ABSTRACT
Touches of homey elegance gussy up the lounge: an antique bookcase, the coveted sort, with glass doors that lift up; a brass planter that sits atop an antique sewing desk. Christmas cards are stuck to a mirror. In an adjoining dormitory room, the beds covered with patchwork quilts are barracks-neat. Pacific Garden Mission is Christianity with the sleeves rolled up, a classic example of the traditional way of aiding the homeless. Freeman, thirty-nine, is co-chair of the Homeless Caucus in Chicago, which formed last November and testified at the City Council's 1985 budget hearings. In Los Angeles, homeless people helped run an encampment erected late last year by a team of organizers. The Center for Street People, a drop-in shelter for homeless people in the neighborhood, helped Louis. Homeless people with histories of alcoholism or disability are the most extreme and poignant examples of the dispossessed, but the problems of the homeless stem from something much deeper than individual affliction.
