Where is America’s Empathy?

My friend sent me an Esquire article, noting its exceptional writing. He was right. The piece is called The Invisible Man. It was written by Patrick Fealey, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and award-winning journalist born in 1967 and raised in Rhode Island. After leaving journalism, Fealey wrote eleven novels and seventy short stories.

In 1997, manic depression took over his life. He is now homeless, living out of a car in Rhode Island. His piece is powerful. Fealey writes about his daily life and how the system turns a blind eye to being homeless. There are roughly 650,000 homeless people in the US, which is equal to .19% of our country. In addition, 2.5M children are homeless. Mental illness runs deep with the homeless where almost 70% experiencing homeless have mental health disorders.

I keep thinking about the article and the lack of empathy in our country. When we look at the numbers vs the political rhetoric throwing homeless people under the bus, it is not that big. This will likely become a much larger issue in the next few years as rents continue to climb and people’s salaries do not.

When the movie Lead Me Home came out on Netflix a few years ago, I watched it and wrote about it. I still think about this film. After reading Fealey’s piece, I returned to the film. I keep thinking….this is America, this is America? This wealthy country where people can come and rise from nothing, yet we have brilliant journalists with mental health issues living on the street because he can’t afford a place to live. How can anyone think that is okay?