When Social Conscience Gives Way To Despair

September 09, 1991|By William Raspberry, (copyright) 1991, Washington Post Writers Group.

WASHINGTON — I`ve found a lovely cure for social-responsibility smugness. Whenever I`m tempted to dismiss someone else as selfish, bigoted or socially irresponsible- all because he doesn`t share my enthusiasm for a particular policy-I think of my own changing attitude toward the homeless. Brings me back down to earth every time.

No, I haven`t turned against the homeless. It`s just that I no longer see homelessness as a problem that`s likely to be solved anytime soon, and, as a result, I find it hard to sustain much interest in it.

That must sound cold-as cold, perhaps, as people used to sound to me when they complained about public spending for inner-city education, or job training, or whatever policy happened to make sense to me at the time. Now, I`m a little more tolerant, thanks to waning interest in the homeless.

Maybe I ought to explain a little of what I`m talking about. I`m talking about homelessness as a rather recent phenomenon: not the hoboes of the Depression, not the people who show up at the shelters for battered women.

The homeless I refer to didn`t seem to exist until

``deinstitutionalization `` dumped them out of the mental hospitals and onto the streets. The reasonable-sounding notion was that mental patients should have their illness treated in the least-restrictive environment. For the non- dangerous schizophrenics and others who needed only regular medication, that meant out-patient care at neighborhood clinics.

It turned out-surprise!-that mental patients don`t always show up for the medication. A lot of those who didn`t wound up sleeping on benches and in cardboard boxes, joining those we used to call ``street people`` in a new category known as the homeless. Their numbers have been growing ever since. And, I confess, my openness to the appeals from homeless advocates has been declining.

It once seemed reasonable to me that a lot of the homeless could find work if only they had access to shower facilities, a clean set of clothes and a mailing address. Churches and other organizations started to provide these basics of human dignity, and I`m sure a few once-homeless men and women are now gainfully employed and snug in their modest apartments. Very few. What`s more likely is that very little has changed, even for those who found their way to the showers and free clothing centers.

At one time it seemed plain to me that the growth in homelessness was a direct result of discrete societal changes: a troubled domestic economy, a skyrocketing real estate market and a Reagan administration cut in housing subsidies for the poor. But while these things were going on during the surge in homelessness, I doubt that they caused the surge in homelessness. A more likely culprit is growing (and untreated) addiction to drugs and alcohol and what might be called ``noninstitutionalization.``

The relevant point, though, is this: Nothing, no matter how promising it seemed at the time, has made any difference. Things keep getting worse, and it gets harder for decent people to respond to each new proposal, each new attempt at conscience-pricking.

Something very much like that may be happening with regard to the causes I still care deeply about: public education, criminal-justice reform, the plight of the inner-city underclass. How could anyone be so coldhearted as to walk away from crack babies, pitifully uneducated children, hopeless adolescents and boys so bereft of positive role models they are virtually destined to wind up in prison or dead?

Can`t we see that we all have a responsibility for this tangle of problems, and even if we don`t, can`t we see that it`s in our interest to help make things better?

I once believed that anyone who didn`t see it that way was, virtually by definition, a bigot. But when I think of my frustration over the question of homelessness, I see another possibility: You don`t have to be mean-spirited to walk away from social problems. All it takes is the certainty that nothing can be done to solve them.