Letter: If you want to write about the unhoused population, I suggest spending the night at a shelter

 Recent Forum columns and editorials on the homeless population reminds me of when I ran for Moorhead mayor in 2001. Lack of affordable housing was the top issue that most area residents expressed concern about. The second most frequent complaint was civil rights.

Yes, bigotry still does exist in the Fargo-Moorhead area, but laws have become more respectful of civil rights. And the civil rights conversations that occur are more frequent and more respectful than in the past. This does not seem to have happened concerning affordable housing.

Let us say, for argument's sake, that most of the homeless people are poor, weird and eccentric. Well, merely being weird and engagingly eccentric is not a crime. It is not a crime in America to be poor, although, as an indigent person, it can certainly sometimes feel like it is burdensome, if not de facto illegal.

If certain members of the homeless community are threatening public safety or the rights of other people, the law can address that. Yet, the big problem with the homeless is that they do not have a home, cannot afford a house, and have a mind and body ravaged by mental illness, addiction, or the simple fact that being homeless itself cannot be good for one’s overall health.

As a final thought, when I was running for mayor, I tried, without success, to spend a few nights in the Churches United for the Homeless shelter to learn more about what it meant to be homeless and interact with homeless people.

If you are not homeless, but like to write quite a bit about homeless people, then it would be a good idea to spend some time, maybe even a week or so, in a homeless shelter.