HOMELESS SHOULD NEVER MEAN HOPELESS: A surprising way out of America's worst crisis?

The edge of forever

The science fiction writer Harlan Ellison may have imagined a way out of our nation's worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression -- rampant homelessness. And with a single word: hope.

"Harlan did that? Our Harlan?" His critics and contemporaries, as they grab their chests in shock.

Ellison, who died in 2018, pulled off this feat with a short story he turned into a teleplay. The City on the Edge of Forever became a darling of the same critics who panned Ellison's other works. Known for novellas and short stories that stretch the boundaries of the bizarre, Ellison pretty much invented "speculative fiction," a unique subset of several genres, from horror and sci-fi to thrillers and romance.

Joan Collins as Edith KeelerNow considered the best episode of a TV series known for its finicky fans and obsessive devotees, The City on the Edge of Forever insisted that mere forward thinking is never enough to capture the future. If, as a people, a society, a civilization we are to thrive, we must think so far into the future that we live on the edge -- of forever.

But how do we do that? And how do the people who comprehend such endless horizons inspire forever thinking in the rest of us?

Ellison answered that question in City through the least of us, homeless men in a Depression-era soup kitchen run by a charismatic secular nun, Edith Keeler. She nourished her downtrodden guests with bread, soup, and an ingredient long missing from many of their lives: hope. Every evening, to familiar faces and newcomers, believers and cynics, our tired, our poor, our huddled masses, Keeler set out to inspire. She would start her short talks with a building block of hope: reciprocity.

"Now, as I'm sure somebody out there has already said, it's time to pay for the soup," she quipped.

"You expect to eat for free or something? You got to listen to Goody Two-shoes," groused a scruffy guy whose vision of America's future must have included "no barrier" shelters. "Not that Keeler's a bad-looking broad, but if she really wanted to help a fella in need ..."

Ever ready for the doubters, the taunters, the dissers, Keeler heard it all before. "Let's start by getting one thing straight. I'm not a do-gooder," she fired back. "If you're a bum, if you can't break off the booze or whatever it is that makes you a bad risk, then get out.

"I don't pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love when every day is a struggle to survive. But I do insist that you DO survive because the days and the years ahead are worth living for."

Persistence. Self love. Mutual understanding. Reciprocal respect.
Hope.

When was the last time you heard of or read about a homeless services provider encouraging or even suggesting hope for the future? Demanding mutual respect? Or insisting the people they serve stay sober, at least on shelter grounds?

"One day soon, mankind ... will find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and cure their diseases. They will find a way to give each person a common future of hope. Those are the days worth living for.

"Prepare for tomorrow!" Keeler urges. "Get ready! Don't give up."

If only America a hundred years later was living up to that hope. Too many homeless persons are instead treated like hospice patients. Feed them, keep them warm on the coldest days ("warming centers"), or cool on the hottest ("cooling centers"), and as comfortable as possible. Never ask that they work. Never insist on payment of any kind. Never pay more than lip service to their personal dignity. Why bother, right? Optimism is dead. Death is nigh. To hell with hope.

Just look at all the awful out there.

There is no housing, nothing affordable, no place to live. There are no beds, no rooms, no spaces for addiction recovery or mental health care. Asking for sobriety is expecting too much. Assuring homeless persons have clean, sanitary environments -- and keep them that way: why, that's not realistic at all.  Just ask any politician whining about "tight budgets" or a service provider making millions in grants from the same politician.

So the hopelessness spreads, in witnessing this demoralizing human tragedy, in the degrading, dangerous task of cleaning up what it leaves behind. 

In an act of Ellisonian irony, Keeler loses her life to save the future, to keep forever out of the hands of history's worst tyrant. She is sacrificed for the needs of the many. Had she lived -- with her smarts, her charm, her command of that forever horizon -- Keeler would have become a world-renowned pacifist who convinced America and our allies to give peace talks a chance. That delay would have given Adolf Hitler enough time to develop the first atomic bomb.

"Edith Keeler must die," Spock tells Kirk, after seeing the terrible truth through a time portal. "If she does not, millions will perish in agony."

Yes, Star Trek. Even the actress Joan Collins, looking back on a 30-something self who knew nothing about the show when she was cast as Keeler, is amazed.

"I had no idea we had made such a memorable episode," she has said. "It was only years later when I realized," that Edith Keeler "from one fifty-five minute installment" had become more iconic than Collins' nine seasons as the rich and ruthless Alexis Colby on Dynasty.Keeler and Kirk (William Shatner)

Harlan Ellison burnished his legend with an over-the-top, suffer-no-fools persona reflected in the title of a 2008 documentary about his life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.

Ellison's viral rant, Pay the Writer, may be the most powerful (and profane) plea not to take anyone for granted, especially when they provide something of value that you need or want.

I can only imagine the blistering takedown Ellison would serve up about how homelessness in America has become a cottage(less) industry, making some people rich while those they claim to help sink further into despair.

The City on the Edge of Forever homeless services model "isn't brain surgery" (I can hear Ellison now). No one eats or sleeps drunk, high, or abusive. You pay for your food and lodging with the same kind of simple chores Spock and Kirk had to do at the soup kitchen.

You treat us and each other and the community beyond that door with the same respect we give you. And most of all, as your self worth returns (and it will), you practice the hope Sister Keeler preached:

"Prepare for tomorrow! Get ready! Don't give up. These are the days worth living for."

-- Michael Martin for the Columbia Heart Beat

Photo credits Paramount Global, Harlan Ellison