Neighbor House of Hillsborough
Cheryl Johnston, who is a writer for the Orange County bureau of the News and Observer has an article in today's Chapel Hill News regarding an upcoming public information meeting Monday night in Hillsborough. The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss the ongoing efforts of a group of volunteers to establish a homeless shelter in Hillsborough. The plan is for local churches to rotate providing temporary shelter to the homeless during the winter months and Ronnie Torrain, who leads the effort, has said his goal is for the program to be up and running by October of this year.

The bi-monthly meeting of the regional Community Initiative to End Homelessness (formerly the Orange County Continuum of Care) is also Monday afternoon in Hillsborough. The goal of the Community Initiative has been to rotate meeting sites to include people from all over Orange County. Its an admirable goal, but the problem is that it excludes anyone who might want to participate who doesn't have their own transportation. There's no public transit between Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Hillsborough, so by holding meetings in northern Orange County without addressing the transportation issue, it is excluding those in the southern part of the county who have no way to get there. The last two major events of the Community Initiative have been held in northern Orange at sites that are inaccessible by public transit: the recent Roundtable discussion at New Hope Elementary and now today's meeting in Hillsborough.

This brings to mind a conversation I had with a friend a couple of weeks ago regarding the wider issue of poorer people in our society being excluded from things due to transportation problems. For instance, programs at Chapel Hill High and East Chapel Hill High, such as AP classes and band often have meetings in the early morning before Chapel Hill Transit busses are running. Students whose parents cannot take them to school and who have to depend on the bus are thus out of luck. This naturally disproportionately affects students from poorer families. It is true that its great that a town the size of Chapel Hill has the kind of bus system that it does, but public transit in Orange County still has a lot of room for improvement.

For instance, during breaks at UNC, busses operate on a reduced schedule which means there's usually no busses running past 7:30 PM or so except for routes which are express only and run between downtown, UNC, and the various park and ride lots on the edge of town. This reduced schedule is in effect for several months during the summer; apparently Chapel Hill Transit does not plan for the fact that some people live here and that students are the only ones who use the busses. It makes things very difficult for anyone who, for instance, has to work second shift. It also caters to those who drive by running express routes to park and ride lots that don't stop anywhere else along their routes. The logic behind designing a bus system that at certain times only effectively serves those with cars escapes me.

Granted, this might seem like a little thing, but poorer people in America often have a constant series of such obstacles in their lives. And that is exactly the point. The poor and homeless often face day to day challenges that the average middle class American never has to even think about. And then we wonder why they find it so hard to climb out of homelessness or poverty and join the middle class. As John Edwards once stated in a recent talk at UNC Law School, its expensive to be poor and often very challenging as well. It is true that there are many stories of people rising above these kinds of challenges to find success in life. However, I do not see the logic of making it as hard as possible for people to get ahead in life. The promise of America should be to open the door to opportunity for as many people as possible. To do that, we might have to extend a helping hand to some of our poor neighbors, many of whom, if only given a chance, would be productive contributing citizens instead of placing strains on an inefficient social service system. Helping people to move up and become productive citizens and taxpayers would save us money in the long run.
-# posted by Michael McGee @ 11:50 AM