From Kansas City to Europe, people of good will step in to help when government won’t | Opinion

The forest near the Polish-Belarusian border was so chilly and damp, even discarded clothing and trash grew mushrooms. I was on a graduate research trip to study the effects of the Russia-Ukraine War on Polish immigration. Our latest interviewee coldly described searches by the Territorial Defense Force, an organization the Polish government established to support the border guard. She faced harassment and alienation from her neighbors, the cost of helping injured people in these woods who had climbed the border wall seeking safety in Europe.

But amid her choked tears, my mind wandered into the trees. I had a nearly identical conversation in Kansas City, two years ago and 5,000 miles away.

While stationed at Fort Leavenworth from 2019 to 2022, I volunteered with an organization called Free Hot Soup, a group that provides food to people in need through informal “picnics.” Sometimes skirting the line of legality, it became briefly famous in 2018 when city officials poured bleach on donated food intended for hungry people. The city claimed activists were distributing food without proper certification, but volunteers argued it was no different from a picnic among friends.

This spirit of defiant altruism resonated with me then, and I saw the same conviction in the Polish forest this January, looking across a clearing to Belarus.

In both cases, activists were not breaking the law, yet found themselves conflicting with police who couldn’t detain or prosecute them. They faced minor harassment, constant questioning by authorities and personal attacks by the community for providing food, medical assistance and donated goods to humans in need.

This frustrating equilibrium is caused by a gap between government policy and execution. Policies that are politically popular or look good on paper get passed. But people, including law enforcement and volunteers, are left to interpret and reconcile the gaps between policy and reality. The resulting gray areas mean problems are never solved but constantly perpetuated.

In Poland, government forces push back refugees to Belarus, but because the Belarusian situation is worse, refugees often try again until they succeed or die. When a migrant’s choice is between dying of sepsis after breaking an ankle or being beaten or killed by Belarusian authorities, their best option is to turn around and try again.

In Kansas City, winter warming shelters quickly reach capacity. Many close once the temperature is above freezing. Shelters require people to give up what few possessions they have knowing that they’ll be back on the street in an even worse situation tomorrow.

But Kansas City has an advantage: the power of the community and municipal government to make changes. The city demonstrated this power with the recent Heart Cart Program and efforts by the Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness. Polish activists are caught between the border police, Territorial Defense Forces, national government and European Union policies. Our challenge in Kansas City is more achievable.

Solving homelessness is difficult. No city has succeeded. Its primary causes — domestic abuse, lack of health care and substance addictions — are unlikely to disappear. But the people and government of Kansas City can do better by creating targeted and goal-oriented, policies that reduce gaps between the policy and the reality. The key is having measurable benchmarks and goals.

Free Hot Soup was and still is filled with caring people who got tired of waiting for the government to step in and help. Policymakers must ensure that programs reflect the current situation and holistically address the problem. Understanding the causes, scope and challenges of homelessness in the Kansas City metropolitan area is the first step to designing policies that do more than sound good, but actually are good.

The crack of a distant branch returned me to the damp Polish trees. Our host inhaled deeply and muttered, “Back to work.” People were coming to Europe escaping autocrats, terrorists and gangs. But they would find only a few resolute activists, carrying food and medical bags through the soggy leaves and fog. They can’t solve the problem, but they keep working, hoping against hope that helping others will lead humanity to a better future.

Daniel Dillenback is a military strategist and former resident of Platte City and Fort Leavenworth. He is a 12-year Army veteran currently pursuing a master’s in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.