La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts

(I have sent this across to the editor ... maybe it will show up in print, eh)

I picked up plenty of new ideas at the recently concluded annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, which was held in San Francisco. In addition to the scholarly sessions that served abundant intellectual fodder, the city streets also made me think, yet again, about one particular issue—the homeless.

The Hilton at Union Square was the main venue. Every time I walked a mere block from the hotel, away from the touristy trolley car station, it was depressing to see homeless men and women of all ages. It was a bizarre and simultaneous juxtaposition of affluence and material deprivation.

Estimates are that there are nearly 7,000 homeless people in San Francisco. No amount of intellectual inquiry about homelessness can help me emotionally understand how the mightiest country, which can wage wars on far corners of the earth, can also have seven thousand people homeless in one of the iconic cities of the modern world. Homelessness in San Francisco is so acute and has been so for a while that the Board of Supervisors has been mulling over declaring a state of emergency, which will help bypass some of the regulations and requirements that otherwise will delay implementing even temporary measures to address the situation.

Meanwhile, the City of Palo Alto, which is in the heart of the fabled Silicon Valley, is considering building new housing and offering them at subsidized rates to families that earn less than 250,000 dollars a year. Yes, even those earning a quarter of a million dollars are finding it difficult to get a place of their own in a part of the world where unimaginable riches are made overnight. If shelter is not affordable for the rich middle class in the Golden State, then that contrast alone will make one sympathize with San Francisco’s homeless.

Here in Oregon, especially in the Eugene-Springfield region, we can relate to the homelessness emergency in San Francisco. The homeless, whose number according to reports exceeds a thousand on any given day, have become a constant fixture in the city and by the river too. The part of the bike path alongside the Willamette that I always walk often has telltale signs of homeless people having used that for a few hours or even a few days.

My first exposure to homelessness in the US was even before I got here. Growing up in India, when comparing and contrasting the two political economic systems that the Soviet Union and America represented, my friends and I had a tough time imagining how a rich country could have poor people sleeping on city sidewalks, like how the urban poor in India spent their nights. During my first year in graduate school in Los Angeles, it was even more of an up-close-and-personal exposure—intellectually and on the streets—to homelessness as a public policy issue.

Whether it is San Francisco or here in the Eugene/Springfield area, the homeless are surrounded by extravagant symbols of affluence. For instance, even here, a couple of blocks away from downtown Eugene is the two hundred million dollar basketball arena that hosts entertainment events. Obviously, it is not that we do not have the money to spend on the humanitarian crisis. Apparently we do not consider spending on easing the human suffering to be a priority, in contrast to our eagerness to amuse ourselves.

The local governments, to their credit, have for a while clearly and loudly spoken about urban homelessness. A few cities consider homelessness to be a crisis enough to warrant a “state of emergency declaration.” But, when it is a public policy issue not merely in one or two cities, and not merely in one or two states, it is clear that local governments cannot solve this problem on their own. There are deeper structural issues that have to be addressed by state governments in association with the federal government too.

It is unfortunate that the election season underway has not addressed real and urgent issues like urban homelessness. In a democracy, it is through politics that we establishing priorities on issues deserving our collection action. But, the campaigns and debates have rarely been about such compelling issues. Instead, we have been verbally assaulted with inanities like the size of a man’s fingers as evidence of hyper-masculinity and virility.

Thus, after almost four decades since those teenage years halfway around the world, I continue to be puzzled that a rich country has so many homeless people and, more importantly, its citizens even seem to be ok with it. I suppose the more things change, the more they do stay the same!

The middle ages

It has been years since I took the rapidly moving public transit trains that go underground. I hate the subway because I am a tad claustrophobic!  Yet, as I remind students in some contexts, there is a lot to be learnt from getting out of one's comfort zone.  Taking the subway is one of those uncomfortable things that I would rather not do, but I did anyway.

As the train jolted out of the airport station, I made sure I read the instructions on what one ought to do in case of an emergency.  I took out my cellphone and made sure I was seeing at least one bar of signal strength.

The train stopped at a couple of stations.  Which is when I wondered, "am I in the correct train?"

Sometimes I think that I don't gain weight--despite all the cheese that I eat everyday--because I spend way too much energy simply worrying about something or the other.  I bet that I burnt as much energy as a marathoner does, while merely sitting on that subway seat worrying that I was on the train to nowhere.

I got up in the moving train and looked at the map by the door.  I made a mental note of the station names where the train would stop if I were on the correct one.  I returned to my seat.

I looked at the young couple ahead and off to my right.  I wondered whether they thought of me as an old man looking dazed and confused.  Or, whether it is their youthful energy that makes them come across like they know what they are doing.  When I was young, even the mugging that I experienced in downtown Los Angeles did not affect my mental makeup.  But, now, I am a wimpy old man worrying that I might be on the wrong train!

The train stopped.  Yes, the station name matched.  Phew!

The train started moving.  A middle-aged man, who was in a suit and tie and holding a few papers in his  hand, turned to me and asked, "this train is going to downtown, right?"

Misery loves company.  Here was another balding middle-aged guy having the same question that I was wrestling with.

After the couple of days of conference activities, I took the train back to the airport.  As I exited the station, I looked at the transit ticket.  I had more than five dollars left on that ticket.  I did not want to waste the money.

At the ticket vending machines, I saw a few people waiting in line.  A middle-aged guy was scanning the machine up and down, seemingly dazed and confused.  I decided that he was the one I would help.

I walked up to him.  "I have five dollars left on this.  You can have it" I said as I handed him the ticket.

He looked at me completely flummoxed.  I could understand his feelings.  After all, like him, I too am a balding, middle-aged man.

He recovered.  He smiled.  "Thank you" he said.

I walked away towards the terminal, immensely satisfied that I helped out a fellow dazed and confused middle-aged man.

Oh the humanity!

In the big city, whenever I was out and about among the multitudes, I smiled a hi at the people walking past.  Not one smiled back.  Not even one.  It is not that they did not see me.  Even after the visual contact, they simply kept going.

After life in the small town that is precious home to me for fourteen years, well, I have been thoroughly spoiled by my fellow residents.  People are friendly.  Strangers smile. They even say hi.  We recognize the presence of a fellow human.

In the big city, the homeless were the only ones who seemed to recognize me.  One nodded his head in acknowledgement.

The older I get, and the more I think about what it means to be human, the more I am troubled by even such things as not even one person smiling back a hello.  It is not as if I went half way around the world and behaved in the Eugene manner.  Oh wait, I have done that too!

In the big city, there are a lot more people to observe, whether or not anybody cared about my existence there.  Humans are fascinating to watch.  I have no idea why people watch cat videos on Facebook; observing fellow humans is phenomenally more entertaining and educational at the same time.

I was waiting for the niece in the area that two decades ago a columnist referred to as "urine square."  That area has since gone through quite a revival.  Rarely did I smell urine there!

One elderly couple walked past me. Each had a cane to help them in their perambulation.  The woman walked with the cane on her left and the man--who was walking to her right--held his cane on his right hand.  "Don't talk to me" she said in her frail voice.  "You know it gives me ulcer."

I am not sure if even the funniest scriptwriters in Hollywood can come up with such scenarios and lines.  On the other hand, maybe all they do is hang out and places like these and merely record what they see and hear and then, presto, a movie scene.  But, surely Nora Ephron did not watch anything close to that scene in the real world and it was all her imagination.

Of course, most people seem to have a smartphone in their hands.  The young seem to look at the screen every other second.  One young man, perhaps in his late twenties, slowly walked past me and he was not looking at this smartphone.   It turns out that there was a reason--hey, even I could hear the phone giving him instructions.  "Now turn left."  Directions.  In the old days, you could always spot the tourists because they would be the ones holding maps in their hands and looking all confused.  With hesitation, they would ask a passerby for help.  Now, Siri takes care of all of us wanderers.

If only Siri can remind us to say hello to a fellow human!