NIMBY

"NIMBY" I told my parents half jokingly. Over dinner, my parents informed me that the synagogue I live directly across the street from is trying to renovate their basement to form an apartment or home for a homeless family, which would house them. Instead of continually teaching the values of taking care of others and being generous, a bunch of churches and now this synagogue also, have decided to help solve the problem. Indeed, it is a noble idea. Its nobleness is the reason it is so difficult to oppose it and voice our opinions against it-- no one wants to be the one denying a homeless family a home.

When you wipe away all of the grandeur of the idea, you can begin to see the flaws. The three main causes of homelessness are crime, drug issues, and mental illness. These three things sadly make it hard to buy or rent a residence and make you an undesirable neighbor. But these reasons are the reasons that I am not in favor of having a homeless family as my neighbor: I question my safety. If you put yourself in my feet  you may agree. Do you really want to live next to someone with schizophrenia?

Beyond my worries about how this may affect me, I wonder how this will affect the homeless family. Family is a very vague term, and the details of what exactly will happen are vague too. But regardless of whether this is a parent with three children, or grandparents with a child and their spouse and their 24 year old son or daughter, how will they feel and manage. If the family cannot afford to maintain a residence, then how will their 10 year old daughter feel in the midst of label heaven (Glencoe is the second most fashionable town after all, see earlier post). As far as how an older family may manage, where will they do something like buy their groceries? At Grand Foods which only offers six dollar organic milk? I doubt it. Everything around here is more expensive, so situating someone with very very little money in an expensive neighborhood seems like a path to disaster.

Also, God forbid something goes wrong, like a theft for example, the defendants will not be suing the family, they do not have any money, they will be going after the synagogue.

Some questions that I have which I hope to be answered when more details are provided are 1) will the family pay taxes or are residents supposed to support them, and 2) will this be a stable housing unit for one family for an extended period of time or for shorter terms.

I am all for affordable housing but I think homelessness is a completely different case . In the end, is the synagogue solving the problem or using the family as a token of their support?



Note: "66% [of homeless people] report either substance use and/or mental health problems". For further reading, this article talks about homelessness.