Lucy: "Sometimes I get discouraged."

Charlie Brown: "Well Lucy, life does have it's ups and downs, you 
know."



Lucy: "But why? Why should it? Why can't my life be all UPS? 
If I want all UPS, why can't I have them?.....Why can't I just 
move from one UP to another UP? Why can't I just go 
from an UP to an UPPER-UP?......I don't want any Downs! 
I Just want Ups and Ups and Ups and Ups!"

Remember this Peanuts episode with Charlie Brown trying to cheer up Lucy by reminding her that everybody loses some of the time. She’s having none of it. This afternoon I walked along the river to where Interstate Highway 163 crosses over the San Diego River, and I met several people who are experiencing what seems to them to be a permanent losing streak. They’ve lost hope that things will turn around and life will be better. There is real irony in the situation. These homeless people have chosen to settle in a section of Mission Valley called “Fashion Valley.” They go to sleep a few hundred yards from an Upscale shopping mall where a woman’s handbag can cost more money than some of these people will get their hands on in a full year.

Later this week after I drop Margaret off at the entrance to San Diego’s grand Symphony Hall and find a place to park a three blocks away on Fifth Avenue, I’ll walk past at least a dozen homeless people bedding down for the night on the street. When I go back to get the car a couple of hours later, more people will have come to the area to put their blankets and shopping carts in doorways of businesses that are closed for the night.

I’m not an economist and even if I were, I wouldn’t know how to explain to my friends who are citizens of other countries why homelessness can happen in America. Like Lucy, most of them believe everybody in “The States” should be forever moving up. They are surprised to learn that we have citizens who don’t have an inside place to sleep and often go to bed hungry. I tell them about the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, about Father Joe Carroll’s ministries, Mamma’s Kitchen and Elder Help and dozens of other privately managed and funded programs designed to help people who are desperate. I tell them our best hope is to elect people to political office who are sensitive to the real needs of real people.