One in 400 people are homeless according to a new study.

During the World Wellness Weekend, Jonathan made friends with a lady from, of all places, Indianapolis.  At some point he told her of our desire to help homeless among others and she gifted him with $10 to ‘start the wheels rolling.’  The next morning, we picked up some socks for men, women and kids and took it to a shelter nearby the convention center.

I did not like what I saw and, frankly, it is what enables homelessness and street begging to stagnate or increase.  As soon as you drive up to the corner building that is this shelter, you know where you are.  There are homeless covering the stairs and ‘hovering’ around – many smoking.

When you walk in to the shelter and pass through the metal detector, you are greeted with a lobby of the same without the smoking.

Sorry, but I just cannot get behind that.  The vision I painted a few weeks ago would have guests at our shelter active in some activity of learning and rebuilding their life and socializing would take place in designated areas, say basketball courts or cafes – not outside loitering.  Guests would be clean from showering and fresh clothes daily.  Guests, as I said, would have 90 days of our support sharpen their saw, polish their diamond and prepare to get into a functioning role in society.

If they cannot graduate from our supportive plan, they are going to be released from the program for a minimum time frame before they are given another chance – maybe 3 or 6 months.  And probably we will need a 2 strikes and you’re out policy to block out scammers and not fall into the same trap that current shelters do – allowing for repeat abusers of their program.

This will obviously take more research and some interviews.  Maybe this is a perfect shelter and they just need a new internal structure.

There are a great deal of shelters all across America.  Yet homelessness is growing.  Time for a new answer to an old question.