The letters “NIMBY” are sadly all too familiar to heads of faith based ministries nationwide that exist to help America’s homeless, hungry and otherwise destitute. They stand for “not in my back yard.” They epitomize the attitudes of many otherwise usually caring Americans, who, while acknowledging that someone needs to take care of the homeless, are sure that it’s not them and darned sure that whoever does had better not do it in or anywhere near their back yards.
New Mexico State Fair Commission and its chairman Tom Tinnin gave new meaning to “NIMBY” recently. Fair commissioners gave unacceptably short two months notice and declined to renew a city lease for a building on the State Fair grounds that has been used as a 200- bed emergency homeless shelter during the winter by the Albuquerque Rescue Mission operating under a contract with the City of Albuquerque.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, according to local media accounts, Tinnin told dozens of concerned people attending a meeting of the commission that, “In the final analysis, you are probably going to thank us ... You should congratulate us for what we’ve done. We’ve made this an issue they (the city) have to address, and you should thank us for that.”
Yeah, right! But let me explain a little.
It isn’t that the city of Albuquerque in this case declined to address the situation. When city officials learned just a month ago about the problem, they practically begged fair commissioners for just one more year. One city agency director correctly told media that finding out so late compounded the problem.
Not surprisingly, State Fair commissioners appear to have been “helped” in their decision by a hostile neighborhood association, which has apparently lodged complaints for a number of years about the homeless dorm. An association official said that the shelter’s presence in her neighborhood brings additional transients to the area.
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That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Keeping the homeless out of my neighborhood.
It reminds me of a comment that I made some years ago to a former director of Albuquerque’s Waste Water Treatment Plant, which happens to be a neighbor of Joy Junction, the homeless shelter I founded and direct.
I commented to this gentleman that we both had something in common. “How’s that?” he asked. I replied, “Well, we both run what many people would consider to be essential services, but no one wants us as their next door neighbor.”
Not surprisingly, he agreed.
I am not unsympathetic to the concerns of the neighborhood association that borders the New Mexico State Fair, but here’s the problem. While these folk don’t want the homeless, neither does any other neighborhood. While this neighborhood association might breathe a sigh of relief that the homeless have been eliminated from their neighborhood this year — similar to a teacher losing a disruptive child from his or her class — the problem has not been solved; just moved on for someone else to deal with.
At least to some extent that’s why the government began dealing with the homeless and mentally and socially challenged in the first place, because people like you and me, the conservatives and the religious right, weren’t doing their jobs.
It’s only when we renege on our responsibilities that the government steps in. You see, there’s a trade-off to decreased government involvement — it’s called increased community involvement. Many times it seems that we want one without the other. We have become a nation that wants to forget community and national concerns and instead as someone so wisely (but sadly) said, “amuses itself to death,” by watching trashy sitcoms.
This fact was brought home to me in living color a few years ago while working in the newsroom of a local television station the night that former president Nixon passed away. Not surprisingly and quite appropriately, the station preempted its programming and ran an extended news segment detailing Nixon’s life.
Did viewers regard this as an historic moment in the life of our great country?
Sadly no. Most of the calls I got that night ran something like this, “How come you guys have taken off (the particular show in question) and you’re playing stuff about that **** crook?” Whatever viewers thought of Nixon, the only words that I have for calls such as that are “tragic.”
This crisis about finding a place to stay for 200 homeless men during the coldest months of the year isn’t just the Albuquerque Rescue Mission’s or the City of Albuquerque’s. If you live in Albuquerque or Bernalillo County and regard yourself as a responsible citizen, especially a Bible-believing Christian, it’s your problem as well.
Will it take people dying for us to realize that just because many of the homeless are not like you and me, they are nonetheless still our responsibility?
