Homeless Women.

Women on the Street

        Have you ever rushed down the street and felt that nagging feeling of

guilt, as you breeze by someone lying in a doorway? Is she alive? Is she

ill? Why do we all rush by without finding out is she's all right?

        People sit in train stations, bus stations, parks, doorways,

unmistakably sick, with what, we don't know. All are seemingly alone.

Some beg. Some don't. Some have open sores that ooze and bleed.

Some are drunk. Some talk to themselves or formless others. They have

no homes.

        Street people make up a small percentage of the homeless

population. Most homeless people blend into the daily flow of urban life.

Many families are homeless. Many babies go from the hospital into the

shelter system, never knowing what it is like to go home. Women are

another subgroup of the homeless.

        Solutions to homelessness are not easily found. But before we can

solve problems, we must be sensitive enough that we create the will to find

the solutions. Often if we do not feel the problem, if some emotional

response is not made, we are not moved to seek solutions. We are often

unmoved to even recognize the questions. We cannot afford to keep

walking by.

        'Work is a fundamental condition of human existence,' said Karl Marx.

In punch-the-clock and briefcase societies no less than in agricultural or

hunting and gathering societies, it is the organization of work that makes life

in communities possible. Individual life as well as social life is closely tied to

work. In wage labored societies, and perhaps in every other as well, much

of an individual's identity is tied to their job. For most people jobs are a

principal source of both independence and correctness to others. It should

come as no...