Emmanuel United Methodist Church, Beltsville, MD

Homelessness: What to do to make a difference

By: Patrick S. Elliott

I imagine you recently got this issue of The Beltsville News and you are setting down to read it. Perhaps it is late afternoon and you are reading this at the dining room table while dinner cooks in the kitchen; or, perhaps, you are snug in your bed, glancing over this article as some light reading before bedtime; or, just maybe, you are looking this over as you wait in line at your doctor’s office, bank, grocery store, etc. These banal activities, which we take for granted, mean a world of difference to those who are homeless. But yet, all too often, when faced with homelessness, none of us know what to do to help.

For example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that on any given night there are 750,000 persons living without a home . It is a tough problem to solve. I’ll let one sleep on my couch and you take in one, and you, and you, and you. Once we in Beltsville are done taking in homeless persons, there will only be 734,310 left. And even if we enlisted the help of the larger Laurel, College Park, Greenbelt communities to house the remaining, this solution does nothing to address the systemic issues of homelessness: mental health care, veteran assistance, and drug rehabilitation, to name a few.

So can one church, one person, make a difference? What can we do? It should not surprise you that I believe we can make a difference. Emmanuel United Methodist Church is already making a difference by helping Faith United Methodist from Accokeek, Maryland, with serving lunches and providing clothes to the homeless of Washington, DC. In reality this approach also does nothing to address the underlying issue of homelessness in America. But as someone who has ventured down to the District to serve the homeless during the frostbite of winter, torrential rain of spring, sweltering heat of the summer, I know that what we do is appreciated by the 160+ people that we serve every week. To the people we serve, we make all the difference in the world, making life on the streets slightly more bearable..