Reflections on a cold and rainy day – wayne centrone

This blog post is a bit of a shift. Thank you for reading.

For over 30 years, I have worked directly and indirectly with people experiencing homelessness – as a physician, a researcher, and an advocate. During this time, I have seen the faces of homelessness change, yet the suffering remains constant. At this point in my journey, I am less interested in dissecting how we arrived at this crisis and more focused on finding a way out.

This morning, I witnessed something that stopped me in my tracks. Standing in the cold drizzle, a young person gathered their plastic bags—the entirety of their life contained in fragile, disposable vessels. Their hands, swollen and puffy, bore the unmistakable signs of an injection drug use history. Their youth was overshadowed by the bleakness of a life filled with pain, their face a silent scream of despair.

How is it okay for those of us who live with the comfort of warm homes, stable jobs, and secure lives to pretend this suffering isn’t real? How can we walk past these lives, reduced to shadows, and not feel the weight of our shared humanity? The truth is, we are no longer mere voyeurs to this crisis. We are complicit. Our indifference, our inaction, and our collective forgetting have made us participants in the long-term societal impact of homelessness.

We need to stop seeing homelessness as “their” problem and start recognizing it as “our” problem. The young person I saw this morning is not a stranger. They are our neighbor, our friends, our co-workers, our family. We are connected, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Their suffering reflects our society’s failure to care for its most vulnerable, a mirror held up to the cracks in our systems and hearts.

The causes of homelessness are complex—poverty, addiction, mental illness, systemic inequities, and a lack of affordable housing—but the solution starts with a fundamental shift in perspective. We must stop seeing people experiencing homelessness as “other” and start seeing them as part of us. This shift requires more than empathy; it demands action.

We need policies that prioritize affordable housing, access to healthcare, and comprehensive addiction treatment. We need communities that embrace, rather than shun, those struggling. And we need to hold ourselves accountable—not just our governments or institutions, but each of us as individuals. What are we doing to help? What are we doing to advocate for change? What are we doing to ensure that no one has to stand in the cold drizzle, carrying their life in plastic bags?

Homelessness is not inevitable. It results from our choices as a society—choices we can unmake. But doing so requires us to confront uncomfortable truths about privilege, inequality, and complicity. It requires us to move beyond charity and into the realm of justice.

The young person I saw this morning deserves better. They deserve a chance at a life filled with hope, dignity, and opportunity. We deserve the chance to have them as colleagues, neighbors, and aspiring members of our society. We all deserve a chance to be our best. Let us not turn away from their pain.

Let us not forget that we are all connected. Let us find a way out—together. It all starts with some form of action. We can do this. I know we can.