son was going to school, had a home of his own, and had a chance at a better life.

“Vulnerable” means the man on the street who had nowhere to go but the emergency room to address his declining health. In just two years, this man went to the hospital as an inpatient 16 times and to the emergency room 14 times. Once this man was connected with case managers who worked to connect him with the regular primary and preventive he needed, his health improved, his visits to the emergency room drastically decreased, and he was able to move off the streets.

This man was one of thousands suffering, unseen, on the streets. Fortunately, case workers were able to find him and help him before his health problems became too severe.

He was one of the lucky ones.

“Vulnerable” means the people on our streets who need help now. It means making the greatest possible impact with the resources we have.

Vulnerability indexes, overseen by the 100,000 Homes Campaign, help agencies like PATH identify and prioritize those people on the streets who are considered the most vulnerable. These surveys tell us where our efforts are most needed.

“Vulnerable” means we aren’t just helping transform lives. We are helping save them.

Whether a result of bad breaks and costly mistakes, or a sudden life-shattering event or circumstance, the disillusioned of us have found themselves removed from the mainstream population.

Aptly named “homeless,” they sadly live, eat, and sleep on the same streets the rest of us jog, drive, and play. City parks, doorways, and bus benches hold their masses.

To all appearances, these helpless, hopeless misfits eek out an existence on discarded, disposed, or donated necessities.

Admittedly an eyesore, their presence is found bothersome, uncomfortable, and downright heartbreaking. Even the most compassionate amongst us would be grateful if they would just go away.

The shear number of these disenfranchised is not only astonishing, but absolutely overwhelming.

It leaves one to ask the question, “If, and I said if, I was willing, even eager, to help address this problem, where would I go? Or where to begin?”

To this, I admit there is no easy answer. The logistics of catering to a need so dire leaves humble good people doing nothing.

But this I’ll state as fact: They’re not going anywhere. There is no “away.” This place does not exist. If they had a place to go, they wouldn’t be here.

Regardless whether lumped together with such derogatory terms as lazy, criminal, or insane, they are as much a part of American society as schools, police, and skyscrapers, with ranks that are growing exponentially. No matter if begging for your money, ranting and raving at invisible demons, or just lying in the dirt defeated and broken, the truth is they are as baffled why they don’t fit in as you are. Seeming never to quite fit in. Even their adolescent years were riddled with a feeling of not having, or even feeling like, enough. No matter the effort or desire to be “Joe Citizen,” their best always seems to fall woefully short. Being not enough to be acceptable for “them,” even for you.

Please don’t be deceiver, however; hopes, dreams, and healthy desires are not foreign ideas to them. They just appear, somehow.

They have become a luxury not afforded to them. Too painful to maintain amongst the insurmountable self-destruction and failures of their past.

Lives, relationships, and careers others seem to manage effortlessly seem unavailable, paralyzing, frightful, and, frankly, unattainable.

With a mixture of unhealthy emotions, they see everything around them functioning seamlessly, justifying their feelings of envy, jealousy, and even awe.

Please understand this: They are as bewildered and amazed at the way you function in and with society as you are disturbed and disgust by them.

Please, I beg you to reevaluate your own fears and biases. Because, no matter who, what, when, where, or why, they aren’t participating, even trying. These people are our family. They are our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and children. Smile for them. Say hi to them. You might be surprised to see how grateful they are, not only for the acknowledgment of their existence, but for the rare opportunity to share with someone, anyone, their capacity to love, care, and contribute.

Now, I’m not asking you to leave the comfort and warmth of your homes tonight to rest with them under the cold, dark night sky, with its unreachable stars. They wouldn’t ask that of you, either. Just take some time to ponder and reevaluate the cosmic truth that our mortal bodies are but vessels, fading, dying containers of the true us.

Possessions, property, social standing, and prestige, (real or imagined), are but whispers of smoke seen through the mirror of mortal deception. Amounting, eventually, to nothing.

Someday, and someday soon, the realm of our human existence, with all of its expectations, judgments, and disappointments will mercifully cease to exist, thus propelling us to our true home, our infinite perfect residence within which each of us, though distinctly different and preciously unique, shall become equal, indispensable fragments of a greater whole.

Pieces that can’t fall short, and are always enough. Complete with understanding that our past was exactly what it was supposed to be. Necessary to shape and form this piece we were destined to become. Unmistakably complete, cosmically perfect, and finally enough.

Photo by Jason Yung.