Column One: The place where homeless people come to die with dignity and dignity comes from.
I love the thought that if they had a place, they’d be welcomed. I think this is a wonderful thing. I love it, and I want to see it go a long way. I think people who have a place that serves them and serves others and serves the community, which is so very important and true to the human spirit and the human spirit’s capacity for generosity and compassion and understanding, have always had the capacity to have a home. I know that’s true. They have a place.
I think it’s the homeless men and women, generally, who are willing to come in. I don’t know about their willingness to go out, but I know they come in. I think for these people, there are a few things that have to be done. And I’m going to touch on some of those things.
A few years ago, I was at the National Law Firms Convention in Phoenix and the keynote speaker was a homeless woman named Mandy, or Ms. Mandy, she was homeless and living on the streets of Baltimore. She was in her 40s, she had been homeless for many, many years. People were coming up to her and saying, “Mandy, tell me why you’re homeless,” for many, many years. I don’t even know how many years. She wouldn’t tell anyone, and she was not ashamed, but she was just lost.
I think that’s the other thing. Homeless people are very, very lost. They don’t know who they are or where they are, for many, many years. They have lived in one place or a few places, and now they live in other places at the same time or in the same place, and they don’t know who they are, they don’t know where they are, they don’t know anything about themselves, and they live on the streets.
And she had been homeless for many, many years, and she didn’t know why. But she had been homeless for years. She had been on the streets and had no where to go, and she had no money, and she had no where to sleep. She was a single mother of two children, a young