Last week at this time, I was back in the suburbs of Seattle, in the towns where I grew up. My sister lives in Kent, in the familiar neighborhood where my grandparents lived, where the church I attended was located, and also, where my wife-to-be grew up. My sister can’t drive anymore, so she let me use her car that week, and I drove out to Kent multiple times to pick her up and bring her to my mother’s place, and I’d drive through old familiar places and reminisce a bit.
Except…they all felt terribly cramped.
It wasn’t just that these were places I frolicked in when I was a small child, and now I’m all growed up, but because everything was walled off with barricades and police tape. In particular, the entire strip along the railroad tracks was cordoned off. This was one of my favorite places to play, because it was full of garter snakes and grasshoppers, and when I was very young, we’d walk along the tracks picking up coal that had fallen off the coal cars to bring to my grandmother, who’d burn them in a pot-bellied stove to keep her house warm. It never appealed as a place to camp, though, since all through the day and night the freight trains would roar through there, and the crossing would flash red lights and ding-ding-ding. You’d have to be truly desperate to want to sleep there.
Well, now no kid is going to want to play there because it’s taped off and there never were any toilets there, so I guess people would just go in the bushes, and they were strewn with garbage. It’s all very unsightly. Here’s a convenient map of homeless hot spots in Kent, and it’s disturbing because I knew the area well. #18 is right next to my grandmother’s house, and #33 is the Green River Road where I’d often go biking and swimming in the river and fishing.
So far it seems like the solution is to send the cops in to chase everyone away, and to ask local religious charities to help out. Remember, this is in the kingdom of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, where incredible wealth thrives, but at the same time many people are assembling cardboard lean-tos in rocky fields next to the railroad tracks. It’s a bit chilly out there, and it rains almost all the time. Too bad they can’t all build a mansion with a gorgeous view of Lake Washington or something.
Another solution: the NY Times ran a story about people in Oregon who were so distressed by all the homeless people that they fled to red Missouri, where apparently they do a more thorough job of rousting the layabouts and keeping them away from good Republican citizens. AR Moxon summarized the story, which is good for me, because I do not read the NY Times anymore and forevermore. The whole article is worth reading, but this is the hard nasty core of it all.
Anyway, everywhere around this country, cities whose governments (not always Republican government, I notice) have agreed to accept the underlying supremacist premises (even if they oppose various supremacist tactics), and have engaged in a policy of elimination of unhoused people, all in the name of safety, even while state governments pursue policies that ensure that more and more people will fall into poverty and lose their access to housing.
It seems to me that better, but more expensive, strategies than walling off portions of the town with police tape would be things like Universal Basic Income, and cracking down on predatory landlords, and capping and enforcing limits on rent, and taxing the hell out of McMansions and especially real mansions, and changing zoning laws to encourage the construction of low income housing. I imagine the people running those towns would panic over the hit to their tax base, but you’d think they’d realize that having refugee camps scattered all over town wasn’t particularly attractive, either.
There is more to that NY Times story, though, because it sure as heck isn’t about deploring policies that create a tide of homelessness. No, it’s about how the Huckins family of Portland was so disturbed by liberal Oregon policies, in exactly the same way that the Nobles family of Iowa was forced to flee to Minnesota because of red state policies. They’re exactly the same! Both sides are indistinguishable.
The Nobles moved because one of their children is trans, and the government of their home state of Iowa has decided that it would be better if trans people didn’t exist quite so much in Iowa, and have passed a law to make that happen. Iowa isn’t particularly special here. Pretty much every state controlled by Republicans has decided much the same thing, and has either passed a similar law or is planning to. There are a lot of intentions stated behind this: the desire for fairness in girls’ sports is one, for example—which is interesting, since Republicans have never been particularly interested in funding girls’ sports, and the actual impact of trans kids on high school sports in Iowa is best described as “undetectable.” The desire to keep girls safe in school bathrooms is another, which is sort of rich coming from the same people who refuse to make schools safe from gun massacres, and who insist on forced birth legislation that is making maternal mortality rates spike, and who pass laws that require genital inspection. The desire to make students comfortable is cited, which is interesting, since it gives away the clear belief that trans kids, who are being othered and excluded in the name of this comfort, are not considered students, or at least that their comfort is considered utterly immaterial, that their existence as students is something divorced from the general responsibility to create a safe comfortable environment for students—that their existence as students represents only discomfort and danger for others.
The NY Times pretended that these two families were exactly the same. They ignored the fact that what drove the Huckinses away were wasteful, destructive Republican policies that amplified the rich-poor divide and that have dismantled the social safety net, while what drove the Nobles away were hateful Republican policies that directly threatened their family. There’s a reason I don’t read that rag that props up the status quo.
The Nobles needed safety. They left their home state because they were being eliminated by their state government. The Nobles were, and are, in serious danger.
The Huckinses wanted to feel safe. They left their state because of insufficient elimination of unwanted and deliberately abandoned people, and came to a state where the people they would rather not see—people who are in the greatest danger—are nowhere to be seen, almost as if they had been pre-cleared away ahead of time, specifically for people like the Huckinses, who enable the danger that others are in, and still do.
I guess I can be thankful this Christmas that we don’t have a visible homelessness problem here in rural Minnesota — you can’t survive a Minnesota winter with a makeshift camp, it takes a serious investment in survival to build the kind of shelter you need here.
Although that makes me wonder — we still have a serious problem with poverty here, there are homeless people around, we just don’t see them. Where do they go? Missouri?
The thing about the unhoused situation in red states is that for decades, Rethugulans have been paying to bus unhoused people to Portland and Seattle and San Fransisco.
Then they say “look at how those liberal cities have so many homeless people! Derp derp derp!” and pretend like their economic policies don’t cause homelessness. It was really the same thing as what we’ve seen Texas and Florida doing with refugees this year.
https://invisiblepeople.tv/how-much-money-do-we-spend-making-homeless-people-uncomfortable/amp/
The homeless problem started in the cities but has long since moved to…everywhere. Everywhere being rural areas as well.
Malheur county, Oregon is in the middle of nowhere, on the Oregon Idaho border.
They still have 266 homeless people and yes, winters are cold and long in the interior plateau. This is with a total county population of 31,000.
Coos Bay is also in the middle of nowhere on the Oregon coast.
It has maybe a 1,000 homeless people out of population of 16,000.
At least here on the west coast, the homeless population is everywhere.
Ever wonder what happens to homeless people?
I knew they died often but didn’t realize how often.
and
I’ve certainly seen it too often.
Guy got too drunk, staggered into the highway late at night, hit by a car. HIV+. Pneumonia, Hypothermia. Sleeping woman blow to the skull. Epileptic seizure, fell into the river. etc..
The city council person who “represents” my area of Berkeley, Calif (yes, the “People’s Republic of Berkeley”) is laser focused on two things: build high-end condos for rich people about 2 blocks from where I live, and turf unhoused people out of her district. She makes it clear she doesn’t care where they go, so long as they are out of her district. Oh, and a new one as of last week: repave one bock of a street. Scuttlebutt has it that a big donor of hers either lives or owns property on that block. Years ago, this corruption and cruelty would have been called out. Now? Well, the average small home sells for north of a million bucks and average rent of a one-bedroom apartment is upwards of $2300 per month, even with (ineffective) rent control. The eligibility list for low-income federal housing assistance has been closed (read: at capacity) for years, and few (read: damned few) landlords in the People’s Republic will accept housing vouchers anyway. Most Berkeley homes date from 60-100 years ago, with little home or apartment construction since the late ’80s, except said high-end condos. Oakland, next door, does precisely the same thing to the non-rich and unhoused. And don’t get me started on San Francisco!
A few years back, there was open discussion on building special wired off camps for the homeless.
I asked a simple, harmless question, which closed their discussion, “Will the camps have great, big ovens?”.
Yeah, nobody wanted to continue breathing that now liquefied air.
nomaduk @ 2, I’m seriously considering making a photo essay of one of my walks downtown. What I really didn’t notice when younger and not needing to periodically rest while walking, I most certainly do notice when I need to sit down before I literally fall down.
And to be brutally honest, it tempts me quite seriously to steal a bulldozer to remove those obstructions to rest, in some cases, taking the building hosting such insane spikes with it.
Don’t get me started on bus stop seating, what few stops retain seats! Some have narrower seating than a fucking budget airline, which makes my sitting in the damned seats challenging and I’m far from being a widebody model chairplane.
No wait, stealing is illegal and immoral, it’d just be a dynamic reallocation of resources on a temporary basis…
Or at least do the photo essay, being as diplomatic as an M1 Abrams tank.
Well, you should read the FtFNYT, because what Moxon did not mention ( Chairitably, because it was in paragraph 307 near the end of the piece , or less charitably, because it didn’t fit their narrative) the Hucknises, also moved to a downsized place near their children to retire.
So they weren’t really chased out by the homeless people…that was merely an excuse they told the interviewer, because it suited their narrative.
“Upstanding couple forced to flee across the country by the dusky hordes” sounds SO much better than “Aging couple retires to lower cost of living area near where their children live”, especially if you’re constructing an explicit “bothsidesamirite!” narrative.
There are families in my state who are leaving due to anti-trans laws (including a particularly awful one targeting trans kids just passed by the state senate). The ones who have money at least to move. Plenty more will be forced to suffer. My found family, all adults, is safe for now until the state decides to revoke HRT medication coverage under medicaid—which it almost certainly is on track to—the only way I’ve been able to afford what I need to keep me alive. Once that goes, it’s going to destroy so much of our community—some of us will be able to afford it privately and stay, some will move, and some will suffer in great agony with the cutting off of access. Of the latter, many of us will choose to simply end our lives rather than experience the pain any further. I already know what I’m planning on doing if I end up not being able to access my hormones (of which are absolutely essential to me due to my body not producing enough on its own after surgery).
Fucking hell world. The suffering goes on and on.
Minnesota Central West homelessness, count 25 October 2018, 95 unsheltered, 246 in some sort of shelter.
https://www.wilder.org/sites/default/files/minnesota-homeless-study/2018/counts/WestCentralMN-2018-Homeless-Counts_3-19.pdf?v=2
My own county has had various towns trying to push those who are homeless out (or else to areas within the towns with no public transportation).
The problem with the NYT is it thinks it’s liberal. The parents in Get Out would be enthusiastic subscribers, I’m sure.
chrislawson@10: It’s the Jerry Coyne of newspapers.
As far as homelessness, at least in the Seattle area, when they remove a camp they offer the residents shelter space or even tiny houses, as well as services. But there are always a few who refuse the help. Not sure why, but it complicates the removals. So, even if the government is trying to do stuff right, it doesn’t always work so well.
@12 Robert:
Are those offers absolute and unconditional?
Or are they conditioned on: you will keep a curfew; you will keep the noise down; you will not own a dog; you will not do drugs or alcohol; you will not allow in or associate with other persons we do not approve of – this may include a partner; you will share space with who we tell you to regardless of any past experiences that might scare you away from them; you will trust us even if we are the same people, or you feel that we are the same people, who have attacked and put you in your current situation before; you will be ready for this now whether or not you are ready for this now.