Editor, The Beacon:

It seems that our community is more interested in hiding our homeless than in understanding their problems and needs. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 31 percent of our homeless population have serious mental illnesses and another 24 percent have conditions related to chronic substance abuse.

Some of these homeless persons are not able to be in confined quarters due to their mental illness. Our treatment of these humans reminds me of forcing animals in our forests into pens.

One homeless person I was fond of was a man named Dewey, who lived in the woods by the train station. He had several tents put together and kept a pleasant clean home. He was very uncomfortable in confining spaces, and chose to live the last days of life in freedom, as he called it.

I’ve known others who were only comfortable outdoors. So, are we as a community going to rise above the simple answer? Are we going to learn more about our homeless neighbors and their needs?

Let us not be a community who solves this complex problem with the attitude of “out of sight, out of mind.”

Linda Brown Gurney

DeLand