Deaths of homeless inspire soul-searching

EDMOND, Okla. | Sunlight through a tall stained-glass window reflects off a donated casket as 350 people came to pay tribute to Dwite Morgan’s 54 years on earth.

To hear First Christian Church senior pastor Chris Shorow tell it, Mr. Morgan was a fixture in this affluent Oklahoma City suburb — a man with a life worth celebrating … even if he was homeless and frequented the church’s free-breakfast program.

Better known in this community of 80,000 as “Bicycle Bob,” Mr. Morgan spent much of the last 25 years sleeping under the stars — the same place where police found him stabbed and beaten to death Oct. 18.

Across the nation, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of homeless people whose faces and names are well-known to church leaders — yet those people, like Mr. Morgan, remain on the streets.

“The church is like a billboard, advertising compassion and loving service. So often, they are the ones whose doorbells ring for help,” said Charles Strobel, founding director of Room in the Inn, a Nashville, Tenn., program that feeds and houses the homeless in churches and synagogues during the winter.

“Most of the time, if help is given, it’s direct emergency services of food, clothing, perhaps shelter and some transportation,” said Mr. Strobel, a former Catholic priest.

However, many churches and religious groups seem less eager to confront the more difficult challenge, he said: Social action to bring about real changes and create affordable housing for the poor.

“Until those changes occur,” Mr. Strobel said, “people remain on the streets, even to the point of becoming a familiar part of the church family.”

A similar situation confronted Jeannette Smith, 66, a homeless woman who slept outside an Atlanta church for more than a year — the same place where police found her fatally shot Oct. 12.

The West End Church of Christ in Atlanta helped organize a funeral service and offered a $1,000 reward for information about Ms. Smith’s death.

“She didn’t bother anybody, just kept to herself,” church secretary Gayron Johnson said of Ms. Smith, who went from church to church for more than four years and kept her blankets and sparse belongings in a buggy the size of a grocery cart. “What I saw in her was a meek and quiet spirit.”

Members at the West End church frequently gave Ms. Smith food and money and encouraged her to go to a shelter, but she wouldn’t do it, Mrs. Johnson said. Ms. Smith preferred to sleep on her own. She told members that people were mean to her at the shelter.

“We all wanted to see her off the street and somewhere warm and inside,” Mrs. Johnson said. “But she’d be right there the next morning when I came to the church.”

But advocates for the homeless say no one really chooses to live on the streets.

Typically, those homeless for more than a year suffer from an untreated mental illness, a substance-abuse problem or a combination of the two, said Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

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