The homeless problem is not a lack of affordable housing. The problem is a lack of adequate shelter. Two very different concepts. And to be clear, yes there is a deeply baked in problem in this country with the ever rising cost of rent not matching stagnant wages. The absurd overvaluation of homes. The federal minimum wage that hasn’t changed in twenty years. The fact that most people driving a new automobile in America are now eyeballing a car note that’s higher than their mother’s mortgage. All of the above contribute mightily to the ever widening chasm between rich and poor. The one percent own the world and the rest of us are just paying interest. But none of these factors are directly to blame for the homeless apocalypse. And it is indeed an apocalypse.
The softer word for zombie is the undead. A reverse negative. Likewise the left wants to call the homeless by the dead word unhoused. They mistakenly believe the word homeless is burdened with too much stigma, that unhoused is somehow a kinder less negative choice of words. The left is wrong. Housed is not a commonly used word. The last time you described a friend who lives in an overpriced apartment as housed is never. Add the negative prefix un to the word housed and congratulations, you have birthed a new pejorative that means nothing.
The left does not necessarily want to be stupid or careless. The left is populated by sincere but misguided genuinely altruistic assholes who have little or no experience in the actual world. How do I know this. Because I am gen X. I’ve spent my adult life surfing the left of the political spectrum largely because the left has always professed to be more interested in protecting the right to choose. The right to choose abortion over unwanted pregnancy. The right to listen to satanic music. The right to hug trees. The right to free assembly. The right to burn the flag. And the perverse right to call a spade a spade, which by definition is the right to free speech. And free speech unfortunately extends to the freedom to be racist, the right to be hateful. Likewise the right to be stupid. The right to sleep outside. But does it protect the right to be mentally ill.
The word unhoused does nothing but further dehumanize the already dehumanized. Because the word conjures nothing. The word homeless is at the very least still sympathetic because it summons to mind the image of someone sleeping in a cardboard box. To put this idiotic argument to rest just consider the word special. It used to mean special. Now it means handicapped or mentally retarded. The word special used to be a compliment. Now it’s a playground slur. A dozen years from now the phrases differently abled or unhoused person will be tagged as supremacist. Meanwhile none of these verbal gymnastics do anything to address the problem of shelter.
Another myth that must be disabused is the idea that the homeless apocalypse is strictly a California problem. The vast majority of homeless people in California are not from California. They are from Tennessee and Michigan and New Jersey. They are from every other state that is unfriendly to homeless people. The only reason there are no open air homeless encampments in Memphis or Atlanta is that every homeless person with the mental capacity to hitchhike or the means to buy a bus ticket to California heads west in search of sunny skies and organic soup kitchens and less draconian drug laws.
I worked at the largest homeless shelter in Colorado from 1994 through 1997. The Boulder Shelter for the Homeless had 120 beds. The facility was a converted motel. Imagine a horseshoe shaped roadside motel where all the doors open onto the parking lot. Knock out all the walls between the adjoining rooms and fill them with bunk beds. The business model was simple. Open the gate at sunset and let the unwashed come in first come first serve. Free to all. Give them a hot meal and a place to store their backpack. Give them a kit of miniature hygiene items and a bed for the night. Don’t make them blow zero. The result was surprisingly effective. I don’t mean to gloss over the negatives. There were occasional knife fights in the parking lot. There were incidents of sexual assault. There were dozens of times the police had to be called to help wrestle a psych patient. There were deaths by overdose on the property. But the homeless in Colorado are survivors. Every year they have to deal with roughly six months out of the year where sleeping outside might kill you. During the spring and summer the Colorado homeless disappear into the foothills. But when the snow comes the ones who have a vehicle or a hundred dollars head for New Mexico or Southern California. The rest start showing up at the shelters in Boulder and Denver, Fort Collins and Durango.
When I left the Boulder shelter I moved with my then wife and two year old son to San Francisco. I spent most of the summer of ‘98 walking around south of Market and the Tenderloin passing out cigarettes and spare change. Even then the homeless were everywhere. It was impossible to walk through the financial district without stepping over bodies every six feet. That was twenty-five years ago. It’s a thousand times worse now. I remember flying to New York in the spring of 1999 and being surprised to see no homeless sleeping on the sidewalks. I asked one New Yorker where they had gone and he said who cares. Another told me that Rudy G. had put them on buses and shipped them to Philadelphia and Detroit. I don't know how true that was but it definitely tracks with what we know about Rudy and for a time the streets of NYC were weirdly spotless when it came to the homeless. Not any more. The walking dead are staggering on every New York street corner and every subway platform looking for a bench or ledge that isn’t covered in sharp spikes.
California has several core problems that contribute to the homeless apocalypse. It is the farthest you can go if you’re chasing the sun and running from the east. It’s the wealthiest state. It’s the most progressive most liberal state. It’s the state where dreams and dreamers go to either become real or die. And it’s the only state where you can realistically sleep outside year round without getting killed by exposure to the elements.
In Memphis the homeless who don’t care to venture out west have four options once they’ve burned all their bridges and can no longer crash on granny’s back porch. They can disappear into the Wolf River swamp. They can gather enough spare change to raise the nine dollars to pay for a bed for the night at the Mission shelter. They can commit a petty crime and be arrested. Or they can check into the psych ward. These are not solutions to the big picture apocalypse.
The government claims there are a half million homeless people currently sleeping outside in this country. This is the same government that stops counting you as unemployed once you stop reporting to the unemployment bureau. Which means the actual numbers of homeless are likely upward of a million point five. And that doesn’t even factor in the monthly onslaught of migrants.
The shelter in Boulder is still operating. It now sleeps 160 homeless per night. It employs a staff of dozens. It relies on government grants and charitable donations to continue functioning. The psych hospital where I worked in Memphis is a for profit operation. It has hundreds of employees and 330 beds paid for by private and state insurance companies that are also in the game for profit. The going rate for a night’s rest on a rubber mattress at an American psych hospital is roughly $1500, or more than a month’s rent, more than the average home mortgage.
The shelter and the hospital have a combined 490 beds. Not all of those beds are occupied by actively homeless people. But everyone sleeping on the street or in a shelter has passed through the psych healthcare system. They are all on the homeless spectrum. If you concede that half if not two thirds of the homeless population would benefit from some level of involuntary psychiatric care or court ordered drug rehab, then we need at least a thousand more psych hospitals and a thousand more homeless shelters to make a dent in the apocalypse. Not to mention the staff necessary to operate them. Or to make the numbers more digestible call it twenty more psych hospitals and twenty more shelters per star on the flag.
Do the simple math. If you accept the government numbers we need a half million beds. Not a half million affordable apartments. We need beds. The homeless need shelter.
And oh my but whose backyard will those shelters go into.
peace.
An outstanding piece of reporting, should be published in something with wide readership.
"The left is populated by sincere but misguided genuinely altruistic assholes who have little or no experience in the actual world." Love this quote...because I am an old lefty and because it's dripping with truth.