NO Fines for Couple Helping Madison's Homeless!

  • by: Susan V
  • recipient: City of Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin isn’t doing enough to help its growing homeless population. So why would the city punish residents who are?

Brenda Konkel and her partner Robert Bloch have donated space on their front porch for lockers for the homeless and an occasional safe place to sleep. Many of those the couple helps are working people who’ve lost their homes through no fault of their own, and some are families with children.

But now the city says it will fine the couple $300 for every day they keep the lockers after next week, and any porch-dwellers must be evicted by mid-October.

Konkel also works to serve the homeless in other ways - one as Executive Director of the Tenant Resource Center that promotes tenant rights - and also by being involved with Occupy Madison's work to help build tiny dwellings for the city’s homeless.

Certainly this couple deserves reward and recognition rather than punishment for its good deeds. And all citizens of Madison deserve a safe place to sleep and to store their belongings. As Konkel reminds Madison, “these are human beings.”

Tell Madison, NO fines for the couple helping the city’s homeless.

We, the undersigned, find Madison’s response to Konkel and Bloch’s good deeds egregiously unacceptable.

Instead of punishing this couple for what the city should be doing, Madison should expand its insufficient locker system it was noted for starting earlier.

According to what Konkel told The Capital Times, the city is not providing enough options for storage, and it’s not only hard on people’s health to carry around heavy backpacks all day, but it also impedes their ability to look for work.

One facility operated by St. Vincent DePaul is impractical, says Konkel, because it’s only accessible twice a week. And another homeless storage is closing on October 15 because city funding is expiring, she added.

Konkel wants to remind Madison that these are human beings the city is asking the couple to evict, people they’ve come to know as friends - who’ve been able to overcome some of their problems simply because they’ve been given a safe place to sleep.

Is that really too much for citizens of the richest country in the world to expect - a safe place to sleep and store their belongings so they can go out and do or seek an honest day’s work?

We request that the city of Madison either take care of its homeless residents or stop preventing Konkel and Bloch from doing so.

Thanks for your time.

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