Lots of wishes

The "Painted Ladies" of Pacific Heights

An 84-year-old woman named Lelia Boroughs lived in a small condo in San Francisco’s lower Pacific Heights neighborhood. She was kind to her neighbors and used to feed the homeless people who congregated outside.

Sadly, she died last September. And in a final act of goodness, she willed her home to the City of San Francisco with instructions that it be turned into a homeless shelter.

Lelia Boroughs

Ms. Boroughs specified that the city could sell the home if it were deemed unsuitable as a shelter. This week, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to clear the way for the sale. Trent Rhorer, the city’s director of human services, said the condo could net the city’s homeless fund $400,000 to $500,000 which could help up to 150 families get into housing.

In the account I read, Rhorer is quoted as saying, “She wanted to give her estate to help one of the biggest causes, which I guess for her was homeless folks.”

Homelessness isn’t just Ms. Boroughs’ cause, as Rhorer’s quote implies. Doing something about the fact that there are people living on the streets of America is, hopefully, on a lot of people’s agendas.

Did you know that 671,859 people experience homelessness on any given night in this country? Or that Michigan’s homeless population exceeded 28,000, Georgia’s climbed to almost 20,000 and New York’s was more than 62,500 in 2007?

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in 2009 nearly four in ten homeless people were living on the street, in a car or in some other place not intended for human habitation.

I wish I could read more stories about people like Ms. Boroughs. I wish I didn’t know that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel and we’ll probably attack Iran soon. I wish I didn’t know that John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell are hell-bent on destroying the economy so that Barack Obama is denied a second term (and struggling, unemployed Americans be damned).

I wish I didn’t have to read about how Mitt Romney doesn’t care about poor people and the president reneged on another campaign promise and home foreclosures are rampant and Susan G. Komen for the Cure stopped funding embryonic stem cell research last year for political reasons.

I wish there were more accounts in the paper and online about anonymous benefactors taking care of medical bills and providing Christmas presents for children who have nothing. I wish the local news didn’t feature stories about little girls getting murdered all the time and proposals to build walls at our borders were dead on arrival.

I wish we heard less about senior citizens getting trampled to death on Black Friday by their fellow Wal-Mart shoppers, and more about sick kids improving, graduation rates climbing and schools, roads and bridges being restored and improved.

I wish we’d hear about more compassionate old ladies leaving their property to the homeless when they die.

I wish reading about good deeds was the norm and not the exception, and we got tired of hearing about everybody trying to make the world a better place.

I wish no one in this country had to sleep in an alcove or bus stop.

“Painted Ladies” photo courtesy HGTV.

Sources: National Alliance to End Homelessness, msnbc.com.