Homelessness

I recall walking out of a church in the twilight in San Diego and thinking it was horrible that store owners and residents had left their garbage on the sidewalks. As I came closer I realized these were homeless people who were being stepped over by pedestrians. There are almost 600,000 homeless people in the US according to 2022 statistics, and about 20 percent of them in California alone. They form communities for protection, but also suffer from crime, disease, addiction, and brutality. We have no cogent plan to deal with homelessness despite who is in political office. People buying homes in Los Angeles are often faced with the difficulty of finding one for a decent price with the reality that a few hundred yards away, beneath on overpass, are scores of homeless people, often violent and often ill. There are the mentally ill, who are protected from institutionalization by laws that actually place them in greater danger. There are the truly dispossessed, who have suffered from job loss, inflation, housing loss, serious illnesses, and so forth. And then there are the “professionally homeless” who want to make a point and simply lead a life which dares others to stop them. Perhaps we need the equivalent of a FEMA for the homeless? And a plethora or organizations raising funds to “help” the homeless are really simply helping themselves. They exploit the situation they don’t alleviate it and, in fact, they thrive on its continuance. This, of course, is a travesty in any country but especially in this, the wealthiest. We need stronger actions. There are no “rights” to homelessness, nor to accost others in the streets. And the real crime here is that we’re doing next to nothing about it.

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