Homelessnesses. What is it? By and large, it’s what floats upon a city budget, certainly in California, which sees a lion’s share of America’s . . . whatever homelessness actually is.
It’s a neighbourhood break-in.
It’s a fire hazard.
It’s a fenced parking lot.
It’s an unwanted windshield squeegee.
It’s poop on the pavement.
It’s a dirty needle.
It’s a place to get beaten to death.
Well-meaning city attempts to tackle ‘the problem of homelessness’ in California run a gamut of solutions, very few of which involve an actual ‘home’ as most people who live in homes have come to understand what they are1.
Over the last year or so, the city of Sacramento has received both praise and condemnation for creative solutions that by and large involve either congregate shelters or, more novel and noteworthy, official tidied-up tent encampments with sanitary support facilities2.
If the city has so far blotted its copybook, it is by its assumed right to determine the definition of a ‘home’ and require a homeless person living in the city/region to move there on pain of criminalization. No other American citizen in the region has their human rights so dramatically abridged3.
With Sacramento labouring and spending to address the problem of homelessness, recent (again, well-meaning) attempts by the city to assist those who live in vehicles illustrates just how frustrating, expensive, and time consuming it can be to tackle homelessness without homes.
Read more in The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento spent $617K preparing to open a homeless shelter. Here’s why the plan fell apart
Footnotes
- Read in The Guardian: ‘We hurt those already hurting’: why Los Angeles is failing on homelessness
- Try: Sacramento County Climbs Aboard ‘Official Tent City’ Bandwagon
- Read in The New Republic: Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex
