Of late, affordablehousingaction.org has been making the case that homelessness merely lives in communities. It is born, however, as a national disease that infects entire nations in all its concrete and abstract forms.
This is a war that must be fought by leadership at the very top — the national government. Squabbles between lesser authorities are largely exercises in misdirected futility. They waste time, energy and money and are nothing but a source of misery for everyone who touts solutions. A lot of the ‘solutions’ bully people with no housing, who have very little or no control over their fates, making them miserable in a myriad of ways.
One of the finest examples of this futility emerged recently in Sacramento, California — the state’s capital — which with all of California, hosts nearly a third of people who are homeless and living outdoors in the United States.
We had imagined that quarrels between minor levels of government were manifestations of the futility of local government tinkering in a problem it had neither the resources to nor the inclination to fix.
The petty government squabbles have been in evidence here, where the City of Sacramento has found itself skirmishing with the County of Sacramento. More recently, mudslinging has featured the heavyweight government of New York City going toe to toe with the heavyweight government of the State of New York1.
And now, we must bear witness to conflicts affordablehousingaction.org hadn’t even thought of. Never mind inter-government disagreements, think instead of intra-government donnybrooks — the City of Sacramento at war with itself, with senior officials threatening each other with criminal charges and arrest.
For heaven’s sake U.S. Congress, step up to the plate and support national solutions to win a major housing war, bypassing impotent jousts by elected or appointed small fry armed with budget and policy peashooters.
Read more at USA TODAY: Sacramento mayor trades barbs with DA over ‘unprecedented’ homeless crisis
