Charity Begins With a Home--for Folks as Well as Foxes

The mother and her six offspring live by their wits, scrambling for food and shelter in a society from which they’re increasingly alienated. Usually they’re ignored by the masses. Out of sight, out of mind.

Then, lo and behold, they make the news when it suddenly occurs to the masses that their very survival might be at stake. People rally to their cause and flood public officials with worried phone calls. Even the governor of California is not too busy to take a moment to tell other state officials to ensure their safety.

Their plight is so desperate and their story so inherently graspable that TV crews join newspapers in chronicling the events.

And, then, just like in the movies, there is a happy ending. The perfect ending.

The system works just like it’s supposed to: 1) An indignant and motivated citizenry demands action; 2) the state’s top official hears the call; 3) trained public servants perform the task with skill and creativity.

I’m swelling with pride because I’ve just described how the state handled the matter of the homeless.

Whoops, I mean the matter of the red foxes living alongside the Costa Mesa Freeway.

At this writing, the mother and her pups are safe and sound, which is more than can be said for the homeless in Orange County, some of whom also live alongside freeway embankments and even less inhabitable places.

I took a spin yesterday down to Dana Point to talk to Marc Ely-Chaitlin, who’s been operating a makeshift soup kitchen out of an apartment building since April 15. The operation has the city a little skittish because Ely-Chaitlin is also operating the building as a halfway house for people who are both homeless and perhaps mentally disturbed, and the building isn’t zoned for those purposes.

Ely-Chaitlin says that about 22 people are now staying in the building and that the kitchen (which is set up in one apartment) has served up to 30 people on some days.

These are people that the new city of Dana Point no doubt wishes didn’t exist, given that the city has a more grandiose vision of itself. Ely-Chaitlin isn’t necessarily fighting that; it’s just that he doesn’t want the city to forget the people who find it necessary to sleep at night in bushes next to people’s homes.

“It’s not that I’m not willing to go through channels,” he says of his soup kitchen. “We need the city. If we want to find the money to offer the services that are needed to give to the poor, we need the city.”

The city has said that Ely-Chaitlin must close the operation. Ely-Chaitlin’s immediate procedural response has been to see if the city will give him a conditional-use permit to keep the operation going. Eventually, he says, he would like to run a halfway house for people who are either homeless or mentally disturbed or both, citing the county’s relative lack of such services in South County.

“We all know the economy is in serious, serious recession,” he says, as a young boy passes in front of him carrying a bowl of soup. “People are falling through the cracks every day. . . . I’m not doing this to trash people (on the City Council). I’m not trying to hurt or insult anybody. That’s not going to get any of us anywhere. But there is no one in this country who can’t say they don’t see it. Not even the most blindfolded, jingoistic, chauvinistic Republican can deny a certain amount of crumbling of infrastructures in this country. But some people euphemize it. It reminds me of the allegory that Rome will never fall or that the sun will never set on the British Empire.”

Fearing that a massive and violent social revolution will erupt if social problems aren’t corrected, Ely-Chaitlin envisions private organizations taking on the task. Government, he says, doesn’t appear to be up to it.

In Dana Point’s defense, it’s a relatively new city. Its leaders may be feeling their way on how to deal with such vexing problems as social service programs.

But they would be wise to become quick studies. Out of sight, out of mind only works for so long.

Out there among us are families surrounded by wealth and comfort but living in the shadows of uncertainty and fear. Maybe they can fend for themselves, without help from anyone else.

Or, maybe an indignant citizenry could come to the rescue and force public officials to come up with creative solutions before crisis time arrives.

It would be the thing to do.

Just ask the foxes.

I mean the homeless.