Recently, Robert shared with us a moral dilemma, and several people wrote thoughtful comments. Here’s his follow-up on the situation he described.
As you probably figured out, I sent the moral dilemma essay out to quite a few of you (around 50, I think), as well as on the blog, and got back an astonishing number of replies. These contained advice that ranged from call the police and have her arrested on one end of the spectrum to invite her in for dinner and a shower at the other end. Of course I had done neither of those and most of you agreed that I did the right thing by allowing her to stay the night on condition that she move on the next morning. Apparently that worked. I have not seen her since, and I can only hope that she found what she needed through a number of agencies that deal with the homeless.
Things could have been much worse, of course, and just last evening one resident here said that she and her husband had to forcefully pull the door closed as a homeless man tried to follow them into the building. So we are not shed of the problem, nor do we expect to be. All we can do is be equally vigilant as well as compassionate. Thanks for your responses. I hope that the situation I described gave you time to think about what you might do in a similar situation.
Robert Heylmun
