Why So Many Homeless in Jackson

Pretty often, the question comes up about why Jackson has so many homeless.  For a city our size, we have a much larger homeless population than you'd expect.  I don't know the answer, but I have a pretty good guess and an opinion.

Even before Stewpot opened, there were accusations that other cities were sending their homeless to Jackson.  We had large bus terminals here, and the Spirit of New Orleans comes through Union Station twice a day.   It'd be awfully easy for police at any stop along those lines to give their homeless a sandwich and a free ticket to Jackson.

Living downtown for fifteen years, I can't prove anything, but I've seen some stuff.  I've seen six or seven homeless get off the bus from Memphis a couple days a week.  I've seen both Madison and Rankin county sheriff cars dropping off homeless on the other side of the tracks on Capitol Street.  

I've heard talk about doing something about this, either legally or journalistically, but after forty-five years of this, nobody has done anything yet.  It'd be pretty complicated to do, for one thing.  You'd almost have to have a whistle-blower to prove anything, and even if you had that, there are several entities involved, and you wouldn't have a whistle-blower in all of them.  I do think proving something against one of them might have an influence on the others, but that hasn't happened yet.

One of the responses I hear is that Jackson is far better able to care for the homeless than these other cities.  That part is true.  More than forty-five years ago, Central Presbyterian Church convinced the other downtown churches that they had a moral obligation to do something about these people living among us. I'm really very proud of what Stewpot has become, and it's spawned a rich cluster of like-minded organizations like Shower Power and Grace Place, and together they do a pretty good job of taking care of those who can't take care of themselves.

I don't know any answers here.  Pretty soon, we're going to have a crisis because closing mental health services at St. Dominics will have a pretty significant impact on the homeless here because many homeless are in a mental health crisis, and without a place like St. Dominics to help, the only other option is to jail them without any help.   Medicaid expansion sure would fix that, but I don't see that happening.  

There are only a few things Jesus told us directly to do.  This is one of them.  He didn't tell us to fight abortion, fend off Transgender athletes, or get rid of books about Heather Has Two Mommies, but he did tell Peter directly, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."  I'm not gonna argue with him about it.  That's a pretty straightforward command.