By Randy Walburger Santa Monica
In Mark Shepherd’s letter in the Sept. 1 issue he emphatically complains about, and is rightly disgusted with the intolerable homeless situation. He seems only to view the homeless problem as “our vagrancy crisis.” Many people in society basically seem willing to allow people to live in filth and suffering and simply blame the victim. This indifference to their needs is cruel, allowing us housed people to watch as people actually decay and even die right in front of us and our family’s faces everyday. In other words, most people turn away from the poor’s suffering in fear and loathing. They complain about how rude and inconsiderate the homeless are, peeing in public even if there is no toilet or privacy for them! Homelessness is the city’s number one problem as our citizen surveys indicate, but homelessness is a catastrophe to the homeless themselves. Let me repeat what I just said. Homelessness is a disgusting problem for housed society but it’s a catastrophe for the poor on the street without a pot to piss in or a bed to sleep on! By hating them and fearing them you are trapping them! Hate and fear is not a solution. Instead of trying to provide the basics of a toilet, a bed, a storage box or a shower society has allowed these people to live as illegal lepers to be shunned, hated, criminalized and finally jailed!
It’s very easy to be offended by some drunk, who has a home, pees in public, but when you have no home or shelter available then what do you expect? It’s time society address this fear and loathing with realistic responses. It’s time that LA County and all its cities address these basic needs for as many homeless as possible now!
What is immediately needed are camping with caseworker management programs that tie these basic services in with outreach. Camping with caseworker management simply means that the person is working with a caseworker to get their individual problems and needs met. There are small 500 square foot chunks of urban wilderness throughout the County. These sites could provide private sleeping modules, the toilet, the shower and the storage basics that would go a long way to helping to reduce their suffering but also reduce your fear and disgust at public squalor.
The Santa Monica Daily Press’s columnist Bill Bauer whips up vicious unsubstantiated rumors about bus loads of more homeless coming to Santa Monica. The reaction is to stir up fear and implies that stepping up police enforcement is the only way to deal with these poor and in many cases severely mentally ill humane beings. Laws against being poor in public are oxymoron’s that fall upon the weak. In my opinion columnists who publicly vilify the helpless poor and newspapers that allow these columnists to print unfounded rumors only create more ignorant fear, which results in ratcheting up the suffering of those on the street. The fact is that Santa Monaca’s homeless population has remained at about 2% of the Counties homeless for over ten years! But let’s face it, as wages fall respective to prices, as rent outstrips more and more people’s ability to pay, you are going to see more and more dispossessed people living in public! If society wants to continue to turn away from their needs it must accept the blame for allowing their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, uncles etc. to live and die in their filth on the street!
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 7, 2007. Read the original PDF.