I Fear I Hate the Homeless

JACOB AKEY MARCH 6, 2025

Last year, a week before Thanksgiving, a homeless man stabbed three people to death in Manhattan. The morning spree was random—not the result of a drug deal or premeditated attack, but rather the product of a sick soul.

When I heard about the killings and saw a picture of the killer, Ramon Rivera, I ran his face through a mental lineup. Did I know him? Have I passed him on the street? Was he the one hunched over, masturbating, at Astor Place? Maybe he was the tweaker always near the bodega on Second? The naked man who wandered in at the end of Friday morning Mass? The guy who sleeps face-down on subway grates near Grand Central? No. I did not know Ramon Rivera, but I’m sure there were thousands of New Yorkers who did, who were startled when they ran through their own mental lineups that Monday morning. The homeless men of this city may be lost and invisible on a social level, but they are quite literally seen by thousands daily. And, to those thousands, especially those who profess Christianity, they present a profound challenge: How can one love a neighbor like that? 

It’s a live question, daily relevant, and one I have been pondering ever since the attack. The homeless are easier to despise than love: Unresponsive to the exterior, deadened by narcotics, and physically disgusting, homeless men overwhelm every public space in New York.

The Church is the natural place to look for guidance. But while one might adapt examples—lepers or demoniacs, perhaps—from Scripture or the lives of the saints, the modern institutional Church, I have found, does not satisfactorily address the experience of living in close contact with the street homeless. Instead, when addressing homelessness, it fixates on housing policy.

Take, for example, the USCCB, whose landmark statement on homelessness, “Homelessness and Housing: A Human Tragedy, A Moral Challenge,” was produced in response to a Church-wide initiative that was itself a response to a United Nations initiative. The document is entirely about federal housing policy. In fact, nearly every statement on the USCCB website that mentions homelessness does so in this context. 

The bishops may be correct that “Housing is being seriously neglected as a priority of national concern,” but their guidance is limited to a call for expanded government spending—a call inapropos to the morally stricken New Yorker living in a city with right-to-shelter laws. (Anyone who requests it has a state-constitutional right to room and board.) 

Papal encyclicals and major documents on social teaching, when they address homelessness, do so exclusively in the context of poverty and the global poor, usually linking homelessness to low wages. This may be the correct approach in many situations, but the street homeless of Manhattan do not work and are unable to do so. A 1987 document from the Pontifical Commission Justitia et Pax may be alone in acknowledging that for some, “the solution does not simply lie in being given shelter or a place to live.”

Pope Francis, for his part, offers actionable advice: “Give without worry.” The Holy Father, and those who echo his advice, emphasize personal charity and the how of giving—“stop, look the person in the eyes, and touch his or her hands.” The Church has consistently taught that the answer to the question of personal giving is “Yes, and more.”

At the same time, however, calls for unqualified giving to the street homeless evince an unreality. Pope Francis asks that, in our giving, we not concern ourselves with what the money is used for. Who are we to judge if a homeless person wants to buy “a glass of wine”? 

On a Coney Island F Train, just before Christmas, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil killed a woman by setting her on fire. Zapeta-Calil would, according to an acquaintance, daily descend into an alcohol and synthetic cannabinoid-fueled psychosis. One wonders at the ethics of funding his “glass of wine.”

Homeless advocates, secular and religious, seem stuck in the belief that street homelessness is a primarily material problem—enough money will solve it. And, while the high cost of housing is itself a problem, it was not Ramon Rivera or Sebastian Zapeta-Calil’s problem. It is not the problem of the men I see daily. Theirs is a soul sickness. But so long as those who address homelessness do so on strictly material terms, they will lack not only the tools to help the homeless but the tools to help the rest of us, too.

We who live in daily contact with the homeless suffer for it. There is an immediate suffering: the fear and reality of harassment and the degradation of public services and spaces. The state likely has a role in curbing antisocial behavior. (Cardinal Dolan has said as much.) There is also a slower, more insidious suffering. Moral residue—the continued feeling of distress after a decision or situation of moral import—is the stifling byproduct of nearness to the afflicted, especially a nearness stripped of agency. What can the average Christian do to excise the moral residue, while also fulfilling Christian duty and recognizing that the problem of street homelessness goes beyond the mere material? 

What he always does, when confronted by tragedy beyond his immediate control: Pray. Pray for every homeless person you see. Personal, private prayer exfoliates the spiritual pores clogged by moral residue; prayer for individuals on the street respects their dignity as individuals, not just members of some unlucky class; and as a Christian I believe that prayer is not the least one can do, but the most. The most efficacious. The most loving. The saints, agents of great material relief and institution building, prayed too.