Our Street People Are Not Somebody Else’s Problem : Homeless: We need to change the ‘not in my back yard’ syndrome to ‘neighbor in my back yard.’ Opposition won’t make them go away.

Recent public debates about the placement of everything from shopping centers and high-rises to landfills, prisons and other public facilities have been marred by a negative force known by the acronym NIMBY--the “not in my back yard” syndrome. NIMBY has begun to play a role, too, in holding up placement of facilities for the homeless. In this respect, a new, more helpful and humane translation of NIMBY is needed: “neighbor in my back yard,” given the many homeless who are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

On Oct. 17, we saw a most dramatic example of this when the Bay Area quake struck and 14,000 people were rendered homeless. Many thousands of them also lost their places of employment. Their plight was essentially the same as that of the people who were teeming into shelters long before Oct. 17--men, women and children who suddenly had no home, no possessions beyond the clothes on their backs, and too little money to arrange a rental even if one were available.

The tragic stories from Northern California underscored, more than anything has in the years I have grappled with the quagmire of homelessness, the fragility of the ephemeral wall that separates us from them, our family and all its security from our unfortunate neighbors at the mercy of random circumstance.

Coincidentally, the quake struck just as “high season” for the homeless issue was kicking off--the annual winter-holiday migration of ragged people out of the shadows and into the limelight of media attention. The season’s tradition of helping others while celebrating our own good fortune was anticipated in the response to the Bay Area quake. Perhaps the only good thing about the disaster is that it proved, once again, that Californians are generous to a fault.

Another important lesson of the unlikely convergence between the Northern California quake and the start of the homelessness “high season” is that charity must begin at home. Nothing could be more appropriate, inasmuch as the homeless on our streets are, in the main, truly our neighbors.

Many cities, mainly those in the Sunbelt, are considered meccas for the homeless, sure to be visited as temperatures plummet up North. But the homeless generally do not move with the seasons. Carl Abbott, a professor at George Washington University, says, “Essentially, homelessness is a universal local problem. . . . Each city produces its own homeless population.”

Empirical studies of people using Los Angeles city shelters last winter validate Abbott’s observation. The average distance a client traveled seeking shelter was just 12 miles--a distance shorter than the average L.A. commute. Most of those surveyed had been L.A.-area residents for up to seven years before circumstances forced them onto the streets. Interestingly, seven years is also the average length of residency of Angelenos with roofs over their heads.

Redefining the NIMBY attitude where the homeless are concerned is especially vital now because there is evidence of a rising tide of NIMBY sentiment against the localized delivery of services to our homeless neighbors. The Times detailed this new sullen mood just one day before the Oct. 17 earthquake. The story reported numerous examples of shrinking availability of services for the homeless in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Harbor City, Pacoima, the Westside and the San Fernando Valley. These local attitudes have been mirrored in Sacramento and Washington, too, where programs earmarked for the homeless have been cut.

Of course, lawmakers in distant locales find it easy to ignore the homeless people who are all-too-visible on neighborhood streets. The problem, we are told, is local, and must have a local resolution. The simple truth is that the only certain way to get the homeless out of the streets is to give them access to the wide range of physical and mental health, transitional housing and other support services they need--services that depend largely on state and federal funding.

So as the “high season” for homelessness opens, let’s resolve to reorient our NIMBY thinking, at least on this one pressing social issue. The homeless really are neighbors in need. They have a right to be where they are. We have an obligation to be as effective--even as creative--as we can be in getting human services to them. The place to start is by expecting realistic local leadership on coping capably with this very local problem. More leadership must emanate from the private sector and community groups. The long-time shunting of the homeless problem to religious organizations alone is no longer sufficient or acceptable. Leadership is urgently needed to help our communities face up to the hard facts about homelessness and to develop a consensus supporting proven, effective service-brokering entities helping the homeless get back on track.

Citywide, 90% of homeless people have been in the street fewer than three months, many fewer than three weeks. Intervention that uplifts and redirects these neighbors back into society’s mainstream before their will to win and survival instincts are devastated exists and works.

Despite statistics showing continued economic growth, we all know that prosperity in recent years has been sharply uneven. Takeovers and mergers, not to mention stiff international competition, have produced higher corporate debt levels and, consequently, the loss of at least 3 million well-paid jobs. Lagging corporate profits and the already evident build-down in the defense industry mean more of the same ahead, much of it concentrated here in Southern California.

Since the wall between security and homelessness is becoming ever more fragile and permeable, helping our homeless neighbors now may have a very personal value tomorrow.