Like many cities in America, Long Beach has two sides to the track. There is a non-spoken border through the city where on one side lives families and people well entrenched in the middle or upper-middle sectors of society. On the other side, are neighborhood pockets filled with generations of families who desperately struggle with poverty.

Of course, well intended redevelopment efforts try to blur such poverty boundaries. But if you know this city, you are very aware of the pockets of poverty. It’s no different than most cities.

Growing up in this town, I was gifted with being raised in a suburban pocket filled with large homes, immaculate lawns, and a neighborhood that was basically walled off from the rest of the community.

Last month’s homeless survey provided a unique opportunity for these two sides of the track to intersect. Neighbors from all parts of the city came together to share stories with people struggling with extreme poverty, our homeless neighbors.

Such encounters between the rich and the poor are not new. History is filled with activities where the “haves” reach out to the “have-nots”.

And likewise, sadly, responses to such encounters are not new. I’ve received responses from people who were not part of the survey: “Those people on the streets choose to be homeless.” “If they only got a job, they wouldn’t be there.” “They are just a bunch of drug addicts.” “The poor will always be with us.”

My knee-jerk liberal response completely condemns such responses. But I have to admit there is some truth. Some people on the streets choose to be there, could benefit from a job, or need to deal with addictions. But such “solutions” do not apply to the whole street population.

There is, however, one solution for everyone. Housing.

It’s hard to find a job if you’re living on the streets. You can’t even get cleaned up for a job interview. The stability of home provides a foundation to address addictions. I’m sure those who have a home, encountering unemployment or dealing with addictions, could imagine the difficulty of finding work or overcoming addiction if they were homeless.

Frankly, these reactions contribute to homelessness. It encourages our community to do nothing, because “these people don’t deserve help.” It reminds me of responses I’ve heard from middle-class folks in Ethiopia, Egypt, and Brazil. Who told me when I was young, that their slums and favellas were filled with people who choose to be poor. So their society basically allowed Third World conditions to persist.

But I can’t get out of my head the 60 or 70 year old man who sits in the same position day and night near a 710 freeway onramp, with his shopping cart belongings buffering him from the cars rushing by. He has to have been on the streets for decades. Whether he chose to be on the streets or not, he needs to be housed. For his sake, and to affirm the decency and character of a society that allows him to wallow in extreme poverty.

Will the poor always be with us? Yes. But should we allow extreme poverty, those who are losing the battle against hunger and homelessness, flounder on our streets? An emphatic no.

Neglecting the poor tears apart the moral fiber of our society.

Has my generation failed? As we see our country’s social safety net unravel before our eyes, we are teetering on the brink of collapse.

I was born in the 1960s, a decade famous for riots, love fests, and liberating music. The parents and older siblings of my childhood friends were part of the anti-war, Woodstock generation that shook the foundation of American society.

I became an adult in the early 1980s, when homelessness in America began to rapidly rise. Many of the agencies helping the homeless in Los Angeles were created during this decade. Today, they celebrate 25 years of serving the homeless.

Celebration, however, is not in order. The founders of the agency that I lead, PATH (People Assisting The Homeless), genuinely thought homelessness would end within 5 to 10 years, by 1990. They never imagined that they would be still helping homeless folks 25 years later.

Not only is homelessness still in existence, the number of homeless have tripled to where there are now reportedly over 70,000 people living on the streets of Los Angeles County today.

With one out of every five persons in the county on public assistance, 1 of 100 homes are in foreclosure, today almost appears as if we have reverted back 25 years when homelessness was out of control.

Nationally, the National Alliance to End Homelessness currently projects there could be 1.5 million more people becoming homeless around the country due to this devastating economy.

Numerous people we see living on our streets of Los Angeles have been homeless for decades, as if society had forgotten about them. Last year, a key study on homelessness by Shelter Partnership, a Los Angeles-based research group, revealed that a growing group within the homeless population is older adults.

Sure, there are signs of hope.

Some in the County are proposing a homeless service paradigm by identifying 500 of the most vulnerable people on the streets and giving them permanent housing. The City of Los Angeles is funding millions of dollars into building permanent supportive housing for chronic homeless people, called “Housing First.”

Many cities within Los Angeles County are becoming more strategic in their efforts to address homelessness through new types of alliances, like the Council of Governments (COG) joining forces to address homelessness in their local cities.

But hope will only occur if a new paradigm helps tens of thousands, not 500 people; and if billions of dollars are invested into housing, not millions; and if all of the county’s 88 cities join forces, not just a few dozen.

Much attention has shifted to the hundreds of tent cities propping up all over the country, thousands of RV campers parked in suburban neighborhoods, and the scary fact that thousands of middle-class families may lose their homes through eviction and foreclosure.

This bleak perspective is what my generation is handing off to the next.

Some call them Generation O, for being actively involved in President Obama’s election. They are between 18 to 34 years old, and do not know a world without blogs, Facebook, Twitter, AIMing, and texting. 

Through their zeal and energy toward electing the first Black President, they saw a historic chance to change the norm of a society that appears to be overwhelmed with poverty, homelessness, and hurt. I’m sure they were thinking, “Those old Caucasian men in the White House weren’t able to do it. How about a change… Next!”

So as more and more Generation O leaders begin to fill leadership positions in government and top positions in the nonprofit world, how will they approach the sad state of America’s dream of prosperity and middle-class existence?

Will they become like a generation before me? What news anchor Tom Brokaw called the “greatest generation” who rescued the world from communism, fascism, and Nazism? Will this new generation save our world from homelessness, poverty, and economic ruin?

Tens of thousands of people living on our streets is a sign that my generation is reeling in its effort to save hurting people. But if a fresh crop of leadership can provide new solutions to a decades-old social problem like homelessness, then just perhaps our American society will prosper once again.

I still have a couple of more decades before I retire. I hope these years include empowering the next “O” generation of political and nonprofit leaders. This could very well be the final mark of success or failure for my generation.

They are the people you just met at happy hour in between a Hefeweizen and a Cosmo. Or the person you haven’t seen for 25 years when you both were sporting shoulder-length hair in high school. Or the stranger who is a Facebook friend of a FB friend of a FB friend. What’s three degrees of separation in the electronic world?

They are the people who want to add you as a FB friend. Some of us ponder for days whether to confirm that “Add A Friend” request while others click it within seconds. Whether it’s a Facebook buddy or a Twitter follower, we still go through that excruciating process of whether to click the confirm button.

Pressing that precarious key is the start of a new electronic friendship that is the beginning of an interaction with a person via binary codes of ones and zeros. But it’s more than that, because electronic friendships are much different than face-to-face companionship.

I’ve written before about how personalities change from the real world to the electronic world. Sometimes, people embrace completely different personalities. From some shy cipher to a partier at the electronic chat room. Do we really know who the person is on the other side of the world-wide-web?

And that is what the real concern is when confirming a new friend. We don’t really know a person, if we do not have regular physical interaction.

For most of us, in the real world we are selective with whom we spend precious time. I surround myself with a limited number of close, intimate friends. Because in the real world, where we actually interact both verbally and non-verbally, we are more vulnerable. People get to know our attitudes, our thoughts, our hurts, our dreams.

Real relationships, however, can expose us to betrayal, humility, grief, and abuse. But we risk it, because healthy relationships bring us intimacy, affirmation, companionship. No longer is there loneliness. Whether we have the charm-filled social skills or not, we yearn for connectedness, for relationally-intimate companionship.

In the world of tweets, Facebook pokes, and Xanga blog posts, electronic friendships have weak boundaries. These relationships are more about communication, less about intimacy and companionship.

This new community leans toward feeding our voyeuristic tendencies. In the real world, we don’t typically forage through a friend’s medicine cabinet, closets, drawers, and cupboards.

In the electronic world, however, we’re open for people to practically cyber-stalk us—our vacation photos, posts with other friends, even the ability to know who is on our friends list. It’s all there for those of us who allow it. (And frankly, I’m more suspect of people who hide all of their info on FB, as if they are hiding who they really are; why are they even on it then?)

But we love voyeurism. Tweeters crave Ashton Kutcher’s every twitter move. We flock to watch Run’s House, The Simple Life, Nick and Jessica, and Anna Nicole. We relate to the Desperate Housewives who peer out the window with binoculars to see what the neighbors on Wisteria Lane are doing now.

We are nosy people by nature. It’s why we add friends in the electronic world. It’s fun. It makes life interesting. It can even dispel boredom.

But if the closest, most intimate relationships are based on one click away, our personal community is built like a house of cards. Weak, precarious, and unstable.

Real relationships, however, with even the risks that may occur are the real deal.

But go ahead… click that confirm button.