Throughout my childhood, when Mama and I were sleeping in our car, we were regularly arrested, cited, and eventually incarcerated for doing so. It is illegal to be houseless in this country, and it is, in fact, a punishable offense. So is sitting, lying, or sleeping on a public street and/or convening on a corner or on a public sidewalk if you are a young person of color, im/migrant, indigenous person in diaspora seeking day labor, or someone who “looks homeless.” All of these are what I call “crimes of poverty”: overtly raced and classed “crimes” pinned on poor people and people of color, resulting in our ongoing police harassment, profiling, removal, incarceration, and, often, state-sponsored murder.Sometimes I and my disabled mama of color (she was African-Taino-Roma—although I look like my white father, the descendent of colonizers) would save up enough money from the tireless hours of extremely hard work we were always doing in our street-based micro-business to rent a motel room or a tiny apartment. Because of my mother’s disability and my young age (between eleven and twenty-one during this time), we were surviving on only what we made by selling handmade art on the street without a license. But there were times, albeit rare, when we would get “inside.” During these times, we had many “landlords,” and at least four of them were observant Jews. They treated us no differently than other landlords did. They went to synagogue, observed Shabbat, and celebrated sacred Jewish holidays. I know this much about them because those holidays were the few times they wouldn’t be calling us, sending us notices, or pounding on our shabby doors in the single room occupancy hotels or the overpriced and uninhabitable apartments they owned that we barely resided in, asking for their rent money. Every single one of these landlords evicted my mama and me for unpaid or late rent.Each time we were evicted, my young heart would jump out of my chest, filled with terror about returning to the street or the back seat of our current broke-down “hooptie” (car), which was constantly being towed for the “sleeping in vehicle” citations we were always receiving; or even worse, the cardboard motels (as my mama called them) in doorways or alleys or parks. Our houselessness was, in fact, directly caused by the amount of money we were able to make and then by the evictions we would inevitably receive for not having enough of said money. (Note, I don’t use the term “homeless,” which is associated with an Other-ing social service industry that profits from our struggle without caring about our survival and capacity to thrive. I see the term “homeless” as one that fetishizes those who are houseless in order to fuel this network of social service nonprofits and for-profits, which could be better understood as “the poverty industry.”)As someone well-acquainted with the violence of urban poverty, I was fascinated and moved by Aryeh Cohen’s discussion of “Justice in the City.” These sacred passages in the Jewish tradition describing a deep and real responsibility for others, a responsibility to “walk” someone most of the way on their journey home, and the naming of “community in desolation” sound so similar to a concept I have developed, in collaboration with my fellow “poverty skolaz” at POOR Magazine, called “community reparations.” Our vision of community reparations names the direct responsibility of people with race, class, and/or education privilege to support and care for community members, neighbors, and others in struggle. This vision launched POOR’s Solidarity Family: a group of supporters with race and class privilege who work in partnership with the landless, indigenous youth, adults, and elders at POOR. With the Solidarity Family, POOR was able to buy a piece of land in Oakland to launch a project called HOMEFULNESS: a sweat-equity cohousing, art, and community garden project for houseless, landless, indigenous families and elders.But I had to wonder—these traditions of justice must have been addressed in the services attended by some of my eviction-happy landlords of the past; how did they reconcile these teachings with the eviction proceedings they so blithely pursued against us and countless other poor families?And why do so many well-meaning people struggle so much with how to support poor community members and their houseless neighbors? How do the conceptions of collective responsibility from the Talmud that Aryeh Cohen cites become distorted or lost? What seems to be missing from many of these narratives is a direct look at systems like capitalism, colonialism, and their requisite bedmate: what I call the “cult of independence.” These are the systems behind the theft of indigenous land, the rampant real estate speculation in poor communities of color, the brutality of gentrification, the displacement of entire communities, the eviction of elders and children with impunity, the land grabs, the eminent domains, the hoarding of stolen land in the form of “assets,” “equity,” and financial portfolios. These are the systems that have created the circumstances of disparity and violence in which we currently find ourselves.In order to confront poverty and houselessness, we must acknowledge the herstories of so many aboriginal peoples who continue to be removed from indigenous land from the United States to Palestine, herstories that are hidden under the beautifully stitched ironclad quilt of profit margins, acquisition, and independence. The backdrop rationale to the violence of capitalism is that what is most important to attain in life is each of our own personal happiness, “success,” and productivity—not community, caregiving, sharing, or journey-walking together.The creation of conditions that benefit some and destroy the rest of us, not able to “make it” or “get ahead,” are pounded into all of us in the United States; we are all asked to buy into the survival-of-the-fittest, bootstraps mythology of U.S. capitalism. This idea intentionally leaves out all who don’t have the resources or support to “make it”—people like my mama, an orphan, an unwanted child of color, whose body was sexually abused hundreds of times by the time she was two years old; who made it by any means necessary to give me life, raise me, and keep on keeping on, no matter what— like so many poor people do every day in this racist and classist hate-filled society. But in my mama’s case, she couldn’t continue fighting through all the pain, which is why we became houseless.Cohen’s description of justice in the city asks us to more deeply consider the role of neighbors—those who, like so many of you, meet and pass houseless people in your own neighborhoods every day. I was happy to see that at least none of the contributors to this special section in Tikkun call the police on their houseless neighbors—something that so many others in their position have done). What if we were to step outside the confines of the individualistic model offered by capitalism? What if, instead of merely thinking of your houseless neighbors outside in the rain, you were to offer them a room in your house? What if you were to rent them a motel room? What if you were to use your credit to help them rent an apartment (something so many poor people are unable to do because of former evictions and bad credit scores acquired through the cycle of poverty). What if, by virtue of their relationship and shared neighborhood, you considered it your duty to walk them, if you will, most of the way back home.At this point you may be asking: What about the social service agencies, the nonprofits and NGOs trying to make a difference? To many of us poor folks, these institutions aren’t allies; they often do more harm than good. This is the poverty industry; it fuels the ongoing lie that poor people are inferior, incapable of thinking for ourselves and creating our own self-determined futures. It takes away our power to manage our own land, create our own small businesses and economies. And it fuels the same lie so often offered as a justification for not giving to panhandlers: that we—as the poor, the panhandlers, the recyclers, the multitude of unrecognized and criminalized workers—do not deserve support unless we justify our choices to those with resources.Those described as “beggars” are in fact working; panhandling is a job, one of the hardest jobs anyone can do— try standing on a highway median for ten to twelve hours at a time. Whether you think it is a loathsome profession, or whether you think the workers spend their money on drugs— guess what, that’s not your business, no more than if a CEO at Chevron or Monsanto spends their paycheck on drugs, alcohol, or cheap food for that matter.Cohen’s essay highlights truly revolutionary concepts in Judaism: concepts that challenge the ridiculous and violent myths of capitalism. Revolutionary change will not come from a grant application, from a social worker, from the prison industrial complex, or from the nonprofit industrial complex. Rather, it can come from things you have in your power to do.Don’t evict us if we don’t have the rent money. Buy and give away healthy, non-genetically-modified groceries. Make land available for community gardens. Offer free talk therapy in the community if you are a therapist; free medical care if you are a doctor or nurse or herbalist; free legal advice, representation, and court appearances if you are a lawyer; or just plain cash, however much of it you happen to have in surplus. For those of you who own land beyond what you and your family reside on, give us back our indigenous, stolen land and respect our sacred burial sites the same way you respect your own. We poor and indigenous folks can self-determine our own futures if given the chance, and we can thrive, if supported with a frame of community reparations.These ideas are thriving in poor people–led, indigenous people–led revolutions across the globe, such as the Prison Hunger Strike movement in Palestine and the United States, the Shackdwellers Union in South Africa, the Landless People’s Movement in Brazil, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, Sacred Site resistance movements like the fight to save San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, and many more.And be very clear, supporting all us po’ and indigenous folks in whatever way we are moving and needing support is not a replacement for keeping up the fight for the last few social service crumbs that are out there—welfare, food stamps, and affordable housing—because that’s all most of us have to live on until we gain back what was stolen from us.Perhaps if we took this regional/community approach of accompaniment and community responsibility, described so beautifully by Cohen and practiced at POOR as Community Reparations, we could transform, heal, and repair a great deal in this hurtful and deeply dangerous society for po’ folks like me and my family. Perhaps we could become a society of community caregivers who walk each other down the path on our collective journeys. Together, we could all be safe.