NIMBY on Upton Street

I live above the Store 24 on Mass. Ave. across the street from the Berklee Performance Center.  The sidewalk in front of my house seems to be a magnet for people in need of “spare change” not to mention perhaps food and shelter and other such basics.  I frequently feel like I run a gauntlet entering or exiting my building – not so much composed of multiple needy people as of my own conflicting emotions of irritation, guilt, compassion, anger, etc., etc.  If my feelings were turned into policy without any amelioration by reason, morality or good sense, all these people would be swept away to some place where I didn’t have to be conscious of their existence.

That being said, I would rather adopt the smelliest, loudest, most pathetically and hopelessly needy of the lot of them, and move that person into my house, than live next door to someone like Norm Knickle or Jerry Frank.  According to the Boston Globe’s Yvonne Abraham, they would deny homeless people the chance of a roof over their heads simply because they imagine that their property values might suffer.  If I were a religious person, I would think about these persons in terms of the state of their souls, and about camels passing through the eyes of needles.  I might compare their posh Upton Street houses to whited sepulchres.

But I’m not.  I’m just someone who can’t stand the stench of greed and selfishness and who hopes that the more that people like these try to make themselves comfortable at the expense of others the more they will be afflicted by demons of their own making.