“We just moved 18 people off the side of the road . . . I don’t think we moved anybody into something that’s better.”
This recent statement was made by Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors after police were called to clear away people who were living in tents. It reflects the French expression “plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.1”
This “change leading to no change” problem is occurring world-wide as municipalities and regions attempt to deal with the problem of homelessness that seems often to begin with slum-clearance or removing a tent encampment, displacing yet another group of people from the fragile conditions that they have little other choice but to call home.
In Santa Barbara, this near-universal act of violence inevitably pretends to be a compassionate government action that will shift people towards something better. Lavagnino’s doubtful comment above is coincident with the Board of Supervisors unanimously approving a 5-year plan for addressing homelessness in a beleaguered corner of North America’s homelessness crisis.
But what about the immediate change that so strongly reflects the feeling that there is no change at all? The reasons given for encampment clearances tend to be immediate health and safety concerns. How valid are these?
At the beginning of COVID, the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered health reasons, both individual and community, why people living in encampments should be left where they are.2 This was before the outdoor transmission of COVID was shown to be far less likely than it is indoors. (Ideally, perhaps everyone, not just the homeless, should have been encouraged to live outdoors.3)
With spring 2021 COVID victory optimism surging everywhere, municipalities and regions across the continent have turned away from pandemic concerns towards business-as-usual. That has included wholesale clearance of tent encampments.
But with U.S. COVID infections climbing steadily towards the highest ever, as well as some regions of Canada sharing the same fate, should the CDC recommendations continue to inform our thinking?
This is not to prey upon Santa Barbara’s homelessness efforts, and their 5 year plan, as efforts to be sneered at. With a recognition that privacy, not shelter dormitory living, is an important part of human mental health, the county has been actively building private tiny transitional housing.
That’s more than can be said for one of North America’s largest cities, Toronto, which has inhaled the premature spring optimism about the defeat of COVID and aggressively attacked and dismantled several tent encampments.4 Furthermore, invoking the ever-flexible necessity of better individual and community health, Toronto has taken legal action against a man who spent the winter building tiny (but “unhealthy” and “unsafe” in the eyes of the City) individual shelters for Toronto homeless over-wintering outdoors.5
Meanwhile Santa Barbara County struggles to break out of the “plus ça change” cycle of bulldozing pop-up homeless encampments over and over again. Read more about their search for permanent end to homelessnesss, in NOOZHAWK: Santa Maria Site Cleared Ahead of Adoption of Homeless Encampment Resolution Strategy
Footnotes
- Roughly “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
- Read more at the CDC: Interim Guidance on People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness
- Try: Staying Home Is Not The Centre Point Of All COVID-19 Responses
- Try: Toronto Tries To Dignify Kicking Homeless Ass And Taking Names
- Try: llegitimi Non Carborundum: Advice For A Toronto Homeless Shelter Builder
