It’s hard to believe, but they’re telling me it will get worse
March 19, 2023 3:42 PM Subscribe
A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis "He looked out the window toward Madison Street, which had become the center of one of the largest homeless encampments in the country, with as many as 1,100 people sleeping outdoors. On this February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the middle of the street, wrapped beneath a canvas advertising banner. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of Joe’s restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate a dozen feet from Joe’s outdoor tables.
“It’s the usual chaos and suffering,” he told Debbie. “But the restaurant’s still standing.” (archive.org version)
An interview with the author of the article: "I’ve spent a lot of time reporting not only about homelessness in the country, but also on all of the ways in which systems aren’t working, particularly in terms of inequality, and how that gap in our country is getting alarmingly larger. What I’m looking to do in my reporting is ask, What are the big tension points in America? Rather than just writing about them as issues, how can I find the people who are actually living out these major tension points? I’ve seen the ways in which homelessness issues have become a tinderbox in cities. You have a lot of people sleeping unsheltered around the country, and you have these small businesses who’ve been through a really rough stretch because of the pandemic, trying to survive. They feel abandoned, as if this problem at their doorstep is theirs to solve. I wanted to figure out how I could tell that story."
An interview with the author of the article: "I’ve spent a lot of time reporting not only about homelessness in the country, but also on all of the ways in which systems aren’t working, particularly in terms of inequality, and how that gap in our country is getting alarmingly larger. What I’m looking to do in my reporting is ask, What are the big tension points in America? Rather than just writing about them as issues, how can I find the people who are actually living out these major tension points? I’ve seen the ways in which homelessness issues have become a tinderbox in cities. You have a lot of people sleeping unsheltered around the country, and you have these small businesses who’ve been through a really rough stretch because of the pandemic, trying to survive. They feel abandoned, as if this problem at their doorstep is theirs to solve. I wanted to figure out how I could tell that story."
Why do articles on homelessness lead with the experience of housed people rather than homeless people?
The biggest victims of the homelessness crisis are unhoused people not housed people.
It sounds obvious but apparently it's not.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:40 PM on March 19, 2023 [23 favorites]
The biggest victims of the homelessness crisis are unhoused people not housed people.
It sounds obvious but apparently it's not.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:40 PM on March 19, 2023 [23 favorites]
A lot of housed people want this problem to go away but don’t want to do anything about it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:48 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:48 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Because it sucks for both groups? I know I don't have it anywhere near as bad as people who were living in a nearby encampment, but picking needles and other garbage out of your yard isn't living the high life either.
Anyway, the focus actually needs to be on the people causing the problem, like stuff companies, private equity buying up housing, etc.
posted by Ickster at 5:02 PM on March 19, 2023 [17 favorites]
Anyway, the focus actually needs to be on the people causing the problem, like stuff companies, private equity buying up housing, etc.
posted by Ickster at 5:02 PM on March 19, 2023 [17 favorites]
What worries me is that so many people are already so unsympathetic and will read every story and identify with the housed guy, the guy running a business, and think immediately that the solution is basically to bulldoze all those people until they disappear. People already want to do that.
It's a question of emphasis. I live in a neighborhood with lots of unhoused people and a rolling number/size of encampments. It really does get stressful, and I do sometimes feel like people who don't live in this situation don't understand how it can feel. But I'm not living in an encampment. It is so scary and hard to live like that. People get sicker in encampments because they are stressed and aren't eating right and, god knows, can't get enough sleep. People drink and do drugs to block out the suffering. People start drug habits.
You feel differently when you actually meet people. An actual human in front of you, even if they're having an episode, is different from a stereotype on the TV or in the paper. When you actually meet people, even if you're pissed off at them or really, really wish they would not hang out basically in your backyard, you can't get too mad at them because they're full human beings.
It's like, I may feel really mad and stressed and upset because of all the trash and needles out back, but goddamn if I want some suburban cop coming in here and bulldozing people's stuff. Like 'em or leave 'em alone, the unhoused people here are my neighbors and I don't want a bunch of idiots from affluent places coming in and forcing a bunch of useless or harmful policies on us.
I feel like I have an infinity of things to say about this and then I look at it and it's all the same thing basically. I do volunteer stuff on this issue, so I think about it every day. Right now the snow is melting and it's muddy. When you see people being forced to live in a slurry of mud and trash and god knows what decaying organic matter like they're refugees from some appalling total war, all you really want is to get them out of it.
posted by Frowner at 5:07 PM on March 19, 2023 [45 favorites]
It's a question of emphasis. I live in a neighborhood with lots of unhoused people and a rolling number/size of encampments. It really does get stressful, and I do sometimes feel like people who don't live in this situation don't understand how it can feel. But I'm not living in an encampment. It is so scary and hard to live like that. People get sicker in encampments because they are stressed and aren't eating right and, god knows, can't get enough sleep. People drink and do drugs to block out the suffering. People start drug habits.
You feel differently when you actually meet people. An actual human in front of you, even if they're having an episode, is different from a stereotype on the TV or in the paper. When you actually meet people, even if you're pissed off at them or really, really wish they would not hang out basically in your backyard, you can't get too mad at them because they're full human beings.
It's like, I may feel really mad and stressed and upset because of all the trash and needles out back, but goddamn if I want some suburban cop coming in here and bulldozing people's stuff. Like 'em or leave 'em alone, the unhoused people here are my neighbors and I don't want a bunch of idiots from affluent places coming in and forcing a bunch of useless or harmful policies on us.
I feel like I have an infinity of things to say about this and then I look at it and it's all the same thing basically. I do volunteer stuff on this issue, so I think about it every day. Right now the snow is melting and it's muddy. When you see people being forced to live in a slurry of mud and trash and god knows what decaying organic matter like they're refugees from some appalling total war, all you really want is to get them out of it.
posted by Frowner at 5:07 PM on March 19, 2023 [45 favorites]
I think they are trying to center the reader's likely demographic using this perspective, but there is a lack of acknowledgment that cleaning would be used as a premise for disassembling the encampment entirely and the ACLU and homeless advocates are given a throwaway mention with scare quotes adorning their concerns.
posted by Selena777 at 5:12 PM on March 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 5:12 PM on March 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think if folks read the entire article, it will become evident that the journalist tries very hard to humanize everyone involved and does not focus on or blame any single factor in a situation that is by its nature so complex.
posted by gwint at 5:21 PM on March 19, 2023 [39 favorites]
posted by gwint at 5:21 PM on March 19, 2023 [39 favorites]
Missed an edit -- "stuff companies" should've been "drug companies"
posted by Ickster at 5:23 PM on March 19, 2023
posted by Ickster at 5:23 PM on March 19, 2023
Why do articles on homelessness lead with the experience of housed people rather than homeless people?
Because the people with homes are the ones who subscribe to the NYT.
The biggest problem with getting people as a whole to want to do enough about homelessness to make a difference—and to spend the colossal sums it would take—is that the political party that is owned by the same people who own the media is actively cheering on a kind of Frankenreich that's almost inevitably going to lead to bulldozing the camps with the campers still inside the tents. The fractious coalition that is the Democratic Party doesn't have anything like a working majority that would want to spend those sums, but for a different reason, which is that by and large its members don't see the forest for the trees: such a wildly disproportionate number of those members' encounters with homeless people is with the in fact very small proportion of them who are horrible people that they view those people as representative of homeless people in general. I mean, kudos to the writer for trying to humanize individuals, but nobody's doing a great job making the statistical argument, that homeless people is a huge spectrum and the horrible people are a fringe.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:26 PM on March 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
Because the people with homes are the ones who subscribe to the NYT.
The biggest problem with getting people as a whole to want to do enough about homelessness to make a difference—and to spend the colossal sums it would take—is that the political party that is owned by the same people who own the media is actively cheering on a kind of Frankenreich that's almost inevitably going to lead to bulldozing the camps with the campers still inside the tents. The fractious coalition that is the Democratic Party doesn't have anything like a working majority that would want to spend those sums, but for a different reason, which is that by and large its members don't see the forest for the trees: such a wildly disproportionate number of those members' encounters with homeless people is with the in fact very small proportion of them who are horrible people that they view those people as representative of homeless people in general. I mean, kudos to the writer for trying to humanize individuals, but nobody's doing a great job making the statistical argument, that homeless people is a huge spectrum and the horrible people are a fringe.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:26 PM on March 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
I liked this article, even though it’s incredibly depressing. The comments on it are brutally ignorant. 95% of them are people baying for the blood of these people living in the encampments. Demanding they be imprisoned or just eliminated. Almost nobody supporting anything like building them houses. Incredibly depressing.
posted by youthenrage at 5:59 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by youthenrage at 5:59 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I had this insight just now - this type of story cannot help but depict housed people who have any kind of human connection with unhoused people as Unusually Good - like, I think we're meant to see the restauranteurs as Very Good People because they try to help the unhoused people around their restaurant at some personal cost.
And it's true that a bad person wouldn't do that. But when you, a housed person, are talking to or doing something for an unhoused person, you're just talking to or helping a person. It feels normal and natural. You'd help out a stranger at the bus stop or a fellow client at the hair salon, right? And you wouldn't think What An Extraordinarily Good Person I Am To Help My Fellow Commuter.
One of the intellectual ruses by which housed people other unhoused people is this assumption that it feels different to talk to unhoused people than housed people, but it doesn't. We pretend that unhoused people are categorically different than housed people because for some of us this excuses treating them like garbage and for others it staves off the fear that we could join them.
(And sure, easy to say that there are unhoused people who have, like, mental health challenges or are assholes or are dangerous or lie a lot...to which I reply, have you actually met housed people? I've known a number of liars, addicts, abusers, etc who all had their own apartments, and I've been a person with mental health challenges.)
posted by Frowner at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2023 [20 favorites]
And it's true that a bad person wouldn't do that. But when you, a housed person, are talking to or doing something for an unhoused person, you're just talking to or helping a person. It feels normal and natural. You'd help out a stranger at the bus stop or a fellow client at the hair salon, right? And you wouldn't think What An Extraordinarily Good Person I Am To Help My Fellow Commuter.
One of the intellectual ruses by which housed people other unhoused people is this assumption that it feels different to talk to unhoused people than housed people, but it doesn't. We pretend that unhoused people are categorically different than housed people because for some of us this excuses treating them like garbage and for others it staves off the fear that we could join them.
(And sure, easy to say that there are unhoused people who have, like, mental health challenges or are assholes or are dangerous or lie a lot...to which I reply, have you actually met housed people? I've known a number of liars, addicts, abusers, etc who all had their own apartments, and I've been a person with mental health challenges.)
posted by Frowner at 6:16 PM on March 19, 2023 [20 favorites]
I think if folks read the entire article, it will become evident that the journalist tries very hard to humanize everyone involved and does not focus on or blame any single factor in a situation that is by its nature so complex.
Much like the iraq war piece the other day, the title is much more reactionary than the article.
"A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis. As homelessness overwhelms downtown Phoenix, a small business wonders how long it can hang on."
The title frames everything from that perspective; it does the centering on the business that the article spends time trying to move away from.
posted by lalochezia at 6:31 PM on March 19, 2023 [7 favorites]
Whenever I read another article about homelessness, I am reminded of a comment I read on something like this that said that as long as the major asset of most homeowner-class folks is their residence, we (in the US, particularly, but I think anywhere with that mindset) will never solve homelessness.
This article made me think about it longer and harder than usual.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:36 PM on March 19, 2023 [13 favorites]
This article made me think about it longer and harder than usual.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:36 PM on March 19, 2023 [13 favorites]
What came across so strongly for me is that it doesn't matter if the restauranteurs or gallery owners are Very Good or Very Bad People individually, because the problems are too large to solve on a one-to-one basis. If there were three unhoused people who arrived in the neighborhood, one with mental health challenges, the housed people of the neighborhood might come together to find a solution within the community (as the owners of the restaurant attempted to do by hiring several unhoused people etc.) but when there are a thousand people, that's not a problem for individuals, but for society.
Whenever I read another article about homelessness, I am reminded of a comment I read on something like this that said that as long as the major asset of most homeowner-class folks is their residence, we (in the US, particularly, but I think anywhere with that mindset) will never solve homelessness.
Exactly. You can see that in the situation the restaurant owners are in as well. They have no savings for retirement-- it was all in the restaurant. When you need both social security and a paid off house to be secure in the last decades of your life (if you are lucky enough to reach old age) your social safety net is broken.
posted by gwint at 6:41 PM on March 19, 2023 [21 favorites]
Whenever I read another article about homelessness, I am reminded of a comment I read on something like this that said that as long as the major asset of most homeowner-class folks is their residence, we (in the US, particularly, but I think anywhere with that mindset) will never solve homelessness.
Exactly. You can see that in the situation the restaurant owners are in as well. They have no savings for retirement-- it was all in the restaurant. When you need both social security and a paid off house to be secure in the last decades of your life (if you are lucky enough to reach old age) your social safety net is broken.
posted by gwint at 6:41 PM on March 19, 2023 [21 favorites]
There's not been a social safety net for decades. It was found to be incompatible with that which the Americans increasingly mislabel as Capitalism, and hence was dismantled. The once-unmatched power of America could not have been built but by slave labor ; post-abolition, there was no way for the economic engine to continue turning without a replacement. If people had any alternative to working long hours at shit jobs managed by incompetents and sadists that they can't leave for fear of soon becoming homeless, then the ready availability of cheap labor that's replaced the slave labor of old would be threatened. And those in power can't abide that threat. It's demonstrably beneficial to them for there to be large swaths of the population living both in homelessness and at its precipice.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 6:59 PM on March 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by armoir from antproof case at 6:59 PM on March 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
Hahah! Paywalled! ...on point.
posted by metametamind at 7:19 PM on March 19, 2023
posted by metametamind at 7:19 PM on March 19, 2023
The one thing that this sort of article does is reinforce the resolve of suburbs to have literally zero homeless services, which means their residents and businesses are unburdened. A lot of perverse incentives..
posted by MattD at 7:31 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by MattD at 7:31 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
that's not a problem for individuals, but for society.
The US, by design and operational intent, does not have a society — it only has an assortment of individuals whose interests may or may not converge on any given topic.
posted by aramaic at 7:39 PM on March 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
The US, by design and operational intent, does not have a society — it only has an assortment of individuals whose interests may or may not converge on any given topic.
posted by aramaic at 7:39 PM on March 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
Think of all the unhomed we could home with the money we just gave Silicon Valley Bank...
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:44 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:44 PM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
The title frames everything from that perspective; it does the centering on the business that the article spends time trying to move away from.
When I saw the title, I decided not to read the article.
posted by praemunire at 9:04 PM on March 19, 2023
When I saw the title, I decided not to read the article.
posted by praemunire at 9:04 PM on March 19, 2023
That sounds like an absolute nightmare both for the homeless people and for the business owners.
The US desperately needs more social housing for people on low incomes;
and laws protecting tenants from being thrown out because the area is gentrifying and the landlord wants to increase the rent.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:13 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
The US desperately needs more social housing for people on low incomes;
and laws protecting tenants from being thrown out because the area is gentrifying and the landlord wants to increase the rent.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:13 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
easy to say that there are unhoused people who have, like, mental health challenges or are assholes or are dangerous or lie a lot...to which I reply, have you actually met housed people? I've known a number of liars, addicts, abusers, etc who all had their own apartments
So I want to preface this by saying I've done a lot of work with and for the unhoused. I have helped to defend blockades against the cops to prevent the clearing of encampments and provided medical services to the unhoused. And even so, while I definitely think you're not wrong, I also think there's an element of serious danger in large encampments that we need to acknowledge and be honest about. I feel comfortable doing that work because when I am doing that work I am doing that work with a team of other people who are also doing that work. When I am doing that work with a team of other people doing that work, I do not present as vulnerable. If I were alone, I would absolutely feel in danger.
People with less to lose are always more dangerous than people who have something to lose, because the threat of the worst likely consequences for their actions is generally not worse than the conditions of their daily lives. You're correct that they're not inherently better or worse people, but the risk assessment goes up. It's just like in the lethality assessment for intimate partner violence, the likelihood of femicide goes up if a male abuser is unemployed - not because unemployed people are less moral than employed people, but because it removes a social barrier to violence and creates another cause of anger.
It's like - addiction itself doesn't cause violence, inability to access the source of your addiction causes violence - so essentially, being around a poor addict is more dangerous for you than being around a rich addict, even though they are not morally worse and are often morally better and more understandable people.
Right now, the risk that is caused by having desperate, unhappy people all concentrated together in certain spots is largely borne by working class people or at best middle class people, largely because the cops don't come out as aggressively to defend those kinds of neighborhoods. You think they'd have the same attitude if this encampment was set up next to the million dollar homes? Absolutely not. But it's set up next to people with little real political power, and so the politicians don't really care, and so they don't either send their thugs or create actual solutions.
I think we are sometimes hesitant to admit that there are real dangers caused by un-self-regulated encampments, because to do so feels like giving in to the people who just want to bulldoze them, and feels like it will be used by those people. I am sometimes hesitant to do so myself; I am doing so on Metafilter but wouldn't do so, for example, on Facebook or in a city council meeting. But I think that we have got to figure out a way of doing so that still acknowledges the humanity of the people involved, because when we are not doing so, the only people doing so *are* the assholes, and their solutions are all brutality. And when we do so, we lose people. I am seeing more and more people move politically right because they feel the left doesn't have a solution or a good take on this problem. And that's a long term problem for us, in this situation as well as in others.
posted by corb at 5:16 AM on March 20, 2023 [38 favorites]
So I want to preface this by saying I've done a lot of work with and for the unhoused. I have helped to defend blockades against the cops to prevent the clearing of encampments and provided medical services to the unhoused. And even so, while I definitely think you're not wrong, I also think there's an element of serious danger in large encampments that we need to acknowledge and be honest about. I feel comfortable doing that work because when I am doing that work I am doing that work with a team of other people who are also doing that work. When I am doing that work with a team of other people doing that work, I do not present as vulnerable. If I were alone, I would absolutely feel in danger.
People with less to lose are always more dangerous than people who have something to lose, because the threat of the worst likely consequences for their actions is generally not worse than the conditions of their daily lives. You're correct that they're not inherently better or worse people, but the risk assessment goes up. It's just like in the lethality assessment for intimate partner violence, the likelihood of femicide goes up if a male abuser is unemployed - not because unemployed people are less moral than employed people, but because it removes a social barrier to violence and creates another cause of anger.
It's like - addiction itself doesn't cause violence, inability to access the source of your addiction causes violence - so essentially, being around a poor addict is more dangerous for you than being around a rich addict, even though they are not morally worse and are often morally better and more understandable people.
Right now, the risk that is caused by having desperate, unhappy people all concentrated together in certain spots is largely borne by working class people or at best middle class people, largely because the cops don't come out as aggressively to defend those kinds of neighborhoods. You think they'd have the same attitude if this encampment was set up next to the million dollar homes? Absolutely not. But it's set up next to people with little real political power, and so the politicians don't really care, and so they don't either send their thugs or create actual solutions.
I think we are sometimes hesitant to admit that there are real dangers caused by un-self-regulated encampments, because to do so feels like giving in to the people who just want to bulldoze them, and feels like it will be used by those people. I am sometimes hesitant to do so myself; I am doing so on Metafilter but wouldn't do so, for example, on Facebook or in a city council meeting. But I think that we have got to figure out a way of doing so that still acknowledges the humanity of the people involved, because when we are not doing so, the only people doing so *are* the assholes, and their solutions are all brutality. And when we do so, we lose people. I am seeing more and more people move politically right because they feel the left doesn't have a solution or a good take on this problem. And that's a long term problem for us, in this situation as well as in others.
posted by corb at 5:16 AM on March 20, 2023 [38 favorites]
I did not read TFA or do much more than scan the thread.
Wake me up when the NYT concludes "This problem is a problem mainly because there are too many billionaires, and if we taxed wealth until the Gini coefficient retreated to about where it was in 1965 a lot of this shit would become manageable."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:14 AM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Wake me up when the NYT concludes "This problem is a problem mainly because there are too many billionaires, and if we taxed wealth until the Gini coefficient retreated to about where it was in 1965 a lot of this shit would become manageable."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:14 AM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
I foolishly read the comments at the NYT and I have to say it's deeply depressing to realize how many people are happily endorsing Randall Flagg's policy for homelessness. It's also deeply frustrating how few people realize that having to live this way causes people - yes, including "good taxpaying citizens" like the commenter there or me - to develop serious mental illness and/or drug problems.
I was struck by the statement that Phoenix added 800 shelter beds (let's ignore the massive issues shelters have) while at this encampment alone, there are 1000+ desperate people.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 8:38 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was struck by the statement that Phoenix added 800 shelter beds (let's ignore the massive issues shelters have) while at this encampment alone, there are 1000+ desperate people.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 8:38 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: I did not read TFA or do much more than scan the thread.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:06 AM on March 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:06 AM on March 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
So I want to preface this by saying I've done a lot of work with and for the unhoused. I have helped to defend blockades against the cops to prevent the clearing of encampments and provided medical services to the unhoused. And even so, while I definitely think you're not wrong, I also think there's an element of serious danger in large encampments that we need to acknowledge and be honest about. I feel comfortable doing that work because when I am doing that work I am doing that work with a team of other people who are also doing that work. When I am doing that work with a team of other people doing that work, I do not present as vulnerable. If I were alone, I would absolutely feel in danger.
The point that I was trying to make is that it isn't unusual saintly sacrifice, as it is often depicted in the media, to do stuff with or for unhoused people. The media treats working with or for homeless people like it's working for a different species and inherently more unsafe than dealing with housed people.
But this is because the media also minimizes regular danger - children are routinely sexually or physically abused by family members, for instance, but mainstream media doesn't depict the family as a site of danger. I would feel extremely, extremely unsafe as a sole transmasculine person wandering around the bar district downtown, and indeed I know friends who have been bashed - but we don't treat frat boys and drunk businessmen as a dangerous other species. I look at my life and I've blithely done a lot of dangerous things without even thinking about it because dangerous people are Others, not nice middle class people.
There are a lot of dangerous places.
The danger in encampments doesn't stem from the beastliness of unhoused people (ameliorated by the saintliness of people who work with them). It stems from, as you point out, the structure of encampment life that allows people (often not unhoused! Often drug dealers and pimps and petty criminals who target the encampment!) to prey on vulnerable unhoused people.
What I'm trying to say is that the media depicts interactions between housed and unhoused people as interactions between a degraded group and a heroic or holy fool class of do-gooders, when that is not how it is at all.
~~
As to the overall safety of encampments, I think that it's so various that generalizing is difficult, with some bias toward very large encampments being worse. Around here at least, one encampment might be really safe and internally organized and another might be chaotic and violent, or an encampment might be a pretty unsafe place for residents but not really unsafe for people coming in. There are a lot of very small groups camping out, too.
Someone doesn't have to be mentally well or sober or even a nice person to interact with you as an equal, too. There is a perception that unhoused people aren't, morally and civically, the equals of housed people. Treating someone as an equal doesn't mean that you think they're a safe person or that you do whatever they ask - it's more like being normal with people, responding the way you do to others rather than like you're a cop/social worker/Very Great Benefactor.
posted by Frowner at 9:34 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
The point that I was trying to make is that it isn't unusual saintly sacrifice, as it is often depicted in the media, to do stuff with or for unhoused people. The media treats working with or for homeless people like it's working for a different species and inherently more unsafe than dealing with housed people.
But this is because the media also minimizes regular danger - children are routinely sexually or physically abused by family members, for instance, but mainstream media doesn't depict the family as a site of danger. I would feel extremely, extremely unsafe as a sole transmasculine person wandering around the bar district downtown, and indeed I know friends who have been bashed - but we don't treat frat boys and drunk businessmen as a dangerous other species. I look at my life and I've blithely done a lot of dangerous things without even thinking about it because dangerous people are Others, not nice middle class people.
There are a lot of dangerous places.
The danger in encampments doesn't stem from the beastliness of unhoused people (ameliorated by the saintliness of people who work with them). It stems from, as you point out, the structure of encampment life that allows people (often not unhoused! Often drug dealers and pimps and petty criminals who target the encampment!) to prey on vulnerable unhoused people.
What I'm trying to say is that the media depicts interactions between housed and unhoused people as interactions between a degraded group and a heroic or holy fool class of do-gooders, when that is not how it is at all.
~~
As to the overall safety of encampments, I think that it's so various that generalizing is difficult, with some bias toward very large encampments being worse. Around here at least, one encampment might be really safe and internally organized and another might be chaotic and violent, or an encampment might be a pretty unsafe place for residents but not really unsafe for people coming in. There are a lot of very small groups camping out, too.
Someone doesn't have to be mentally well or sober or even a nice person to interact with you as an equal, too. There is a perception that unhoused people aren't, morally and civically, the equals of housed people. Treating someone as an equal doesn't mean that you think they're a safe person or that you do whatever they ask - it's more like being normal with people, responding the way you do to others rather than like you're a cop/social worker/Very Great Benefactor.
posted by Frowner at 9:34 AM on March 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
As to the overall safety of encampments, I think that it's so various that generalizing is difficult, with some bias toward very large encampments being worse. Around here at least, one encampment might be really safe and internally organized and another might be chaotic and violent, or an encampment might be a pretty unsafe place for residents but not really unsafe for people coming in.
Yeah, I think - and this is also maybe my experience with defending encampments against teardowns talking - that my experience is that paradoxically, the safer places get from police sweeps, and specifically, the more able they are to build semi-permanent structures, the safer and more able to internally organize (because of less turnover) the camp tends to be. When you can make a medical space, and people know they can reliably come there for treatment, other people will value and protect that space so it's not vulnerable. Less vulnerable spaces mean less people looking to prey on vulnerability. Same with a number of other types of specialized communal spaces. When people can build sanitary facilities, that hugely improves issues. When people can build shelters that reliably protect against the elements, they can get good rest and handle the day better. When they can build spaces that protect their things, they feel more secure. But this is also, in my experience, the things that cities hate the most and will work the hardest to destroy, because it belies the idea that they like to put out, which is that encampments are temporary, and that the problem of houselessness is temporary and that people are only temporarily houseless.
Honestly, and I know this is a super unpopular opinion, but I'm of the mind that if there's empty green space and people are claiming it, they should be allowed to live on it and improve it to make it habitable if the city isn't housing them. How in the world is it not better for people to dig safe field sanitation facilities than to just have no place to use the bathroom? How is it not better for people to build lean-tos than to be huddling in shitty tents?
posted by corb at 10:21 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I think - and this is also maybe my experience with defending encampments against teardowns talking - that my experience is that paradoxically, the safer places get from police sweeps, and specifically, the more able they are to build semi-permanent structures, the safer and more able to internally organize (because of less turnover) the camp tends to be. When you can make a medical space, and people know they can reliably come there for treatment, other people will value and protect that space so it's not vulnerable. Less vulnerable spaces mean less people looking to prey on vulnerability. Same with a number of other types of specialized communal spaces. When people can build sanitary facilities, that hugely improves issues. When people can build shelters that reliably protect against the elements, they can get good rest and handle the day better. When they can build spaces that protect their things, they feel more secure. But this is also, in my experience, the things that cities hate the most and will work the hardest to destroy, because it belies the idea that they like to put out, which is that encampments are temporary, and that the problem of houselessness is temporary and that people are only temporarily houseless.
Honestly, and I know this is a super unpopular opinion, but I'm of the mind that if there's empty green space and people are claiming it, they should be allowed to live on it and improve it to make it habitable if the city isn't housing them. How in the world is it not better for people to dig safe field sanitation facilities than to just have no place to use the bathroom? How is it not better for people to build lean-tos than to be huddling in shitty tents?
posted by corb at 10:21 AM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: I did not read TFA
Notice that I did not comment on the article itself, only on how the title framed it, which one can do by, well, reading the title, as I did in the paper before deciding to pass it up.
posted by praemunire at 11:50 AM on March 20, 2023
Notice that I did not comment on the article itself, only on how the title framed it, which one can do by, well, reading the title, as I did in the paper before deciding to pass it up.
posted by praemunire at 11:50 AM on March 20, 2023
The danger in encampments doesn't stem from the beastliness of unhoused people
I found Tracy Kidder's recent Rough Sleepers frustrating because it stuck so resolutely to the perspective of the housed people providing the care. It's a deeply old-fashioned liberal book in that sense, both meaning and doing well, but always with certain limitations. Nonetheless, reading a book like that reinforces my own experience that the long-term unhoused population has a significant concentration of very ill and/or very needy people, now traumatized and stressed and stigmatized or even criminalized on top of their other problems. These people aren't "beastly" at all, but they can be very challenging to interact with.
An encampment is inherently a crime scene, because it represents such a flagrant failure on our part to take care of people's basic human needs. "Cleanups" are just society's way of destroying the evidence. But I don't think we can say that the chief problem with encampments is that they attract outside predators, though they certainly do. They attract people who don't have a problem taking a shit in public. They attract people who are so out of it they don't even notice they've left their used sharps lying around. They attract people who will do anything to secure their next fix. They attract people who think that mysterious government forces are surrounding them with secret agents so they can be whisked away for horrible experiments and are constantly evaluating everyone around them for signs of being suspicious. They attract people who are neither seriously mentally ill nor addicted, but who can think of no other way to meet their basic needs except through petty crime. They attract people who no longer give a fuck about a world that demonstrably hasn't given a fuck about them. That very few of these people are that way by choice, that they represent only a certain percentage of the unhoused, and that the encampment is just the least bad of a horrible menu of options for them, does not make it easier for the people in the vicinity.
I feel the urge to write a good five more paragraphs on this because anything less is insufficiently nuanced. I just think it's not helpful to argue that encampments don't tend to lower quality of life around them, because that doesn't line up with the experience even of those who aren't simply "eww, are you poor? begone from my sight!!!" I understand where the impulse is coming from, because it feels like any admission that, yeah, it's not great having a ninety-year-old neighborhood fixture get their head smashed in for no reason by a couple unhoused guys living in the park (recent local event) leads so readily to annihilationist rhetoric, and very often from people who will never see an unhoused person in their neighborhood (really enjoyed the jackass comments from people who would never set foot in "war-torn" NYC on the press coverage of that local event). Also there will never be any shortage of people on the other side to tell you how bad they are, and why should we do their work for them? But the difficulties created by encampments should be all the more reason to try to find real solutions. It's just so much easier and simpler for housed people to turn on the unhoused than on the society that lets them become so that they become very difficult to talk about.
posted by praemunire at 12:39 PM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I found Tracy Kidder's recent Rough Sleepers frustrating because it stuck so resolutely to the perspective of the housed people providing the care. It's a deeply old-fashioned liberal book in that sense, both meaning and doing well, but always with certain limitations. Nonetheless, reading a book like that reinforces my own experience that the long-term unhoused population has a significant concentration of very ill and/or very needy people, now traumatized and stressed and stigmatized or even criminalized on top of their other problems. These people aren't "beastly" at all, but they can be very challenging to interact with.
An encampment is inherently a crime scene, because it represents such a flagrant failure on our part to take care of people's basic human needs. "Cleanups" are just society's way of destroying the evidence. But I don't think we can say that the chief problem with encampments is that they attract outside predators, though they certainly do. They attract people who don't have a problem taking a shit in public. They attract people who are so out of it they don't even notice they've left their used sharps lying around. They attract people who will do anything to secure their next fix. They attract people who think that mysterious government forces are surrounding them with secret agents so they can be whisked away for horrible experiments and are constantly evaluating everyone around them for signs of being suspicious. They attract people who are neither seriously mentally ill nor addicted, but who can think of no other way to meet their basic needs except through petty crime. They attract people who no longer give a fuck about a world that demonstrably hasn't given a fuck about them. That very few of these people are that way by choice, that they represent only a certain percentage of the unhoused, and that the encampment is just the least bad of a horrible menu of options for them, does not make it easier for the people in the vicinity.
I feel the urge to write a good five more paragraphs on this because anything less is insufficiently nuanced. I just think it's not helpful to argue that encampments don't tend to lower quality of life around them, because that doesn't line up with the experience even of those who aren't simply "eww, are you poor? begone from my sight!!!" I understand where the impulse is coming from, because it feels like any admission that, yeah, it's not great having a ninety-year-old neighborhood fixture get their head smashed in for no reason by a couple unhoused guys living in the park (recent local event) leads so readily to annihilationist rhetoric, and very often from people who will never see an unhoused person in their neighborhood (really enjoyed the jackass comments from people who would never set foot in "war-torn" NYC on the press coverage of that local event). Also there will never be any shortage of people on the other side to tell you how bad they are, and why should we do their work for them? But the difficulties created by encampments should be all the more reason to try to find real solutions. It's just so much easier and simpler for housed people to turn on the unhoused than on the society that lets them become so that they become very difficult to talk about.
posted by praemunire at 12:39 PM on March 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
1. Affordable, accessible, Owner-Occupied Housing. Lots of it.
2. Affordable, accessible, health care for all. Of course health care includes, physical , mental, dental, addiction. It's health care.
3. Decent wages. Decent benefits. Double the minimum wage, at the very least. Index it to COL, inflation, whatever they use for congressional benefits & Soc. Sec. The left has been seduced away from thinking the minimum wage matters, but it does.
4. Disability benefits are obscenely low. You can work a little but not much, so it's a ticket to poverty.
5. Some states and cities are trying hard. But if a town has okay programs and benefits, it is immediately swamped with desperate people from the rest of the state/ country. This is a problem that requires federal money, ideally from taxing obscenely wealthy property, 2nd, 3rd, etc., homes, and other forms of wealth.
There are people with lifelong mental illness, addiction, etc., who are difficult to house and care for. But for most people who are without a place to live, a decent wage/benefits, health care, and an affordable apartment or house would absolutely solve so many problems.
The rich have tons of influence; they use it to affect laws for their benefit, and they use it to insulate themselves from the pain caused when wealth is continually siphoned from everybody to the wealthy, squeezing more and more people dry every year. The poor create certain problems for their communities, while the wealthy create and profit from them, from us, at every turn, and the wealthy generate far more pollution and carbon than the poor.
NYT will always side with the wealthy. always. The article does a better job of seeing the big picture than usual.
posted by theora55 at 1:23 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
2. Affordable, accessible, health care for all. Of course health care includes, physical , mental, dental, addiction. It's health care.
3. Decent wages. Decent benefits. Double the minimum wage, at the very least. Index it to COL, inflation, whatever they use for congressional benefits & Soc. Sec. The left has been seduced away from thinking the minimum wage matters, but it does.
4. Disability benefits are obscenely low. You can work a little but not much, so it's a ticket to poverty.
5. Some states and cities are trying hard. But if a town has okay programs and benefits, it is immediately swamped with desperate people from the rest of the state/ country. This is a problem that requires federal money, ideally from taxing obscenely wealthy property, 2nd, 3rd, etc., homes, and other forms of wealth.
There are people with lifelong mental illness, addiction, etc., who are difficult to house and care for. But for most people who are without a place to live, a decent wage/benefits, health care, and an affordable apartment or house would absolutely solve so many problems.
The rich have tons of influence; they use it to affect laws for their benefit, and they use it to insulate themselves from the pain caused when wealth is continually siphoned from everybody to the wealthy, squeezing more and more people dry every year. The poor create certain problems for their communities, while the wealthy create and profit from them, from us, at every turn, and the wealthy generate far more pollution and carbon than the poor.
NYT will always side with the wealthy. always. The article does a better job of seeing the big picture than usual.
posted by theora55 at 1:23 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Who will the middle class ally themselves with, though?
posted by Selena777 at 1:31 PM on March 20, 2023
posted by Selena777 at 1:31 PM on March 20, 2023
As a housed person living adjacent to an encampment-type situation, it feels like a double-bind. When the topic comes up, I avoid talking about how this has affected my use of public space so as not to stoke anti-unhoused sentiments. I don't want anyone's belongings bulldozed. I want everyone to be able to use public spaces. I understand that unhoused people are pushed around and they need to exist somewhere.
But I also don't want the entire unhoused population of the city living in my neighborhood after being pushed out of other neighborhoods-- like, of course I don't! By framing it as a NIMBY issue or whatever I feel like we're really ignoring the way that our collective lack of action on this issue is pitting middle-class and working-class people against each other and against unhoused people. No one who is rich enough to impact homelessness in any real way has to deal with an encampment on their doorstep.
posted by geegollygosh at 2:58 PM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
But I also don't want the entire unhoused population of the city living in my neighborhood after being pushed out of other neighborhoods-- like, of course I don't! By framing it as a NIMBY issue or whatever I feel like we're really ignoring the way that our collective lack of action on this issue is pitting middle-class and working-class people against each other and against unhoused people. No one who is rich enough to impact homelessness in any real way has to deal with an encampment on their doorstep.
posted by geegollygosh at 2:58 PM on March 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
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I also liked how direct the article was about how recent this shift in how homelessness is experienced is:
But the homeless population in Phoenix continued to grow by hundreds each year, even as the city’s supply of shelter beds remained relatively flat, and a federal court ruling in 2018 required places with no shelter capacity to allow some camping in public spaces. The city’s average rent rose by more than 80 percent during the pandemic. A wave of evictions drove more people from their homes, until for the first time ever more than half of Phoenix’s homeless population was finding refuge not in traditional places, like shelters or temporary apartments, but in cars or tents.
I recently was living within a few hundred yards a sizable encampment and saw a lot of the same things described here. The people there were in a terrible position, but at the same time allowing that to occur was probably the most serious dereliction of responsibility by the (local, state, etc.) government I have ever directly seen. There was a collective shrug by authority, leaving all the consequences to be carried by local residents, business owners, and of course the homeless population themselves.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:15 PM on March 19, 2023 [12 favorites]