On the recent national holiday to honor our presidents, more than 200 Nevadans gathered on the steps of the Capital in Carson City. Many people pitched tents or boxes for the long night of cold and snow and the silence of being for a moment, without a home.
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The Tent City was organized to call attention to and eliminate the shame of homelessness in our state. According to Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless, it was an unqualified success due to the efforts of many individuals and organizations, including the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada; Elizabeth Dorway and Family Promise; the Carson Presbyterian and Methodist Churches; Cactus Jacks, which provided food for the group; a bus-load of advocates from Las Vegas; and dozens of others, from north and south -- not least of whom was Reno police officer Patrick O'Bryan.
In the foyer of the Capital are the black and white stills taken by 15 men and women experiencing homelessness. Officer O'Bryan gave them the portable cameras to document a day in their lives. They further elucidated this experience through journal entries to help those of us who are not homeless understand its daily toll.
The surprise, of course, was that they revealed our common humanity, much of which is artistic. I am reminded of Gertrude Stein: "A rose is a rose is a rose." Now, perhaps the same can be said of us: A person is a person is a person.
Almost 20 years ago, several of the organizers gathered in Tonopah for the first meeting of the statewide coalition to end homelessness. None of us imagined it would take the better part of two decades to do what is right, moral and humane: insist that all people have access to shelter, safety, food and clothing. How is it that it took us so long to gather the political will to take action?
Nonetheless, three bills are pending in the Legislature to end the public and private failure to treat one another with compassion. At Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie's hearing on Assembly Bill 126 to provide transitional housing and supportive services, county officials from Clark, Washoe and Churchill documented the excruciating personal cost of this human suffering: according to the 2005 HUD data analyzed by the National Alliance to end Homelessness. More than 16,000 people are without safe, adequate, nighttime shelter in Nevada and nearly one-third are under 18.
It is easy to stand back and assume things will get done, but this took years and years to accomplish, culminating with a few hundred committed people at the doorsteps of our Legislators, several of whom either camped out for the night or spoke at the event. Now there is consensus: In the wealthiest nation on Earth, the shame of homelessness must end.
Again, it was not the numbers that were overwhelming, it was the choice to do things differently, to think about the problem as one that will no longer be tolerated. As great minds have said throughout history, as long as one person suffers, my life will be diminished by their sorrow. Shelter will now become a reality because the era of talking about it has come to an end.
SHAUN GRIFFIN
VIRGINIA CITY
THE WRITER IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY CHEST INC., A GROUP DEDICATED TO BUILDING "HEALTHY FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES."
