WNYC’s Brian Lehrer did a follow-up segment today with Robert Hess, Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, on this year’s HOPE Count. It’s a good quick way to learn more about this event and how and why it happens, and also some advice about simple things you can do individually to help intervene for homeless people (like call 311 on a cold night if you see someone sleeping outside that you’re worried about).
Having missed it this year myself, I’m not sure how many CCfBers were able to join Casey this year in volunteering for the HOPE Count. But this opportunity, which has become a staple of our church’s calendar, is one of the simplest and most effective ways of helping address a problem that is local, complex, systemic…when “pure religion” is taking care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, who among us is more a stranger than the one who lives permanently outside the web of physical and social safety that so many of us take for granted?
