We see them all the time.

We walk by.

We look the other way. 

Perhaps if we do not acknowledge their presence, make eye contact or engage them in conservation, we won’t have to think about their situation, wonder when the last time was they had eaten, whether they have family worried about them or if they will freeze when the temperature plummets at night. 

They are the homeless. 

They live in every community, if you can call it living. 

Maybe we blame them for their own circumstances. 

Maybe we think they have put themselves in this situation because of horrible choices or just by being lazy.

We don’t know. 

We don’t know their stories.

We don’t ask. 

We don’t know how they came to live on the streets, in make shift camps or sleeping on park benches. 

We don’t know if they suffer from mental illness, addiction or simply fell prey to a series of unfortunate circumstances. 

We don’t know if they have family searching for them, if they served our nation in the military or if they have been guilty of a lifetime of lawlessness and living on the fringes. 

Most are not lawless. Many suffer from mental illness.

And an alarming number are veterans. 

They are the homeless. 

We’d rather not think about them. 

We’d rather not be bothered. 

We pass laws against panhandling, we remove them from city streets and, at the very least, we ignore their individual needs and the sheer numbers of homeless men, women and children in our communities. 

What does that say about us? 

Isn’t the truest measure of a society how it cares for its most vulnerable and least fortunate? 

We use public dollars to improve sidewalks, build parks, plant trees, mow right of ways, buy mulch, build nicer public buildings, purchase nice furniture for those buildings, pay administrative salaries, support the arts, put on festivals and events and improve the quality of life for everyone. For everyone except the homeless, that is. 

We even use public dollars to buy park benches. We just won’t let the homeless sleep on them. 

In this case, we don’t have a solution.

But we do hope to raise awareness. 

Our reporting has shown there are more homeless in our communities than most people suspected there might be. 

Our reporting has shown that while there are services available that those services fall short of the actual needs. 

We encourage law enforcement to be gentle, lawmakers to be open minded and the community to be open hearted. 

Faith-based organizations and churches could make addressing the needs of the homeless in our community a priority, helping to buy food, medicine, tents, clothing or even helping to provide qualified clinicians who can address mental health needs. 

Indirect funding for agencies such as South Georgia Partnership to End Homelessness and Lamp falls woefully short of addressing needs. In fact, the modest amount of pass through dollars from federal, state, city and county budgets is not even a drop in the bucket. 

Earmarking public monies — both county and city — to address homelessness is warranted and needed. 

It is true many of the homeless do not want to stay in shelters. It is true that many suffer from addiction and many of those would resist treatment. 

It is also true they, like all of us, need — and deserve — food, clothing and shelter. 

This is a conversation we must have. 

The irony is that as individuals, agencies, churches and even government, we will send relief to people in need in third world countries, while we see them — the homeless — in our own communities every day, walk by and look the other way.