Five Tropes Local TV News Uses to Dehumanize Homeless People
September 28, 2021 2:17 PM Subscribe
"Rightwing demagogues like Tucker Carlson incite against the homeless on a nightly basis, but mainline outlets also help stigmatize the unhoused, only with more subtlety." Political writer Adam Johnson shines a light on 5 tropes commonly used to dehumanize the unhoused in mainstream news (with receipts).
Yes, it's horrible - people have, like, a tent so that they can sleep out of the rain and then the cops clear the area and destroy everyone's tents, which means that not only do people need to look for new tents, the resources that might have been spent by mutual aid groups, etc, on moving things forward for homeless people now just have to go to getting people more tents. It's great for the tent industry, I bet, since there are so many more homeless people.
And that's another thing media does - treating mass homelessness as a natural and normal feature of American life. Partly they can do this because they've been claiming since the eighties that the cities teem with dangerous homeless people so the unwary already believe that there have always been lots of homeless.
But I'd say that mass homelessness in Minneapolis only started five or six years ago. It started with people sleeping in doorways of the commercial buildings on my street. Then that summer there were tents under the overpasses along the greenway. Then more tents, more people in the doorways, a big encampment of Native people that was a huge political scandal. Now, of course, there are three big encampments of Native people within a mile radius of my house and we just accept it as normal.
It makes me want to scream. Like, literally within my medium term memory you never saw homeless encampments. And now they are everywhere.
What's so tricky is that it's a godawful situation that individuals can only ameliorate, not solve. My neighborhood is in fact a lot worse right now! There is trash everywhere! There are needles everywhere! There's a lot more petty crime! A local school (like, local to me - the encampment is actually there) went remote because there's a homeless encampment right in front of it...and some guy from the encampment just started firing randomly into traffic! And frankly it is demoralizing to see people sleeping in tents everywhere you turn and to know that there are people shooting up out back by your trash cans, and then you have to pick up the needles and gloves, etc, and I don't really freak out about biohazards because city life is full of ick but I still don't like it.
And of course, if you say that, it's used to justify sending in the police and it puts you in community with the ghastliest NextDoor-Citizen-NIMBY busybodies. I would prefer not to use the police to solve a tragic social problem, just as I would prefer not to burn down my house to catch a housefly.
But the point is, individuals can do mutual aid networks and feed people and give them supplies and try to connect them with such meager resources as are available, but only the government can actually do the one thing that would work - give people homes, individual homes with doors you can shut and lock behind you. Give them homes regardless of whether they are addicts or violent or in the grip of serious mental illness, give them regular food and regular medical care. Spend the money that would be required to keep, for instance, women safe from violent men in this theoretical housing.
The government is the only entity that can muster the money and the people and deal with the regulations and our vile, posturing mayor, the pound shop Justin Trudeau himself, Jacob Frey, is too neatly buttoned into the pockets of the developers to give a shit. He is the worst possible mayor at the worst possible time, an utter moral failure. Any other mayor, including more conservative ones, would be more fit to deal with this crisis than he is, and we're stuck with him. All he's concerned about is keeping visible homelessness out of the rich parts of town and ordering the cops to break up encampments whenever there are too many complaints to ignore.
"Connecting people with resources" - what bullshit. Connect people with hotel rooms, connect them with apartments and that'll get them off the street.
posted by Frowner at 3:21 PM on September 28, 2021 [91 favorites]
And that's another thing media does - treating mass homelessness as a natural and normal feature of American life. Partly they can do this because they've been claiming since the eighties that the cities teem with dangerous homeless people so the unwary already believe that there have always been lots of homeless.
But I'd say that mass homelessness in Minneapolis only started five or six years ago. It started with people sleeping in doorways of the commercial buildings on my street. Then that summer there were tents under the overpasses along the greenway. Then more tents, more people in the doorways, a big encampment of Native people that was a huge political scandal. Now, of course, there are three big encampments of Native people within a mile radius of my house and we just accept it as normal.
It makes me want to scream. Like, literally within my medium term memory you never saw homeless encampments. And now they are everywhere.
What's so tricky is that it's a godawful situation that individuals can only ameliorate, not solve. My neighborhood is in fact a lot worse right now! There is trash everywhere! There are needles everywhere! There's a lot more petty crime! A local school (like, local to me - the encampment is actually there) went remote because there's a homeless encampment right in front of it...and some guy from the encampment just started firing randomly into traffic! And frankly it is demoralizing to see people sleeping in tents everywhere you turn and to know that there are people shooting up out back by your trash cans, and then you have to pick up the needles and gloves, etc, and I don't really freak out about biohazards because city life is full of ick but I still don't like it.
And of course, if you say that, it's used to justify sending in the police and it puts you in community with the ghastliest NextDoor-Citizen-NIMBY busybodies. I would prefer not to use the police to solve a tragic social problem, just as I would prefer not to burn down my house to catch a housefly.
But the point is, individuals can do mutual aid networks and feed people and give them supplies and try to connect them with such meager resources as are available, but only the government can actually do the one thing that would work - give people homes, individual homes with doors you can shut and lock behind you. Give them homes regardless of whether they are addicts or violent or in the grip of serious mental illness, give them regular food and regular medical care. Spend the money that would be required to keep, for instance, women safe from violent men in this theoretical housing.
The government is the only entity that can muster the money and the people and deal with the regulations and our vile, posturing mayor, the pound shop Justin Trudeau himself, Jacob Frey, is too neatly buttoned into the pockets of the developers to give a shit. He is the worst possible mayor at the worst possible time, an utter moral failure. Any other mayor, including more conservative ones, would be more fit to deal with this crisis than he is, and we're stuck with him. All he's concerned about is keeping visible homelessness out of the rich parts of town and ordering the cops to break up encampments whenever there are too many complaints to ignore.
"Connecting people with resources" - what bullshit. Connect people with hotel rooms, connect them with apartments and that'll get them off the street.
posted by Frowner at 3:21 PM on September 28, 2021 [91 favorites]
This is incredible. Thank you for posting it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:24 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:24 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
5 tropes commonly used to dehumanize the unhoused in mainstream news
Amen sibling.
posted by bendy at 4:45 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Amen sibling.
posted by bendy at 4:45 PM on September 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
How is the housing status of the alleged assailant relevant at all? Why does one never see “Housed man arrested after murdering wife'' or “Housed woman wanted for slamming car into pedestrian”? The answer is that mentioning the housing status of those committing crime has no functional purpose other than smearing or inciting against unhoused people.
If more newscasters, Tuckers, influencers, neighbors, etc. would flip a perspective the other way so that they were the ones being humiliated or judged or punished for their own circumstances, I'd be tentatively optimistic that social injustice would be slightly mitigated.
Tuckers, you have to live in tents.
Newscasters, you get kicked out of restaurants.
Influencers, you have to pee outside.
Neighbors, you're rummaging through the recycling bins hoping to find enough cans that you can eat today.
Lori Loughlin, your daughters will have to work three jobs so they can afford community college.
posted by bendy at 5:01 PM on September 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
If more newscasters, Tuckers, influencers, neighbors, etc. would flip a perspective the other way so that they were the ones being humiliated or judged or punished for their own circumstances, I'd be tentatively optimistic that social injustice would be slightly mitigated.
Tuckers, you have to live in tents.
Newscasters, you get kicked out of restaurants.
Influencers, you have to pee outside.
Neighbors, you're rummaging through the recycling bins hoping to find enough cans that you can eat today.
Lori Loughlin, your daughters will have to work three jobs so they can afford community college.
posted by bendy at 5:01 PM on September 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
The item in this article that points out how stories dehumanize homeless people by casting the housed as the victims...so spot on.
Society is set up to create an underclass and then exploit and crap on those people. And in this environment, it's the haves that blame the have-nots for the problem.
It's the perfect soil for the Just World Fallacy to set down deep roots:
"I have a home because I'm disciplined, a hard worker, and clever and make good, responsible choices. THEY are homeless because they are lazy and/or criminals who make bad choices."
...
I recently read about the Tiny House transitional/bridge neighborhood initiatives that some municipalities have begun, like the Chandler Blvd Tiny Home Village being run in Los Angeles by Hope of the Valley. There are six of these transitional neighborhoods in L.A. now. (HotV is also building a new Trebek Center.)
Of course, there are broader issues related to the social safety net, affordable housing, community policing, NIMBYism, and mental health services that need to be addressed before we can have a truly holistic solution.
posted by darkstar at 5:04 PM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Society is set up to create an underclass and then exploit and crap on those people. And in this environment, it's the haves that blame the have-nots for the problem.
It's the perfect soil for the Just World Fallacy to set down deep roots:
"I have a home because I'm disciplined, a hard worker, and clever and make good, responsible choices. THEY are homeless because they are lazy and/or criminals who make bad choices."
...
I recently read about the Tiny House transitional/bridge neighborhood initiatives that some municipalities have begun, like the Chandler Blvd Tiny Home Village being run in Los Angeles by Hope of the Valley. There are six of these transitional neighborhoods in L.A. now. (HotV is also building a new Trebek Center.)
Of course, there are broader issues related to the social safety net, affordable housing, community policing, NIMBYism, and mental health services that need to be addressed before we can have a truly holistic solution.
posted by darkstar at 5:04 PM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
people have, like, a tent so that they can sleep out of the rain and then the cops clear the area and destroy everyone's tents, which means that not only do people need to look for new tents
Not to mention that houselessness is a dog-eat-dog world. Other homeless people will steal your tent if they can. If you don't want to carry it around with you all day you have to hide it somewhere. Chances are reasonably good that someone else will find it - if it's someone with a home they'll probably throw it away, another person who needs it will most likely steal it.
posted by bendy at 5:06 PM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
Not to mention that houselessness is a dog-eat-dog world. Other homeless people will steal your tent if they can. If you don't want to carry it around with you all day you have to hide it somewhere. Chances are reasonably good that someone else will find it - if it's someone with a home they'll probably throw it away, another person who needs it will most likely steal it.
posted by bendy at 5:06 PM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm part of a mutual aid group that does weekly outreach to unhoused individuals --mostly handing out water, sandwiches, hygiene kits, socks, t-shirts. People are always incredibly appreciative of those items, but also yeah it sucks that we can't even really hook them up with a case worker so that they could potentially access other services. Because to get a case worker you need a working phone number so that they can call you when one becomes available.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 5:15 PM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 5:15 PM on September 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
See also this post shortly before this one.
posted by bendy at 5:16 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by bendy at 5:16 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Because to get a case worker you need a working phone number so that they can call you when one becomes available.
Many unhoused people I've met make having a phone a priority. The porch of my building has an outlet and many times people have left phones and portable batteries plugged in there.
A restaurant that used to be open a couple blocks away had an outlet tucked into its awning for stringing lights over the door and if you stood up on the edge of a big planter under the awning you could plug in your phone and hide it up in the awning for a few hours.
But still, if you can only acquire either a phone or a sleeping bag, you're probably going to choose the sleeping bag.
posted by bendy at 5:21 PM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
Many unhoused people I've met make having a phone a priority. The porch of my building has an outlet and many times people have left phones and portable batteries plugged in there.
A restaurant that used to be open a couple blocks away had an outlet tucked into its awning for stringing lights over the door and if you stood up on the edge of a big planter under the awning you could plug in your phone and hide it up in the awning for a few hours.
But still, if you can only acquire either a phone or a sleeping bag, you're probably going to choose the sleeping bag.
posted by bendy at 5:21 PM on September 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
At the other end of the spectrum from the Tiny Homes Villages, while reading more about this tonight, I came across this article in the LA Times about the Weingart Tower, a new high-rise apartment complex being built to serve the homeless on Skid Row.
“One of the things we asked the architect is we don’t want it to look like a housing project,” Murray, a former state senator, said “We want it to look like one of these other first-class downtown apartments.”posted by darkstar at 7:51 PM on September 28, 2021 [10 favorites]
The $160-million first phase will include 228 studio units and 47 one-bedroom units, all coupled to supportive services including case management, medical and mental health treatment services, client plan development, group meetings and a meals program. Three units will be for managers.
Many unhoused people I've met make having a phone a priority. The porch of my building has an outlet and many times people have left phones and portable batteries plugged in there.
I spotted an outdoor charging station with branding for one of the Medicaid hmos in my state. It’s a bank of locking units with charging cables, and it’s outside a church that doubles as a food pantry. I’m glad, it’s needed, but it’s also addressing a symptom, not the disease.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:23 PM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
I spotted an outdoor charging station with branding for one of the Medicaid hmos in my state. It’s a bank of locking units with charging cables, and it’s outside a church that doubles as a food pantry. I’m glad, it’s needed, but it’s also addressing a symptom, not the disease.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:23 PM on September 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Because to get a case worker you need a working phone number so that they can call you when one becomes available.
Many unhoused people I've met make having a phone a priority. The porch of my building has an outlet and many times people have left phones and portable batteries plugged in there.
A restaurant that used to be open a couple blocks away had an outlet tucked into its awning for stringing lights over the door and if you stood up on the edge of a big planter under the awning you could plug in your phone and hide it up in the awning for a few hours.
I don't know if I'm too far off the mark here, but I think a worthwhile sub-conversation to have around the homelessness issue is the need in the US for an address and/or phone number to receive basically any service that isn't a point-of-sale cash transaction. Like JFC, I'm just an expat, I am in fact financially solvent enough to buy stuff, but I can't renew my driver's license, get a new bank account, or get a US phone number from a provider without involving my mom and her address and phone number. She's like, retired and stuff. She doesn't need my ID hassles in her life. Yet the other available workarounds are literally just bothering someone else to pretend it's me living at a US address (sometimes for pay). It's not like it's impossible, but you really want me to do the kabuki thing where I pretend I live there just to get the basic society things? You want me to have a credit record to rent an apartment, but to have a credit record, I need a credit card, and to get a credit card, I need an address. Wtf. I know there are many workarounds to this, but you get my point. When this stuff is so convoluted, it's impossible for someone living IN THE LITERAL STREETS to do the extra-ass legwork that US society is so extra about. It's hard enough for me, and I have a laptop, a house, and time.
It seems to me that any conversation about housing the unhoused begins with legitimizing their existence in the eyes of institutions so that they can receive things in the mail and get phone calls. I'm not even saying give them houses (I'm saying that later, in a different conversation), I'm saying give them PO boxes, bank accounts, and government ID's. Hand to my heart, I think any damn thing that solves homelessness has to start with that.
I have a second rant here that is not so prominent in public conversation, but consider that we live in a world of increasingly severe climate change where we also have fun stuff like solar power and electric cars that are only getting cheaper and more universal. Now, in 2021, if you see someone sleeping in a Tesla in a Walmart parking lot, you probably leave them alone, but in 2031? In 2041, when it's 5 people under a sun umbrella outside a refurbished Nissan Leaf with a Dishy McFlatface or 3 on the roof tapping away furiously on refurbished Chromebooks or in battered Oculus Quests as they remotely control Amazon FulFillBot 5000's, do you tell them to move on? Do you tithe them for a day's worth of property tax and sell them algae tacos from the solar-powered taco truck? Do you smash up their solar panels and tell them to move on to the next sundown town (might take on a new but equally ominous new meaning in a near-future world of climate refugees)? Do you round them up and put them to work in the town's Maker House, where "vagrants" package 3D printed fart harnesses for artisinal beef cows?
How do people think kicking the homeless out of communities goes down in 5 years, 10, 20? Especially if housing continues to be so unaffordable. I'm no sci-fi author, but it takes me about 5 minutes to imagine how this gets real dark real fast. We need to start legitimizing and housing the homeless FAST to avoid that future.
posted by saysthis at 9:32 PM on September 28, 2021 [17 favorites]
Many unhoused people I've met make having a phone a priority. The porch of my building has an outlet and many times people have left phones and portable batteries plugged in there.
A restaurant that used to be open a couple blocks away had an outlet tucked into its awning for stringing lights over the door and if you stood up on the edge of a big planter under the awning you could plug in your phone and hide it up in the awning for a few hours.
I don't know if I'm too far off the mark here, but I think a worthwhile sub-conversation to have around the homelessness issue is the need in the US for an address and/or phone number to receive basically any service that isn't a point-of-sale cash transaction. Like JFC, I'm just an expat, I am in fact financially solvent enough to buy stuff, but I can't renew my driver's license, get a new bank account, or get a US phone number from a provider without involving my mom and her address and phone number. She's like, retired and stuff. She doesn't need my ID hassles in her life. Yet the other available workarounds are literally just bothering someone else to pretend it's me living at a US address (sometimes for pay). It's not like it's impossible, but you really want me to do the kabuki thing where I pretend I live there just to get the basic society things? You want me to have a credit record to rent an apartment, but to have a credit record, I need a credit card, and to get a credit card, I need an address. Wtf. I know there are many workarounds to this, but you get my point. When this stuff is so convoluted, it's impossible for someone living IN THE LITERAL STREETS to do the extra-ass legwork that US society is so extra about. It's hard enough for me, and I have a laptop, a house, and time.
It seems to me that any conversation about housing the unhoused begins with legitimizing their existence in the eyes of institutions so that they can receive things in the mail and get phone calls. I'm not even saying give them houses (I'm saying that later, in a different conversation), I'm saying give them PO boxes, bank accounts, and government ID's. Hand to my heart, I think any damn thing that solves homelessness has to start with that.
I have a second rant here that is not so prominent in public conversation, but consider that we live in a world of increasingly severe climate change where we also have fun stuff like solar power and electric cars that are only getting cheaper and more universal. Now, in 2021, if you see someone sleeping in a Tesla in a Walmart parking lot, you probably leave them alone, but in 2031? In 2041, when it's 5 people under a sun umbrella outside a refurbished Nissan Leaf with a Dishy McFlatface or 3 on the roof tapping away furiously on refurbished Chromebooks or in battered Oculus Quests as they remotely control Amazon FulFillBot 5000's, do you tell them to move on? Do you tithe them for a day's worth of property tax and sell them algae tacos from the solar-powered taco truck? Do you smash up their solar panels and tell them to move on to the next sundown town (might take on a new but equally ominous new meaning in a near-future world of climate refugees)? Do you round them up and put them to work in the town's Maker House, where "vagrants" package 3D printed fart harnesses for artisinal beef cows?
How do people think kicking the homeless out of communities goes down in 5 years, 10, 20? Especially if housing continues to be so unaffordable. I'm no sci-fi author, but it takes me about 5 minutes to imagine how this gets real dark real fast. We need to start legitimizing and housing the homeless FAST to avoid that future.
posted by saysthis at 9:32 PM on September 28, 2021 [17 favorites]
Ex-homeless nopes out of this. Y'all sorta half-right, half-wrong.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:49 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by zengargoyle at 11:49 PM on September 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
there are often people with signs at major intersections in my city - i have to wonder why i never see two people with signs at the same corner and why i never see the same person again at that corner - there seems to be some kind of system at work here
but that's a minor detail - things are getting much much worse here and i can't understand why a progressive city can't find a decent, humane solution to this problem
i know that zoning laws that restrict cheap housing like mobile homes and how many unrelated people can live together are part of the problem
posted by pyramid termite at 2:22 AM on September 29, 2021
but that's a minor detail - things are getting much much worse here and i can't understand why a progressive city can't find a decent, humane solution to this problem
i know that zoning laws that restrict cheap housing like mobile homes and how many unrelated people can live together are part of the problem
posted by pyramid termite at 2:22 AM on September 29, 2021
there are often people with signs at major intersections in my city - i have to wonder why i never see two people with signs at the same corner
Because the stronger one of the two will intimidate the other away.
posted by praemunire at 7:42 AM on September 29, 2021
Because the stronger one of the two will intimidate the other away.
posted by praemunire at 7:42 AM on September 29, 2021
there are often people with signs at major intersections in my city - i have to wonder why i never see two people with signs at the same corner and why i never see the same person again at that corner - there seems to be some kind of system at work here
These folks at the intersections have vanished in my city since the mayor announced that any driver who handed them cash would be charged with distracted driving. Handing money out of a stopped car is dangerous, you see, and will lead to a fine and sone points on your license.
Critics pointed out the mayor had just criminalized drive-through fast food restaurants, but weirdly that side of the law is not enforced.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
These folks at the intersections have vanished in my city since the mayor announced that any driver who handed them cash would be charged with distracted driving. Handing money out of a stopped car is dangerous, you see, and will lead to a fine and sone points on your license.
Critics pointed out the mayor had just criminalized drive-through fast food restaurants, but weirdly that side of the law is not enforced.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Connect people with hotel rooms, connect them with apartments and that'll get them off the street.
On my block, some of the folks on the street prefer living there. They've literally rejected free hotel rooms in favor of the sidewalk. Some of it is mental illness, I think, and some of it is a matter of preferring their freedom to do whatever they want wherever they want.
It's an incredibly complicated, multi-faceted problem. I have sympathy for them--I know their names, talk with them, give them support from time to time--but I am also very unhappy about how they're trashing our neighborhood. They generate enormous piles of trash--old furniture, bicycle parts, mattresses, garbage of all kinds. I clean up our street on a weekly basis, and I have to deal with all the piss and shit in the course of doing that. And they are definitely hurting the businesses next to their piles of stuff. I'm not talking about a Walmart either; I'm talking about locally-owned small businesses. (Those people have rights too.)
And yes, there is a serious crime issue that comes with it. There was an attempted murder and arson right across the street from my house--I can show you the video of the injured victim and the large fire that resulted--and judging from the screams I've heard at night, I would guess that there have been some sexual assaults/rapes that have happened. (Yes, we called the police on those, but nothing happened.)
I really don't know what the answer is. I have high hopes for the tiny house villages the local municipalities are experimenting with, but a much more comprehensive set of solutions is necessary.
posted by mikeand1 at 9:13 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
On my block, some of the folks on the street prefer living there. They've literally rejected free hotel rooms in favor of the sidewalk. Some of it is mental illness, I think, and some of it is a matter of preferring their freedom to do whatever they want wherever they want.
It's an incredibly complicated, multi-faceted problem. I have sympathy for them--I know their names, talk with them, give them support from time to time--but I am also very unhappy about how they're trashing our neighborhood. They generate enormous piles of trash--old furniture, bicycle parts, mattresses, garbage of all kinds. I clean up our street on a weekly basis, and I have to deal with all the piss and shit in the course of doing that. And they are definitely hurting the businesses next to their piles of stuff. I'm not talking about a Walmart either; I'm talking about locally-owned small businesses. (Those people have rights too.)
And yes, there is a serious crime issue that comes with it. There was an attempted murder and arson right across the street from my house--I can show you the video of the injured victim and the large fire that resulted--and judging from the screams I've heard at night, I would guess that there have been some sexual assaults/rapes that have happened. (Yes, we called the police on those, but nothing happened.)
I really don't know what the answer is. I have high hopes for the tiny house villages the local municipalities are experimenting with, but a much more comprehensive set of solutions is necessary.
posted by mikeand1 at 9:13 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
My friend who was homeless for several years was badly traumatized by how he'd been treated in shelters. He wouldn't stay in a shelter come hell or high water. I feel like starting these programs and doing them right so as to build trust is pretty important. A big part of this would be talking to various homeless people about what they'd need to feel safe and also, I think, accepting that different kinds of housing are going to be needed (and that basically none of them are "a mat on the floor in a gym with a hundred other people, you have to be out for the day by 8am, no pets".)
It's worrying because the impression I get around here is that several of the nonprofits doing outreach are fundie Christian and not really ready to meet people where they're at. The only person I know well who was addicted to heroin, for instance, took like three tries to quit - and that was when they were housed, had full family support and were able to go to an inpatient facility. It seems like if you want to house people, you have to be okay with housing people while they are managing an addiction, and you have to be okay with things like safe injection sites, needle disposal, etc.
Near me there's a small encampment by a disused gas station. I'd heard a lot about it on NextDoor (awful as that is) and so I biked over to take a look today. (I didn't intrude, I just biked by.) I'd heard that this was a women-only encampment that was trying to get people housed. Obviously I couldn't tell if this was true by looking, but the parking lot area is all fenced off and tarps have been put up on the inside of the fence so that you basically can't see in - I caught glimpses of some tents as I went by. There's some kind of contact/info booth that seems to be either self-organized or run by some small group out on the sidewalk.
On the one hand I feel good about this because it looks safer and cleaner than a lot of other situations I've seen, and the safer and cleaner people's situations the better sleep they'll be getting. On the other, I sure hope it really is people getting housed. I just dread a sort of "rationalization" of this kind of thing where we have permanent camps but they're "good" camps where, sure, everyone lives in a tent but there's some privacy and porta potties, and we all accept that this is a fine way for some of the citizens of a very rich country to live now. Obviously a "good" encampment is better than a miserable, chaotic one with no sanitary arrangements and I'm afraid that this will be used to justify permanent homelessness.
I worry because the solutions are likely to be expensive, time-consuming and difficult to spin as helping only perfect deserving people who have never done a thing wrong ever...and as a society we are not good at those that kind of solution.
Now that I've qualified for a booster shot, I think I'm actually going to look up some of the mutual aid groups doing homeless support - I was starting to do that earlier and then Delta happened, but I feel a little better about it now.
posted by Frowner at 10:24 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's worrying because the impression I get around here is that several of the nonprofits doing outreach are fundie Christian and not really ready to meet people where they're at. The only person I know well who was addicted to heroin, for instance, took like three tries to quit - and that was when they were housed, had full family support and were able to go to an inpatient facility. It seems like if you want to house people, you have to be okay with housing people while they are managing an addiction, and you have to be okay with things like safe injection sites, needle disposal, etc.
Near me there's a small encampment by a disused gas station. I'd heard a lot about it on NextDoor (awful as that is) and so I biked over to take a look today. (I didn't intrude, I just biked by.) I'd heard that this was a women-only encampment that was trying to get people housed. Obviously I couldn't tell if this was true by looking, but the parking lot area is all fenced off and tarps have been put up on the inside of the fence so that you basically can't see in - I caught glimpses of some tents as I went by. There's some kind of contact/info booth that seems to be either self-organized or run by some small group out on the sidewalk.
On the one hand I feel good about this because it looks safer and cleaner than a lot of other situations I've seen, and the safer and cleaner people's situations the better sleep they'll be getting. On the other, I sure hope it really is people getting housed. I just dread a sort of "rationalization" of this kind of thing where we have permanent camps but they're "good" camps where, sure, everyone lives in a tent but there's some privacy and porta potties, and we all accept that this is a fine way for some of the citizens of a very rich country to live now. Obviously a "good" encampment is better than a miserable, chaotic one with no sanitary arrangements and I'm afraid that this will be used to justify permanent homelessness.
I worry because the solutions are likely to be expensive, time-consuming and difficult to spin as helping only perfect deserving people who have never done a thing wrong ever...and as a society we are not good at those that kind of solution.
Now that I've qualified for a booster shot, I think I'm actually going to look up some of the mutual aid groups doing homeless support - I was starting to do that earlier and then Delta happened, but I feel a little better about it now.
posted by Frowner at 10:24 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
My church hosts a non-profit whose primary work is providing state ids, a mailbox, and cell phone charging for our neighbors who need them. They provide lots of other transition services, too, but those are the most important ones, the ones that were identified as gaps in the services available in Atlanta. So many folks need a state id because the city threw away all of their stuff, including all of their important papers. So many folks just need to charge their phone so they can get the phone call offering them a job. So many folks just need a mailbox where they can pick up that ID, those forms, or the check that will finally help them move into an apartment.
posted by hydropsyche at 12:43 PM on September 29, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 12:43 PM on September 29, 2021 [6 favorites]
Ex-homeless nopes out of this. Y'all sorta half-right, half-wrong.
I wish zengargoyle had said more about this.
Here's a recent post of mine about some potential solutions and some pros and cons.
posted by bendy at 5:25 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I wish zengargoyle had said more about this.
Here's a recent post of mine about some potential solutions and some pros and cons.
posted by bendy at 5:25 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I just dread a sort of "rationalization" of this kind of thing where we have permanent camps but they're "good" camps where, sure, everyone lives in a tent but there's some privacy and porta potties, and we all accept that this is a fine way for some of the citizens of a very rich country to live now. Obviously a "good" encampment is better than a miserable, chaotic one with no sanitary arrangements and I'm afraid that this will be used to justify permanent homelessness.
"Yes, and ..."
Portland is developing "safe rest villages" and will be announcing the first three sites tomorrow. They were going to announce six a week ago, pulled from a list of 100 possible sites around town, but now it's three tomorrow. The link I provided explains everything these villages will provide. There's also some discussion of providing secure parking space for people who are living out of RVs, campers, and cars (which I've noticed a lot more of, living across the street from a park where we can see as many as a dozen of those parked around when it's our block's turn to be a gathering point).
My understanding is that these villages are not popular with the county policy people, who are all-in on "housing first" when left to their own devices and who own the bulk of the region's response to the crisis. The initiative for these villages started with a city councillor and the county folks have been pulled in to contract for management and operations.
This is all against the backdrop of Portland's situation becoming much more visible, hence "worse."
I live close to a bike trail where there used to be a lot of camping -- hundreds in a one-mile strip a few years ago -- because it was a relatively safe place to go: It took longer for sweeps to happen, and there were a few natural areas where folks could go back in the wood line and not be seen. When the pandemic hit, the city extended policy already informed by Martin vs. Boise and largely suspended sweeps except where a given encampment has grown over some size and there are major, major sanitation issues. I think that policy has put homeless people in more frequent conflict with housed people because they're settling in residential areas more often. In some neighborhoods, that means the neighborhood associations seem to organize phone brigading the police until the encampment goes away.
It's gotten to the point we have our own dark money campaign in town. It is being scrupulously "bipartisan" about its policy goals, meaning it has decided its marquee issues are homelessness and police body cams -- one being its real concern and the other seeming like the sort of thing you'd toss out as a sop to liberal consciences. People have leaked donor decks that show it's spending money on figuring out how to get around Boise and other higher court rulings.
And that's where the "yes, and" comes in:
Boise says you can't criminalize street homelessness if you don't have shelter beds for homeless people. If you have enough shelter space, the court seemed to say your anti-camping ordinances are enforceable. So we're doing these safe rest villages over the objections of the "housing first" people who actually own policy in this area and who are not motivated to see them work, but own staffing and operation. It feels to me like even though the idea is very appealing to people as a humane alternative, compliance/participation might be kind of low, especially by the time they get done picking sites that will fly with all the NIMBYs -- places out in industrial districts and remote parts of town where transit is harder.
In my darker moments, I think, "well, someone probably thinks it'd be fine if they never topped 75 percent occupancy ... an empty bed is an empty bed and suddenly we're satisfying Boise and there's a pretext to step back up the sweeps and even make them worse because living in a tent on a sidewalk has become a criminal endeavor again."
I think Portland is at a point where it'll be okay with that. My own family's experience of the encampment/car-and-trailer flotilla that has formed, disappeared and reappeared over the past 18 months has involved threats to neighbors, intimidation with baseball bats, domestic violence, people getting beaten in the park, and seeing a trailer catch on fire, killing the resident.
There's a certain kind of person who says having a problem with that is just middle class NIMBY concern-trolling, but you know -- we make an effort to learn names, we offer water, my wife is a social worker who manages programs for homeless services and she tries to help people connect with services with a single phone call instead of starting at the top of the services labyrinth. When people come and say "I won't be here long," I always say "just do what you need to do, and if a neighbor complains or harasses you, let me know so I can talk to them -- you have a right to be here." I point out the nearest source of water, where the bathrooms are, and where to put trash so the park rangers will carry it off twice a week. I go to "concerned neighbor" meetings and say the same thing -- they have a right to be here and we don't want to be in the business of harassing people who are just trying to exist. I don't think I'm concern-trolling when I say it's an appalling situation that needs to end, and that when I say "needs to end" I don't mean "criminalizing the existence of people without houses." Nobody should have to burn to death in a trailer at 3 in the morning because some pathetic electrical comfort like a coffee maker or heater finally caught fire, and the people who saw it happen shouldn't have to have endured the trauma of seeing it happen.
I hate that those villages, something we've done in Portland in the past, and which I'm supportive of in principle given the inability of the county to actually drive any velocity on its housing-first approach, are probably interesting to city government as a fig leaf for re-criminalizing homelessness and getting our "nice" downtown back.
I wrote more about the collision between policy people and "normal taxpayers" elsewhere (okay, fine, reddit).
posted by mph at 5:57 PM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
"Yes, and ..."
Portland is developing "safe rest villages" and will be announcing the first three sites tomorrow. They were going to announce six a week ago, pulled from a list of 100 possible sites around town, but now it's three tomorrow. The link I provided explains everything these villages will provide. There's also some discussion of providing secure parking space for people who are living out of RVs, campers, and cars (which I've noticed a lot more of, living across the street from a park where we can see as many as a dozen of those parked around when it's our block's turn to be a gathering point).
My understanding is that these villages are not popular with the county policy people, who are all-in on "housing first" when left to their own devices and who own the bulk of the region's response to the crisis. The initiative for these villages started with a city councillor and the county folks have been pulled in to contract for management and operations.
This is all against the backdrop of Portland's situation becoming much more visible, hence "worse."
I live close to a bike trail where there used to be a lot of camping -- hundreds in a one-mile strip a few years ago -- because it was a relatively safe place to go: It took longer for sweeps to happen, and there were a few natural areas where folks could go back in the wood line and not be seen. When the pandemic hit, the city extended policy already informed by Martin vs. Boise and largely suspended sweeps except where a given encampment has grown over some size and there are major, major sanitation issues. I think that policy has put homeless people in more frequent conflict with housed people because they're settling in residential areas more often. In some neighborhoods, that means the neighborhood associations seem to organize phone brigading the police until the encampment goes away.
It's gotten to the point we have our own dark money campaign in town. It is being scrupulously "bipartisan" about its policy goals, meaning it has decided its marquee issues are homelessness and police body cams -- one being its real concern and the other seeming like the sort of thing you'd toss out as a sop to liberal consciences. People have leaked donor decks that show it's spending money on figuring out how to get around Boise and other higher court rulings.
And that's where the "yes, and" comes in:
Boise says you can't criminalize street homelessness if you don't have shelter beds for homeless people. If you have enough shelter space, the court seemed to say your anti-camping ordinances are enforceable. So we're doing these safe rest villages over the objections of the "housing first" people who actually own policy in this area and who are not motivated to see them work, but own staffing and operation. It feels to me like even though the idea is very appealing to people as a humane alternative, compliance/participation might be kind of low, especially by the time they get done picking sites that will fly with all the NIMBYs -- places out in industrial districts and remote parts of town where transit is harder.
In my darker moments, I think, "well, someone probably thinks it'd be fine if they never topped 75 percent occupancy ... an empty bed is an empty bed and suddenly we're satisfying Boise and there's a pretext to step back up the sweeps and even make them worse because living in a tent on a sidewalk has become a criminal endeavor again."
I think Portland is at a point where it'll be okay with that. My own family's experience of the encampment/car-and-trailer flotilla that has formed, disappeared and reappeared over the past 18 months has involved threats to neighbors, intimidation with baseball bats, domestic violence, people getting beaten in the park, and seeing a trailer catch on fire, killing the resident.
There's a certain kind of person who says having a problem with that is just middle class NIMBY concern-trolling, but you know -- we make an effort to learn names, we offer water, my wife is a social worker who manages programs for homeless services and she tries to help people connect with services with a single phone call instead of starting at the top of the services labyrinth. When people come and say "I won't be here long," I always say "just do what you need to do, and if a neighbor complains or harasses you, let me know so I can talk to them -- you have a right to be here." I point out the nearest source of water, where the bathrooms are, and where to put trash so the park rangers will carry it off twice a week. I go to "concerned neighbor" meetings and say the same thing -- they have a right to be here and we don't want to be in the business of harassing people who are just trying to exist. I don't think I'm concern-trolling when I say it's an appalling situation that needs to end, and that when I say "needs to end" I don't mean "criminalizing the existence of people without houses." Nobody should have to burn to death in a trailer at 3 in the morning because some pathetic electrical comfort like a coffee maker or heater finally caught fire, and the people who saw it happen shouldn't have to have endured the trauma of seeing it happen.
I hate that those villages, something we've done in Portland in the past, and which I'm supportive of in principle given the inability of the county to actually drive any velocity on its housing-first approach, are probably interesting to city government as a fig leaf for re-criminalizing homelessness and getting our "nice" downtown back.
I wrote more about the collision between policy people and "normal taxpayers" elsewhere (okay, fine, reddit).
posted by mph at 5:57 PM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
Portland is developing "safe rest villages" and will be announcing the first three sites tomorrow.
mph, thanks for that news and for the rest of your post.
posted by bendy at 8:33 PM on September 29, 2021
mph, thanks for that news and for the rest of your post.
posted by bendy at 8:33 PM on September 29, 2021
« Older …interwoven appreciation of the neural function... | chunky cubby chasers Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:39 PM on September 28, 2021 [21 favorites]