Recently on the neighborhood listserve there was all kinds of consternation and flame going on when the owners of Off The Wall, an antique/used furniture store on South Congress, put out the word that they have noticed a significant uptick in panhandling and presumably homeless people in this commercial corridor.  Their main plea was that neighbors not encourage the panhandlers by giving them money.  Someone on the list then proceeded to refer to homeless people as “bums” and implied that they are responsible for the increase in car vandalism and the like.  Well… that didn’t sit well with anyone else on the list.  It did, however, provide some great stories about people’s own experience with homelessness and the homeless in general.

I then recalled that my own grandmother had often voiced her fear of someday becoming homeless herself.  She kind of romanticized it, probably having grown up in the era of the hobos, but I’m sure she really did worry about it.  She befriended several homeless women who lived on the Drag near the University when she lived near there, one of which had been a doctoral candidate and the other a dance instructor from which my mom took classes in the ’60s.

The fact is, many people are incredibly close to being homeless, especially if they have any kind of mental illness for which treatment is nearly non-existent in Texas (here’s a great snapshot of what that means in Harris County for their county jail).  And that real estate bubble hasn’t helped, as the 44-lb. cat in New Jersey recently found out.  Two kinds of fat cats here in the land of the free – and both are losers.