CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Wausau’s city council had a contentious debate last week about homelessness.
I think there was more that wasn’t said than was. The unasked question is who, fundamentally, is responsible for caring for people who don’t have a place to live? It is the city, or local charities?
In Wausau, two charities have done most of the work: Catholic Charities, which runs the warming center in the city, and the Salvation Army, which runs a homeless shelter. There are other groups, too. The city’s footprint for helping the homeless is small.
And it should stay that way.
Charities do this work out of a sense of mission and purpose. Christian groups that work with the homeless will tell you that their faith demands it. If the city were to, say, create a Department of Social Services, dealing with homelessness becomes another function of government… and another obligation for the taxpayers.
I’ve said before that there are two mostly empty buildings, Marathon Hall and East Gate Hall, that could both be used as overflow housing on the coldest winter nights. But local volunteers or other charities should run them. In Wausau, thankfully, the homeless problem is small enough that it’s not overwhelming. When more space is needed during dire weather, there should be a plan to provide it.
But a new city-funded social services office is the wrong approach. It would need a director. That director would need a staff. Groups that the city partners with for homelessness would expect to be paid. A Department of Social Services would not be confined just to one issue – homelessness. They would quickly expand into other perceived needs. The department would become a catch-all for everything. Surely this would be the office that passes out filtered water pitchers.
The problem with expanding government to solve a problem is two-fold: what starts out small always grows larger, and government measures its success by how many people it serves. We don’t want a situation where the number of people who depend on the city for shelter is steadily growing. What we need are problem-solving volunteers, working to shrink homelessness to an irreducible minimum.
Chris Conley
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