Our Homeless Neighbor: The Black Bag on Charles Street

I recently caught a TV segment on the annual counting of the street homeless—we have 3,200.

Hmm, it is very cold this February, so the question is why would anybody sleep in the street? I mean, it makes sense inside the subway or Grand Central station, and I’ve even discovered people sleeping in my freezing vestibule on Charles Street—but why would anyone choose the street?

At the end of the segment I got the answer: many are mentally ill. Some years ago there was a collective decision to close many mental hospitals and force the dislocated patients to make what life they could in the real world.

This helps explain the person who sleeps in a black sleeping bag in the doorway of the Charles Street Synagogue.

Since you can call 311 and the police are supposed to do something, especially when it is very cold, I was surprised to see the familiar sleeping bag still there when it was a frightening five degrees. I asked the President of the Synagogue about it, and he explained that he had made the decision to let the transgendered person stay.

That black bag seems an indictment. I have to imagine that the person inside it is shattered at discovering the utter maliciousness of genetic chance and must display that pain and demand our notice.

Homelessness is not just the lack of money. And that black bag demands that we, who somehow manage to pay the rent, find a warmer doorway for the person inside.