A couple of years ago, I was driving Tony to one of his many therapy appointments. As I pulled to a corner of an exit ramp, I lowered my window and held out some cash to a gentleman standing at the corner with a sign. He quickly met my eyes and then looked down, back at Tony, and then briefly at me again as he said, “I can’t take this. Not from you. Keep it for him.”

When I was in high school, there was a girl in one of my classes who came from a much wealthier family than mine. She and I got into a spirited (ok, slightly heated) debate one period in particular after she made several statements about how lazy homeless people are, and that if they just tried to clean themselves up in a bathroom or something like that and tried to get a job she was sure they wouldn’t be in the position they were in.

This is I think a narrative many people tell themselves, an explanation that makes it easier to look away. And unfortunately, it is a tale that ignores some hard realities: our homeless population is a varied group that includes in it’s ranks military veterans suffering from PTSD or other untreated conditions, women fleeing domestic violence, LGBTQIA youth kicked out of their homes, individuals with mental illness, and the developmentally disabled.

You see, I had seen that gentleman around before. I had noted him in particular one afternoon at a gas station I was stopped at while I was waiting to pull up to a pump, and I had seen in him some of the same things he probably recognized in my son, who is often rocking or flapping in our backseat: signs of a neurodevelopmental disorder- though his impairments clearly were not as severe as Tony’s. He had fallen through somebody’s cracks, and when I looked at him, I honestly unfortunately saw one possible future path for our son in the absence of fearless and seemingly near constant advocation. And I think this gentleman obviously did too.

As I see it, the “safety net” in our communities is not big enough to meet the needs of everyone who actually qualifies for that kind of help or support and keep them off the streets. And part of the fault for that lies with us, as the voters and residents of our communities. We have prioritized other things, and we have looked away- and in so doing some of us have told ourselves whatever myths we needed to sooth our consciences and make the experience more palatable.

I shared some of my thoughts last year about the need for increased funding in Arizona for the developmentally disabled. Those needs remain unchanged, in fact, they continue to grow as health care costs continue to rise. To me, it seems that it is not enough to say that we value the right for every life to be born for those of us that do. I think that if we say that, we need to honor an effort to give everyone born some basic quality of life once they get here.

While I would wish for every person born an equal opportunity for growth, learning, love, and adequate sustenance, at the very least I would hope that in a country overall as wealthy as the USA we could provide for a humane way to keep our most vulnerable populations off the streets.

The current delivery system to the developmentally disabled in Arizona pays certain providers less than they can get at clinics that accept traditional private insurances only. And generally, these therapies increase capabilities enough to bring a long-term return on investment in lowering costs of future care even if they don’t result in complete independence.

And last year at the DDD rate forums, I listened to multiple group home administrators state that the amounts they were getting reimbursed wasn’t enough to cover the cost of services they were providing and some of them mentioned that they were beginning to shift their client based away from state-reimbursed care of the developmentally disabled. What will happen if those homes one-by-one end up having to do just that because they can’t financially survive and continue providing care to the individuals they serve? Where will those individuals go, and…will we look away?

My hope is that we will not- that even those of us who aren’t the parents of a developmentally disabled individual will recognize and vocally support the need for increased funding to these services here in the great state of Arizona or wherever else we may live.