The Outstater
Unserving ‘the Unhoused’
OUR MAYOR has thrown down the NIMBY gauntlet. She is trying to shame opponents of her plan to build a $3.8 million “homeless services” center downtown, a couple of blocks from the art museum. She says they selfishly don’t want the center in their backyard but cannot offer an alternative plan.
I am here to help, but first some background. Our foundation once had offices near a rescue mission and not far from the site of the proposed center. I don’t want to detail the nasty stuff we found in our alcove every morning but we eventually had to lock the front door to keep out “the unhoused,” to use the mayor’s term of art.
Who, exactly, wants that in their neighborhood?
A related experience is from a member of the board of an alcohol rehabilitation center. The board was offered a sizable donation to renovate the center. He was surprised by the staff’s recommendation to turn it down. A spruced-up building, the staff advised, would send the wrong message to a drunk dropped off late at night by a sheriff’s deputy — e.g., that considering the nice digs maybe he hadn’t hit bottom quite yet and had a few more drinks to go.
One councilman recognizes these realities and is questioning why the city would purposely foul a downtown area that it has spent millions renovating. I quote from his statement yesterday, a statement pointed at the do-gooder elite of our business community.
“I’m just an idiot councilman so I’ve gone and asked the experts who have the responsibility — the Downtown Improvement District — what will this do? Will it have any negative impacts? That’s a fair question because they have the responsibility to be an honest player in that question, and I can’t figure out why they would sit this one out. I guess they’re too busy planning big parties.”
While the councilman awaits an answer, we have a solution. It is to cut off the money. We should vigorously encourage the good work of private charities, of course, but not support vagrancy with a broad range of services funded with municipal dollars.
The role of the city should be a narrow one — public safety and law enforcement, no million-dollar buildings required. It is difficult and inexact work, but an attempt must be made by officers on the street to differentiate those homeless in need of medical help from those who are making miserable life choices. Money helping the former is well spent and necessary. Members of the latter group, however, can be given bus tickets out of town.
If that is too harsh, you might recall that counties once managed “poor farms,” an alternative to jail time, where those convicted of repeated vagrancy were sent to do light chores to help pay their upkeep —until they could put their lives together, or so it was hoped. — tcl
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