Advocating For the Homeless

Advocating for the homeless is something very important that more people need to do. As I have shared in past blogs, it can be a daily struggle of attacks from adults, teens, security guards, and the police, individuals along with state and county people taking their possessions illegally. Advocating doesn't mean you always take their side. One of the things they know is that we will fight for their rights if that is being taken away and they are being disciminated against, but if they are in the wrong...we expect them to do what it takes to make it right.

Advocating is one of the things that has really spoken love to the homeless. They can't believe we are out there each day and if they give us a call even during the night, we are off and running to see what is going on. You can't stand from a distance and advocate. You have to be willing to walk the road with them and see first hand what they are doing. I'm not even talking about a big protest for one day or even a week, but when someone is harrassing them, stand up for them.

A couple examples of this is where my husband works in the court where they assign the homeless to him as a volunteer in order for him to help them do what the judge requires of them doing. The judge gets my husbands input a lot of times on whether he thinks it is fair or not. This is another way of helping them instead of just tossing them in jail and they come out just to do it all over again. This is one way of advocating for the homeless.

Another example is something that just took place the other day and does happen quite often. We got a frantic phone call from one of the guys saying the police were kicking them out of their camp. They knew that they were suppose to get a 5 days notice prior to being kicked out, but until now nobody has kept that law because nobody has ever stood up for the homeless out here before. So, my husband goes out there and the police proceed to threaten to arrest him, make fun of him, and really became mean about it all. He kept trying to talk to them and they wouldn't listen. So, he called an attorney who was going to call our lawyer about this. The police realized my husband knew the laws and really did know people high up and so they backed down. They finally agreed that they would give them the 5 days that they were deserved. They did arrest the guys though because they were drunk and my husband told them they needed to pay for doing that. He wasn't standing up for them and getting them out of that one.

So, there you have it. It is a daily thing though. It is tough when you are dealing on a constant basis of being put in jail yourself, ridiculed, attacked, made fun of, but God tells us in the Bible that we are suppose to stand up for the rights of the poor over and over.

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:3,4