As we are around the corner from a holiday that for roughly 2.38 billion people on Earth commemorates the birth of a poor carpenter’s son in a manger — because his parents, who migrated from Nazareth, had no place to stay in Bethlehem — we as a community should be asking how can we take care of our poorest residents and the unhoused.

At the Sedona mayoral debate on Oct. 6, I asked the two candidates running for Sedona’s highest office how they would address homelessness, specifically listing the names of residents whom many of us see daily, sleeping in breezeways or in bushes behind buildings, at bus stops or in a tent on the open parcel immediately east of Sedona City Hall.

Few of these transients are homeless by choice; rather, most of them are homeless due to a combination of factors, including mental illness, over which they have no control.

There but for the grace of God go we.

Months after the election concluded, and with night­time temperatures a good 30 to 40 degrees colder, these unhoused individuals are still homeless and there are no concrete plans to house or care for them other than to decriminalize camping on public land within the city limits.

Our city can budget more than $100 million, build a trailhead shuttle service fewer and fewer tourists use, convert land from parks into parking lots and buy even more land to sit idle for decades to come — but it can’t build a homeless shelter or provide homeless services. It even cuts grants to nonprofits that help the homeless.

The city also refuses to help the businesses that collected that sales tax and bed tax revenue from their customers, opting not to reinvest those taxes back into the community to keep our tourism-driven economy alive in the post-COVID-19 recession.

City council didn’t choose to help these local businesses earn more to pay higher wages so workers could afford to live in the city instead of camping west of Sedona in Honda Civics, or living five to six people in double-wide trailers or manufactured homes built in the 1970s, or commuting from other towns that care about their residents more than Sedona’s leaders.

Candidates for council election cycle after cycle espouse affordable housing, yet city-owned parcels remain dirt years later.

Of course, our newspaper archives show officials as far back as 1988 demanding that the city build more housing for workers. If only inflation was as predictable as bureaucratic inaction …

Instead, we hope that nonprofit leaders, who don’t have much money themselves, can scrape together enough donations to put a few homeless men and women up in a hotel for a night when the temperatures fall below freezing.

Sedona area residents can call themselves patriots or passionate progressives and pontificate on unread blogs, condemning the evils of income inequality, or host galas to reward their commendable charity work, but when those same do-gooders become NIMBYs, opposing every affordable housing project or low-cost apartment within five miles, they are no better than the Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Charles Koch, the Waltons or the bad-billionaire-of-the-moment they condemn with Facebook memes and Twitter tweets, #self-righteous #hypocrisy.

“Treat your neighbor as yourself,” the boy from Bethlehem would later tell his followers. Two thousand years later, that simple plea is merely window dressing if we do not take action to actually treat our neighbors, the poor and homeless among them, as ourselves.

If you have leftover holiday gift money this year, donate it to nonprofits helping the poor and the homeless. If a project for affordable housing comes to a parcel near you, don’t think, “How might this ruin my view?” Instead, ask yourself, “How many families will this help?” or “How many poor carpenters’ sons could this house?”

If a young, unwed woman finds herself suddenly preg­nant, your support or opposition to a new housing project may determine whether she and her son have shelter on some future Christmas Eve when there is no room at an inn nor anywhere else in the town.

We personally, as individuals, have no compulsory moral nor ethical obligation to help the poor and home­less, but as members of a community who benefit from the safety and stability of that community, we collectively do have a moral imperative.

A community is the sum of its members; therefore we as individuals must work in the collective interest for the good of others and help those most in need and build places to sleep and live.

So if you put up a Christmas tree, decorate your house in Christmas lights, or pray to a God who came to earth in the body of a small boy born in a manger because there was no room in an inn, let alone a home, remember to honor his teachings after Christmas ends.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor

Angie’s House

For more information about Angie’s House, visit angieshouseaz.com or call (928) 301-2169.

Catholic Charities

For more information about Catholic Charities, visit catholiccharitiesaz.org.

Old Town Mission

For more information about the Old Town Mission in Cottonwood, visit oldtownmission.org or call (928) 634-7869.

Sedona Area Homeless Alliance

For more information about the Sedona Area Homeless Alliance, visit sedonahomeless.org or its Facebook page or call (928) 978-9387​.

Verde Valley Homeless Coalition

For more information about the Verde Valley Homeless Coalition, visit verdevalleyhomelesscoalition.com or call (928) 202-1176.