One of our responsibilities at the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, the lead agency of Dallas and Collin Counties’ homeless response system, is to conduct an annual point-in-time count of our homeless population.
The upcoming count is on January 23, 2020 and we need 1,500 volunteers. Why do we need that many volunteers? Because, although we count our homeless friends throughout the year using a variety of methods, on that night we go out into the streets and try to locate, count, and if possible, interview every homeless person we can find.
Why go to all this effort? The count is a requirement under federal law. Of course, that doesn’t really answer the question. Why does federal law require this? Because it helps communities understand the extent of homelessness, the changing trends and the measure of their success in making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring.
Makes sense, right? I believe, however, that there is complementary reason that goes a little deeper.
In mid-2018, we established a shared homelessness initiative with Faith Forward Dallas at Thanksgiving Square, a coalition of Dallas faith leaders. One of the five components of the initiative’s action plan, is that we ask Faith Forward members to volunteer for the annual homeless count and to help recruit volunteers from their communities.
What does the homeless count have to do with faith? A more sophisticated way of asking this question is the way the Rev. Linda Roby asked it about three years ago: Why, from a theological perspective is it important to engage in this activity, counting the homeless?
The answer I gave her then is one I still believe today. In fact, in the Abrahamic tradition, one of the first ideas we are introduced to in the first chapter of the Bible answers this question: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created… them.”
The revolutionary power of this idea is limitless. If the original humans were created in the image of God, that means that every human bears that image. Consequently, each human, from the richest to the poorest, from the billionaire to the person experiencing homelessness, has inherent importance, dignity and worth.
The implications of this idea are clear: If we really believe someone has inherent importance, dignity and worth, we would invest in that person, wouldn’t we? We would make sure that person has what he or she needs to maximize his or her potential in all aspects of their life. At the bare minimum, we would make sure that person had the one thing we all need to even begin to think about any other aspect of life: a home.
It is through the seemingly daily act of counting our homeless friends that we reaffirm to others and remind ourselves that those experiencing homelessness bear God’s image, that we have failed to treat them as such and that we need to act on that obligation. I have even suggested that when counting teams spot a homeless person on the night of the count, that they verbalize this belief, by saying, “There is another image of God.”
Register to volunteer in the homeless count at https://dallas.pointintime.info/
The original version of this column was written by David S. Gruber, MDHA’s Development and Communications Director, for The Dallas Morning News. It was published on Dec 19, 2018. This version has been updated for 2020.
