Today, I Saw My Ghost of Christmas Future.
Today, I saw my ghost of Christmas future. I was out on my walk, and there he was lumbering ahead of me on the street carrying a sleeping kit on his back as if it was a giant crucifix. He’s just one of the many homeless people I daily encounter on my strolls across my town. I walked past him when he stopped to scavenge through a recycling bin filled with some beer and wine bottles. I thought to myself, it is arduous and backbreaking to comb the jetsam of the housed to keep food in your belly and smoke in your lungs when you live on the streets. In passing, I saw his face up close. It had elements of both defiance and defeat in it. I don't know his back story, and I don't need to know it. You see, all backstories of deprivation in 21st-century societies have one similar element to them-the entitled don't pay their fair share of taxes to fund an all-encompassing social safety net.
That is why our homeless are like steerage passengers on the Titanic because they will never be considered lifeboat worthy. That homeless man, I think understood that cruel reality and that is why he had a flash of defiance on his face. He knows he has a greater chance of wining a big lottery pay-out than society finding him an affordable place to lodge. His survival is up to him because society said, “not my problem.” Sure the news media always like to report on those few homeless people that made good and fought their way back into society. But for this homeless person with his sleeping kit on his back like a crucifix, I think he will forage like a feral animal until the end of his days. He will live by his wits until sickness or mental illness kills him long before his best before date would have expired, if he was housed. In his way, he understands society better than the tens of millions of people who work for salaries below the living wage because they still think they are going to be allowed eventually to board a lifeboat and be saved from predatory capitalism. It is not their fault. The news media and too many politicians make them believe that if they hate refugees or people on benefits, there will be a berth for them on a dingy which will lead them to the land of home ownership and equity.
But that's not true. Just like in 2021 "we will build affordable housing” is not true when it comes out of the mouths of politicians who hold the levers of power. When governments pledge to reverse the trend of rising housing costs after decades of it going skyward without a promise to radically reset capitalism, we are being lied to like Americans were in 1928 when President Herbert Hoover promised a “chicken in every pot.” Instead two years later, Hoover delivered bread lines that stretched to the horizon because of his handling of the Great Depression.
Seeing that homeless man today and knowing I will see different homeless people tomorrow disturbs me because I feel that the thinnest of ice separates me from them. I made my rent this month, but it was a struggle. And, I will most likely make my rent next month. But I have become like a man who has been long in the sea, and my arms are getting tired of swimming and not seeing shore. And, I am not alone. There are millions like me in the USA and hundreds of thousands like me, in the UK, Canada or Australia whose tenancy is tenuous. All of us- who are thrashing about in the dark water of economic uncertainty and housing uncertainty should dread that our futures are held in the hands of politicians who allowed their citizens to die in their thousands or millions because ordinary life had less value to them than ensuring the 1% preserved their wealth.