Poverties Echo: A Lost Morality
“But the real question is why do you like seeing people in a society suffer? Degrade themselves into asking you for help? It’s never hard to bless someone. A dollar, food from the store, even paying for their transportation ticket.”
There is a stereotype that is blanketing our sense of justice. A lie that causes us to judge the morality of someone else while, in return, makes us miss the opportunity to help them. This stereotype is the common assumption that every homeless person is on drugs, and that the reason they are homeless is entirely their fault. This very assumption is causing us to miss out on helping someone truly in need of our service.
A recent study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development might not be as surprising to you as it should be: “HUD found homelessness reached a new peak with 771,480 people nationwide experiencing homelessness in 2024.” Another recent study shows that, in New York City, “families with children account for over 70% of those in city shelters. The rate has seen a 39.4% increase in families experiencing homelessness in 2024.” These people not only are dwelling in a poverty-induced environment, they are also struggling as families. Just imagine walking past an unfortunate individual asking people for a sliver of money, food, or anything they can get. In that quick second, you decide you know what that person is going through. You judge them for what you think you know. However, for all we know, that same person has to go back to a family of three in a shelter, telling his or her kids that they aren't going to eat tonight. We are so quick to judge and yet so slow to help the crumbling society around us.
Until these assumptions are addressed, poverty’s grasp on our society will never loosen its grip. We are letting a deadly plant grow into something not resembling any beautiful flower. This plant will continue to grow until its petals shadow our city and its stem wraps around our society. We are so conditioned and acquainted with seeing poverty all around us that it doesn't seem to affect how we feel or interact toward it.
This stage in our society is not only leaving us heartless to the chaos around us, but it is also making us dependent on a government that doesn't give a flying fish about whether we live or die, succeed or struggle. The power is in our hands and no one else's. We hold the key to the future, a future not just for ourselves, but for others, too. If you think about it, if in your current life right now the government hasn't been the best help to you and your family, then just imagine the lives of those who are struggling to even be alive. The government, in part, is turning a blind eye to the suffering that the people in our society have to endure.
Why are we, as a people, not doing anything to prevent homelessness and poverty? Why are we not being the light in the darkness, the pedestal for the helpless, a lender to the borrower, the shining hope in someone's depression?
These might seem like idealistic questions, but the answers to these questions are actual solutions. It doesn’t take a lot to greet someone with a smile that shows love and care. Take time to sit down and converse with the people you see that are helpless. Go in with ears that are eager to listen and a heart that strives to understand. Sometimes people are waiting for you to care enough to pop the bubble that surrounds their life. It’s not always about giving money; it’s also about giving your time—that can change someone's perspective on living.
Some of you have a selfish mentality, a voice in your head that says: “Oh, I worked for what I got, so why should I give my hard-earned stuff to a guy I don’t know?”
But the real question is why do you like seeing people in a society suffer? Degrade themselves into asking you for help? It’s never hard to bless someone. A dollar, food from the store, even paying for their transportation ticket. Clothes we grow out of, we throw in the trash. How about we make that startup for someone's future? So many ways to help, yet we feel our best option is to go through life treating the existing as nonexistent.
This also leads me to how we treat the teens that are poverty-stricken in our community. I can almost bet that most of you may see a young individual not looking their best: clothes ripped up, walking around aimlessly. You might, in that moment, judge them automatically for the person they might be. A lot of young kids and teens are heavily judged in today's day and age because people feel like these individuals slacked off in school, hung out with the wrong crowd, and completely disregarded anyone that tried to give them help.
We constantly judge others and move on with our life without ever thinking deeply about the hidden truths these kids hold, the weight they have to carry and the feeling they have that they will never amount to anything due to how they were raised. In this city alone, 154,000 students in the education system were homeless last year. In the Bronx alone, 17% of students experienced homelessness.
Think about those kids. Think about how they suffered with the lack of opportunities. Yes, maybe their parents were acquainted with drug abuse and faulty choice-making, but why blame the product and not the producer? These individuals are growing up without the privileges a lot of us have, and yet when they grow older, trying to start a new life, we slander their name, taking their right to be another human being and denying them the help that could change their future.
There's a saying called “The rich get richer.” But what about the poor? Oh, well, some may say, I guess they get poorer, right? No. They die off unwanted and alone, without a government to aid them. I want you to think about that and everything I’ve said earlier. It’s not just the higher ups that are killing our people. It's also our people that are killing our people.
