Throwing Out the Homeless with the Bath Water
Did you ever have a friend who would get you half way there? You know, the one who would promise to help you out, only to pull support just as you were about to reach your goal. Only to blame you for your troubles. As in, you should have known better than to get into a place of need in the first place. It's one way to learn self-sufficiency, by the school of hard knocks. But no one living under a bridge, or worse, under a blanket thrown across a couple of shopping carts, wants to hear excuses. That ship has sailed. Rock bottom is a fact, and it is happening to more and more people. Apparently, there isn't enough money to go around to alleviate the problem.
All the shelters and agencies do a great job of helping people that they can deal with. The backlog of housing needs for people in Kansas is overwhelming. Recently, the effort has been shifted to substance abuse treatment for the homeless. The logic is that these people cannot advance or even maintain a basic living arrangement until they are clean and sober. Most homeless shelter administrators and their peripheral support agencies who provide treatment beds are well aware of this scenario. City and State governments are talking non-stop about it these days. Kansas is sitting on a budget surplus and could easily spend some more money to build housing and treatment facilities galore. If we are serious about eliminating homelessness and not becoming like all the other states who have an overwhelming visible problem, then we could act very simply right now.
But what do we do instead? We go and tear down encampments. I can imagine it was this way with the Indians. Splotchy concern about their well-being, and a pressing manifest destiny to conquer the West, and suddenly you can see how some people back then probably sympathized with the plight of the Indians, but the big money-making machine mowed them over for capital gain. We talk about the human issue and the societal toll that homelessness brings, and yet when we get a little bit closer to solving the problem, we pull the plug on these poor folks. Business owners start bitching about the unsightliness of camps and feeling fearful. Like Indians are about to attack. Fear and human nature jump out like a knee-jerk reaction, and we are still left with the stigma of homelessness and all of the resentment against it. We retaliate against the homeless, after promising to help them. Why should they trust anyone?
So, it is simply a matter of putting our money where are mouths are. Otherwise, shut up. The homeless people don't care how much you tried. As Yoda says, do or do not, there is no try. Stop trying to help the homeless, and just do it. All of the research has been done, the code has been cracked on how to deal with it, so just write one big check and do it already. Talk about it any longer, and it is going to be an entrenched, insurmountable problem. As in, huge skid rows in all of our cities in Kansas. It's coming people. It's not just a warning, it's a fact Population growth, immigration, and increasing inequality are going to fill in all the cracks in the sidewalk, whether that is outside your business, your kid's school, or your home. We won't be able to bulldoze all the crap away.
You can take action now. Email Governor Kelly. Email your congress people. Ask that they put funding behind the shelters and the treatment facilities which help people get off the street. These are people. They are not shopping cart collectors.