This email went out to our list of supporters and interested folks on  October 10th of 2009. We send something like this out most months – if you would like to get on that email list, please go here and give us your email address. Of course, we won’t share your info with anyone, and we won’t fill your inbox with crazy spam. (Or even sane spam.)

Dear Friends,

Several weeks ago I sat in a room full of pastors from downtown churches in a forum called by the Raleigh Police Department. Ostensibly, it was to talk about how faith communities can properly secure their premises, especially in light of Martha’s murder a few months ago. The gist of the presentation was about church security – having your facilities well lit, etc. And then, they started talking about “the homeless.”

We saw pictures of dangerous criminals (their words), all but one of whom were black, as examples of the sort of people we should be watching out for. (Of course, most of the folks in the audience were white, so this played with their stereotypes perfectly.) Then they presented us all with trespass letters, which, if signed and placed on file with the police, would give them permission to arrest folks found on their property after hours. The entire presentation built to this, and you got the feeling this was the whole reason for the meeting.

There aren’t near enough shelter beds. If you are unhoused and needed a safe place, you might think about going to sit out of the rain under the awning at the corner church. Especially since the church is closed so you won’t scare any of the rich white people who attend there. If you thought this way you wouldn’t be alone. There are several churches downtown where friends of mine sleep – behind their dumpsters, in the shrubs, under the awning. Because it is well lit, clean and generally safe.

The police work for the city, which makes revenue from developers, who sell houses to rich people who do not like seeing homeless people. So the police are under a lot of pressure to “clean up” the homeless problem. The police are frustrated by the churches that have allowed people to sleep on their grounds. So, the police scare the daylights out of the church leaders, throw Martha’s death in the mix, show some scary pictures of black men and convince a goodly number of the downtown churches to put up no trespassing signs, enabling the police to act on those trespass letters they wanted us to sign.

The presenters assured us they did not want to interfere with our mission – they just wanted us to help them keep us ’safe’.

I was the only one who stood up and said that our mission does not call for us to be safe – it calls for us to show extreme love and radical hospitality. I asked the people, preachers and police alike, the following question:

“If you are tired and hungry and alone and have no home and no hope – if you cannot go to the church, where should you go? “

No one had any answers to that. The police officer told me he understood, but that was not his job.

But it is my job. It is our job. To extend grace and love to the other. Not to put up signs to keep people who don’t look like us away.

So I have spent the last few weeks telling my friends who sleep outside that churches are not safe places anymore. That the No Trespassing signs mean they will be arrested. And when they ask me where they are supposed to go if they can’t go to church, I tell them I don’t know. And when they leave, I cry.

Sometimes, the people I meet in my work here  make an instant impression – and sadly, sometimes they all just run together. Martha fell into the latter category. I no longer remember when I first met her, or the circumstances.

She had sporadic bouts with homelessness. Sometimes she would go into longer-term programs and sometimes she would stay with friends and sometimes she slept outside. My friends and I were talking about her the other day and decided she must have left town for a while, because there was a long stretch when we did not see her for about six months.

Since her reappearance several months ago, she has been a regular at our Saturday and Sunday morning breakfasts in Moore Square. She would always be happy to tell you what was going on in her life, or, her favorite topic, what she used to do professionally before she became homeless.

According to Martha, she had worked for the government (in various, unrelated, positions), been a nurse, been a CPA, a radiological technician, etc. Almost every time you saw her, a new career would manifest itself in her history.

On the 26th of July this year, we had a long conversation. She was telling me how she had been forced out of Moore Square the day before, because she had been eating her lunch and outside food is not permitted in the park when they are having concerts. She told me of her career in the music industry and then how she had, after finishing her lunch, came back to listen to Charlie Daniels, who she really enjoyed.

Somehow, we began talking about wine, and she told me her favorite was sauvignon blanc. She went on to tell me how relaxing it was to come home from a long day at the hospital and turn on some relaxing jazz and put your feet up and sip some sauvignon blanc…

“When you’re doing that”, she said “you feel like everything is going to be ok.”

Last Tuesday, Martha was found dead outside Sacred Heart Cathedral downtown. The police have now determined it was murder, and while speculation is rampant on the streets, no one really knows anything.

The one thing everybody remembers about Martha was all the careers she claimed to have. Several folks have pointed to this as evidence of mental illness. I’m not so sure.

Imagine being in your fifties and you live in a world where you sleep outside and no one calls you by your name and your life consists of struggle to find food and clothing and shelter. When that’s your life, maybe imagining a world where you come home from a hard day’s work and listen to jazz and put your feet up and sip white wine and know that everything is going to be ok may just be the sanest response possible.

The National Coalition for the Homeless recently released a 194 page (!) report on the trend among cities to criminalize homelessness.

Of the 25 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors for its annual Hunger and Homelessness Report, 19 reported an increase in homelessness in 2008. On average, cities reported a 12 percent increase. The lack of available shelter space leaves many homeless persons with no choice but to struggle to survive on the streets of our cities. Even while most cities cannot provide enough affordable housing, shelter space, and food to meet the need, many cities use the criminal justice system to punish people living on the street for doing things they need to do to survive. Such measures often prohibit activities such as sleeping/camping, eating, sitting, and/or begging in public spaces and include criminal penalties for violation of these laws. Some cities have even enacted food sharing restrictions that punish groups and individuals for serving food to homeless people.

Read that last sentance again. If you give food to homeless people, you would be breaking the law.

You can download the full report here. I will write a real post on this more later, but right now I am just disgusted.