[HN NOTES & MULLINGS ON THE MATTER]

On a chilly overnight, several days ago, Barnstable Police were called to check on a homeless man who was cold and had nowhere else to go. He was hanging out on property where he wasn’t allowed to stay… and it was too late during the overnight to connect the man with any of the existing cold weather overflow shelter programs. The man was not from the Cape and had just arrived, according to a computer check and sources. The man did not want to move again to another place and officers talked him out of getting locked up for trespassing… and instead gave him a ride back to the lobby at BPD headquarters, a very temporary, brief reprieve from the elements until something better could be figured out…

The homeless arriving in Hyannis from other communities, and sometimes from other states, has been a touchy issue for decades. And the people of Hyannis are definitely disproportionately overburdened with our share of services for the downtrodden… much more so than any other local village, where some NIMBY villages have absolutely nothing for the downtrodden. Much to our credit, the people of Hyannis are definitely not the NIMBY-type… but we do have our own poverty, housing issues and limited resources.

It has always baffled me why other local villages and communities do not do more to help shoulder the challenges of providing real services for the homeless.

Maybe it’s because the people of Hyannis have much bigger hearts than the other communities that do not do their share for the downtrodden…

And maybe other communities take advantage of our good nature…

I’ve always felt the richer villages and communities, with their gated-type neighborhoods, are all too quick to pass these issues onto the good people of Hyannis.

And every year there’s the fed-up Hyannis people who always talk about how they are going to someday pack up and leave Hyannis for greener pastures. To some Shangri-la, where there is no homelessness, crime, pain or sorrow. Someplace where the streets are paved with gold. A heavily guarded, totally functional “NIMBY LAND,” where they will live forever in blind equanimity and bliss…

… a place that has absolutely everything, except for the one thing that makes the Hyannis they left behind bearable and special, the selfless people who roll up their sleeves year-after-year when push comes to shove for those in need.

I’ve found most real Hytonians cannot live very long in some distant, cold NIMBY LAND before missing the real, genuine people back home in Hyannis. But that’s just me…

We become worn to perfection by the challenges here… where those NIMBY neighborhoods are missing something they’ll never quite understand.

I actually feel bad for the NIMBYs.  Don’t you?

(Top HN photo: Barnstable Police Patrolman Michael Lima gives a homeless man a much needed lift…)

P.S. – Today’s Hytown Vignette is brought to you by Three Dog Night… [CLICK IT/CRANK IT!]

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