A growing movement sparked by Chapel Hill’s Downtown Partnership has made headway to improve downtown’s image.
Whether or not there is a negative image about downtown, the image is reality if you’re a customer. If shoppers think panhandlers are on the sidewalk and they don’t like it, that is their reality.
As it is said Biblically, “The poor are always with us.” Chapel Hill’s corporate sense of decency and charity even attracts poor homeless people. But our sense of decency and charity also calls on us to confront this reality .
The Partnership’s project for face-to-face social counseling for homeless is a creative step in this direction. In the same vein is the “Spare Change for Real Change” idea, whereby we’re asked to donate money to help homeless people as a group rather than giving to panhandlers.
