On the streets of Nottingham, England, vending machines have been set up to help feed the homeless. The brainchild of a charity called Action Hunger, the system has had such positive results that New York City is planning to try it out. Here’s how it works. Shelters and outreach services for the homeless issue their clients an electronic card that can be used for up to three items in the vending machine each day. The machines are stocked with a variety of 
necessities: protein bars, toothpaste and brushes, gloves, socks, tampons, fresh fruit, water, books.
In order to keep their vending machine cards active, clients are required to show up for one of the available services for the homeless every week. That provides some assurance that people who are homeless are receiving attention to the larger issues that have led to homelessness, that they will be referred as needed to agencies that can help them.
This is a heartwarming departure from the downright hostile anti-homeless measures cities have been using in recent years – from spikes set into the sidewalk to prevent the homeless from sleeping outside businesses, to slanted and curved park benches. Out of a sense of impotence about our growing homeless population, municipalities have been spending money on the idea that thwarting homeless people will eliminate their presence.
Towns that have not enacted such overtly cruel strategies, however, may be just as inhospitable through benign neglect. For example, why is it that we have no plan to help people in the winter who have nowhere to go during the hours that shelters are closed? Every year that same problem occurs. Every year, the homeless have to seek daytime shelter in malls, churches and wherever businesses are gracious enough to let them sit for a while.
Many towns care for the local destitute with funds for soup kitchens and cot shelters. At the same time, when additional resources become available, the money usually goes towards programs that enhance life for the privileged: recreational facilities, parks, public art, improved traffic patterns, tourist attractions and so on. An inclusive spending strategy might set aside a percentage of new revenues and new construction to address the needs of the poor within our own communities.
Can we develop certificates for homeless people that allow them to use the gym, go to the laundromat, go to a doctor, see a dentist, get a haircut, use the bus, have a library card, learn a trade or attend a class? Are restaurants interested in opening up tables or times when they feed the homeless? Has a fund been set up to pay the school lunch fees of any family that gets behind? Could the town contribute more to a specific program at the survival center or to expanded preschool and after school programs?
Could the town highway department patch up some of the medians? One of the homeless fellows I chat with at a stoplight was having a very difficult time walking down a median strip one day because the pavement on the strip has heaved sideways from winter cold and it was aggravating his back issues to have to walk at a tilt.
Beyond municipal government, the general population needs to hear from our local leaders and through local media that kindness towards the homeless is encouraged. Residents need to have pamphlets listing all of the services the town offers, so that any individual can talk knowledgeably to any panhandler about the kinds of help available. Local media could be running human interest stories on homeless people that frequent certain spot in town. The minute people learn about someone more fully, the more they care about the person. It’s a universal human reaction.
In other words, what we need is a community-wide culture of respect for everyone, including those out on the streets. Our streets.
In Dallas, Texas, people are encouraged to take old backpacks they may have at home, fill them with items for the homeless and keep the backpack in their cars as they travel around town. If they encounter a panhandler, they can then gift the person with a backpack full of necessities and other items. According to the Nottingham project, by the way, books are extremely popular.
We are not going to be able to solve poverty at the local level. Poverty, homelessness and marginalization result from policies at the federal level. But we do need to include the destitute and marginalized among us in our concept of life in the community. These are our poor and needy. They live here.
Every town has brilliant minds and resourceful, inventive people who could figure out ways to uplift the marginalized. We need to charge our leaders with responsibility to give this as high a priority as, say, maintaining and restoring our crumbling municipal buildings or attracting downtown businesses.
While it is right and necessary to have public art, and we do want access to nature, and it’s wise to restore historic sites and beautify our towns, all those efforts are going to intersect with the poor and homeless in our communities. Public places are all the homeless have left to them. That is where they will be.
