One night last winter, as I waited for the J2 on my way home from wrestling practice, I noticed an out-of-place white patch in the grass by the bus stop. Looking closer, I saw that the patch was a collection of towels, laid out flat between the sparse trees foliage by the sidewalk so as to be just barely visible from the bustle of Old Georgetown Road. After a couple seconds, I realized that I was looking at a makeshift bed.
Of course, this wasn’t my first time seeing homelessness in the WJ area. Every day, students walk or drive past men and women soliciting charity on the way home from school, holding cardboard signs as they walk the medians between Wildwood and Georgetown Square or sit patiently in front of nearby storefronts.
But that moment struck me because, in retrospect, it was the first time I became fully aware the bizarre contrast between the upper-class suburbia of Bethesda and the struggles of its poorest residents – residents who, based on my few conversations with them over the past couple months, regularly receive less than 10 dollars a day in charity despite living in one of the wealthiest areas of the county…