Today they’re called “homeless people,” “unhoused people” or “unsheltered people.” In my youth, they were called “vagrants,” and in the 1930s “hoboes” or — less charitably — “bums.”

Whatever label has been applied to them, these unfortunates, who can’t afford shelter and who survive by sleeping in cars, abandoned buildings, tents, or the open, represent a challenge to the American belief that ours is a prosperous and humane society.

The cities of Lewiston and Auburn have taken some tentative steps towards addressing local homelessness through emergency shelters. Facing political opposition and funding challenges, however, they’ve generated a lot more talk than action.

Last November, the Androscoggin County Commission approved $520,000 to purchase 24 temporary modular shelters to donate to the Twin Cities for a temporary homeless village at a site to be determined. But the plan was later shelved because the cities couldn’t reach agreement with the county on how to allocate financial responsibility for the project.

In mid-January the County Commission authorized nearly $298,000 in funding so that two local non-profits, Community Concepts and Immigrant Resource Center of Maine, could open a “warming center” at Calvary United Methodist Church on Sabattus Street. The facility, expected to accommodate more than 50 people, will remain open seven days a week, but only from midnight to 8 a.m., and provide food preparation areas, bathrooms and showers, but no beds.

At about the same time the City of Auburn announced it was applying for state funding to open a similar facility for 30 people on city-owned property on Mill Street.

These developments, though positive, are probably insufficient to meet the need, and the Twin Cities may have made matters worse by limiting both the number of institutional shelter beds and the places where the homeless can set up their own makeshift shelters.

Last September, after months of contentious debate, the Lewiston City Council passed an ordinance restricting the zones in which homeless shelters could be located, imposing a 250-foot buffer from schools and daycare centers, and capping the total number of shelter beds at 120 (not including those that “primarily serve homeless families, youth or children”).

In October the City of Auburn ordered the First Universalist Church of Auburn to remove a homeless encampment from its lawn due to zoning and public health law violations.

In December, in response to public complaints about threats and disorderly conduct at homeless encampments on Lewiston public property, the Lewiston City Council narrowly approved an ordinance making it unlawful to “camp, sleep, or remain on the grounds of” any city owned, maintained or controlled building or land.

A popular trope is that the homeless are just drunks, druggies, and petty crooks who can’t keep a roof over their heads because they either don’t care or don’t want to work for it. To be sure, there is a strong statistical correlation between chronic homelessness and mental illness, addiction and trauma. But the closer you get to the stories of the homeless, the more you feel like you’re looking in the mirror.

Many working people are just a paycheck away from the financial precipice. An illness, accident, mental health crisis, job layoff, divorce or other personal or financial setback can easily lead to rent delinquency and eviction.

Back in 2001 author Barbara Ehrenreich published a caustic account of her personal experiment in trying to survive by working full-time jobs as a waitress in Florida, a Walmart sales clerk in Minnesota, and a Merry Maids cleaner in Portland, Maine. Her best-selling book, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” concluded that it was only barely possible to pay for housing, food and transportation on what she was earning for her exhausting labors and then only if nothing in her life went wrong. “Nickel and Dimed” came out over two decades before COVID and high inflation made housing and food far less affordable.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in January 2020, just before the onset of COVID, over 580,000 people in the U.S. experienced homelessness. These included about 171,000 with families, 37,000 veterans, and 34,000 unaccompanied children.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point in Time Survey indicated that on a single night in January 2022 there were 4,411 people experiencing homelessness in Maine, over double the number of 2,063 the year before.

Deprived of shelter, the homeless have to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to survival — staying warm, getting food, guarding belongings, protecting personal safety. This means that, though many may not be able to hold down regular employment, laziness is unlikely the cause. Indeed, a 2021 University of Chicago study found that in 2010 over half the homeless shelter population under age 65, and 40% of those not in shelters, earned at least some income from employment.

The Sun Journal and other Maine newspapers have done a good job of reporting on the problem, giving it a human face and helping to dispel myths about homelessness. For instance, the Jan. 15 Sun Journal carried three articles (one reprinted from the Waterville Morning Sentinel), relating the experiences of homeless people who, though employed full- or part-time and qualifying for housing vouchers to subsidize their rent, couldn’t find any available affordable units near their place of work.

As today, the homeless were looked down upon in the early 20th century, that is, until the Great Depression led to 25% unemployment rates and homelessness became a plague touching many working families. Books like John Steinbeck’s novel “Grapes of Wrath” and songs like Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home” painted a heart-wrenching picture of the plight of the “Okies,” homeless farm refugees from Oklahoma’s “Dust Bowl.” The homeless suddenly became American folk heroes.

Perhaps if we view the homeless like Steinbeck and Guthrie did, as people who could just as easily be us, then we’ll become more motivated to press for a concerted and comprehensive public effort to give them a helping hand.

Elliott Epstein is a trial lawyer with Andrucki & King in Lewiston. His Rearview Mirror column, which has appeared in the Sun Journal for 16 years, analyzes current events in an historical context. He is also the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He may be contacted at epsteinel@yahoo.com

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