Covering The Homeless: What's Too Soft, What's Too Hard?

Recently I wrote a story on how the city is drafting a new policy to deal with homeless encampments.

Merced has a few of these encampments along Bear Creek.

I get a lot of phone calls from readers complaining about them.

My goal was to let readers know that the city is drafting this new policy. I also wanted to check in with the homeless for their take on it. In my reporting, I spoke to city officials, then visited one of the encampments that will be affected by the new policy. I met Chrystal and Heath, two homeless people who told me they thought the city should build a tent city for the homeless.

Their photo ran on the front page with the story.

I got a few phone calls about the story. Responses showed what a complex and emotional issue homelessness is for people.

One caller said the story was one-sided. "You made it sound like the homeless are a problem that should be swept under the rug," he said.

I can see how he read the story that way, because the focus was on the city's actions. It wasn't a portrait or explanation of homelessness from the perspective of the homeless themselves. Instead, it was about government's actions toward the homeless. In other words, the city was the actor or "main character" in the story, not the homeless.

Another person who called said the story was too soft on the homeless. She said she had worked with Chrystal in the past and knew her. "It's not a sad story," she said. She worried that putting Chrystal on the front page would create too much sympathy for Chrystal -- sympathy the caller said she didn't deserve, because she lives under the bridge by choice. The caller said she worried that compassionate readers would give Chrsytal money, and that she might spend that money on drugs.

"I don't think it's right that people just think she's stuck out there, because she's not," said the caller. "She wants to stay out there."

I guess my take on it is that even if homeless people are on the street "by choice" -- because of either a drug problem or mental health issue -- it still represents a failure of society that we have people who can't or won't live in the mainstream. How we solve it, I have no idea, but I think it's an important issue to cover, because it goes to the core of our beliefs about the role government should play in our lives.