"This is a difficult problem, and some wise and compassionate people are working hard at it. But in the main I think we work around it, just as we walk around it when it is lying on the sidewalk or sitting in the bus terminal- the problem, that is. It has been customary to take people’s pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into an issue, not a collection of human beings. We turn an adjective into a noun; the poor, not poor people; the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in the box or the woman who sleeps on the subway grate.
Sometimes I think we would be better off if we forgot about the broad strokes and concentrated on the details. Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not homeless. They are people who have no homes. No drawer that holds the spoons. No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything. "
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