COMMUNITY ESSAY : After One Con Too Many, the Spirit of Charity Withers : Homelessness: The last straw for the author is a family using an infant to demand cash, but refusing an offer of food.

There is no better way to encounter the homeless than to walk the streets of Los Angeles or ride its buses. For me, a recent bus trip from my Westside apartment to Burbank proved a long-held hypothesis that, like welfare, homelessness is sometimes a sought-after state of being.

Gazing out of the bus window at the littered streets of Hollywood, I watched three men wake from their night’s sleep in their hidden enclave adjacent to the Hollywood Freeway. Their nest was an overgrowth of lush green ivy. Besides being grimy and unkempt, they looked well-fed, healthy. They did not slouch in recovery from the night’s slumber, rather coming awake with alertness, a smile, a joke and slap on the back. The bus was stalled because of a traffic accident, so I was privileged to gaze at the scene played out there next to a seedy motel. One of the men moved further into the brush to relieve himself. Another sauntered up the walk to the motel, emerging with a bag and several cans of beer hanging from a plastic strap casing. The three took seats on the curb and began to munch on food from the bag, occasionally sipping from the beer cans. I contrasted this scene with one I had encountered at Pico and La Brea when I caught the bus. On each corner stood groups of four to 10 Latino laborers waiting for someone to pick them up for a day’s work. Illegal immigrants no doubt, they were willing to stand in the winter rain to make less than minimum-wage pay. What a difference an attitude makes.

In reflection, I remembered that once, in a moment of absolute lunacy, I asked a transient why he lived on the streets. His reply was a shrug and what seemed to be a bemused, ain’t-no-big-thing, contented grin. He was ageless, white-skinned and long-haired with a missing tooth and dirty beard. Standing in front of the Catholic church at Corning Street and Pico Boulevard, underneath a gleaming white statue of Jesus, somehow gave me the strength to be inquisitive. Since I had ventured to engage in such stupid bravery, I gave him the dollar’s worth of change in my hand. Hurrying away, I felt that I had just contributed to his alcohol or drug problem and his continued social demise.

On another occasion, a beautiful Friday afternoon, I saw sitting on a curb a young black family--father, mother, three children, including an infant girl in the mother’s arms. I was on my way to the post office with four letters to be mailed, nothing else, not even my wallet. As I approached, the woman held out her hand, adjusting the baby in her arm so that the child’s endearing face was part of my gaze. “We’re hungry,” she said. I shook my head, extending my hands that held only letters. I stooped and patted the little girl’s head. I pointed to the church a half-block away and told them that if they went there, they could get something to eat. “You don’t have any money?” the woman insisted. I really wanted to help; we were kindred, Americans of African descent. I offered to escort them to the rectory. The family refused me, turning back to the street. I continued walking. At the corner, I looked back at them. The woman was pleading with an elderly couple. I saw the old man put something into the little girl’s hand. It was the money all the time.

I, like others, have had it. Is there no answer to this urban nightmare? Children being used as pawns in con games their parents play. Able-bodied men arrogant in begging, base in drinking and defecating in view of pedestrian and motor traffic. It has become increasingly apparent that all who claim the mantle of “homeless” do not deserve our benevolence and compassion.