OVER 50 AND HOMELESS

by Darnell Boyd

I heard that 50% of the homeless population is over 50 years of age. 

How could this be? You mean to tell me that the seventh-largest economy on Earth will allow elderly people to sleep under a bridge in dirt with rats running around?

I’ve even witnessed amputees sleeping in their wheelchairs. We have marathons for this disease and walkathons for that disease, but for homeless people with mental health issues and elderly, houseless folk, we want to declare him or her incompetent, a nuisance, dangerous, alcoholics or bums. So they only offer them a one-day bed, or a 10- to 30-day bed.

If a homeless person has nowhere to go or live, and you don’t have a permanent bed to put them in, then leave their tents alone and stop criminalizing them. Leave the homeless people you don’t want to help alone.

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HOMELESS GETS THE BLAME

by Darnell Boyd

Market Street has a problem, and who gets the blame? If you guessed “homeless people,” you are absolutely correct.

There is a certain mall on Market Street that cannot be filled, and the first and only reason that the developers gave was that it’s too many homeless residents, drug dealers and people with mental health issues that’s the cause.

This is my opinion, developers: your rent is too high. Lower your rent, and there wouldn’t be many people without homes, and your malls will be filled with stores.

It’s your rent so high that the stores are homeless, your rent so high that the store wouldn’t make a profit; your rent is so high that people can’t afford to spend their money on anything else but your high rent.

Notice that I keep stating that your rent is too high. Lower your rent. It’s the high rent, stupid!

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