Solutions exist to help end homelessness, but we need neighbors who are willing to say yes.

If there’s one thing the last three years should have taught us, it’s compassion. A global pandemic, social turmoil, and now a brutal war serve as a stark reminder that we are all in this together.

Yet when it comes to serving the local homeless community, compassion barely exists. I am disheartened by recent backlash to proposed transitional housing. For two years, Homekey in Salinas has served the most vulnerable population – those without the luxury of a home to shelter in and most likely to die of Covid. Through Homekey, a state program to transform hotels and motels into housing, 100 homeless people transitioned off the streets. Yet nothing like Homekey exists on the Monterey Peninsula.

Meanwhile, affordable housing sits dead in the water. Rents continue to increase, pricing people out. NIMBY sentiments leave us with emergency shelters where you can stay for six months, but if you can’t find affordable housing within that window of time, you are right back on the street. Meanwhile, our community is full of empty commercial buildings and several local schools will close soon. We have space to house the homeless, even some with water credits. Yet we’re faced with neighborhood opposition to proven solutions like Homekey.

Gathering for Women, a day center for homeless women in Monterey, sees an average of 400 women annually, the majority over age 60 and long-time locals. At Casa de Noche Buena in Seaside, we currently house 25 single women and families with children. Reading letters and comments on a recent Monterey County Weekly story about the defeat of a Homekey proposal in Pacific Grove after neighbors voiced opposition, I’m left to wonder: Is it the single mother with a newborn who you don’t want as a neighbor? The 60-year-old with a heart condition living in her vehicle? The young woman who received a $2 an hour raise, making her unqualified for public assistance? Is it the 150 homeless children in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, or the dozens of CSU Monterey Bay students who sleep in their cars?

How many local people couldn’t afford rent if their spouse died, or there was a medical emergency? How many live month to month on Social Security? Every homeless person on the Monterey Peninsula is someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, father or mother. They are members of our community just like you and me. Collectively, we are failing them. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are just a couple bad breaks away from joining them.

This ends where we began: with compassion. What kind of community do we want? The kind that turns a blind eye to the most vulnerable among us, or the kind that helps through practical, proven solutions like Homekey? We can do better by saying yes to solutions which have already proven successful in other communities, as nearby as in Salinas.

STACI ALZIEBLER-PERKINS is executive director of Gathering for Women. She and her husband are renters who, like millions of Americans, wonder each year if the next rent increase may price them out of their home.