There are more than enough resources to support every human being there is, but of course that would mean some people would have to be less rich than they are, and that isn’t going to happen, so affluence requires poverty, requires homelessness to exist.

To be rich, to be wealthy and comfortable, we need a system that breaks people, ignores their pain, ignores their suffering, ignores their very humanity, so wealth can be savoured by the few.

And these victims of avarice, these living, breathing human beings, beings of hope and despair, are of course seen as a blight on our world, something to be dealt with, moved along, processed, dealt with in one way or another until they are no longer anyone’s concern.

You can’t sleep here, you can’t stay here, you must go somewhere else, you aren’t allowed to be anywhere that bothers us but there isn’t anywhere we want you. It sure would be good if you would just go away.

The victims of society are seen as weak, as unworthy, as things that reek of failure. And the fact is, the failure is ours, society’s.

We didn’t care the cost of elevating the vain, the greedy, the egotists to seats of power, money and influence. We looked on like we have from the dawn of time, looked up to those on their thrones built on the efforts of us all, and because what they took from us was bearable, let them take even more from others we ignored.

And when we see those that suffered the most, lost the most, had taken the most, we are horrified at their presence, because deep down we know, we could be them, and we are complicit in what happened, like our parents, and their parents, and their parents before them.

For generations our leaders talk about helping those less fortunate, we accept their promises and ignore the fact that nothing is ever done.

The blame is on all of us.

Tarik Rachid  - Speech at Housing Affordibility Symposium