A little over a year ago I was walking along “the Ave” (a street known for homelessness in Seattle’s University District) with a friend as we looked for her acquaintance, Eddie Wang. We were meeting up with Eddie that night to talk with the homeless who called those streets “home.” As we passed a local grocery store my friend and I kept our eyes fixed ahead of us, not wanting to engage the homeless men sitting at our feet, mostly because we were two girls and it was getting dark, but also because we were waiting to interact with the homeless until we had a more “official” reason (like walking with the founder of the group, Sleepless in Seattle).
Five minutes passed with no sign of Eddie—and then it hit us. We turned around and, sure enough, he had been sitting with those homeless men outside of the grocery store the entire time… the men we hadn’t even acknowledged. The shame was instantaneous. I can assure you, nothing is more convicting than totally failing to be a good person in your pursuit of being a good person.
But that experience served as a much-needed wakeup call for me to understand homelessness in Seattle, as well as the people working to address it.
