By Randy Walburger Santa Monica
The July 4 issue had some strange ideas about “the homeless” problem that I’d like to address. Bill Bauer (SMDP, July 4, page 4) in his never-ending negative gripe column about “vagrants,” correctly points out that spending an additional $370,000 on the homeless isn’t going to do “bupkes” to solve the problem. That’s because, if as he correctly states, $200,000 is for a homeless czar and the remaining $170,000 is for staffing. What is left over for direct aid to the homeless? Zero.
Since they can’t house themselves, homeless people are the visible manifestation of poverty itself. Homelessness is not separate from the growing poverty we see in general today, so it’s useless to look for solutions to homelessness without addressing the larger problem of jobs, wages, medical care, housing and the failure of the federal government to address illegal immigration, which affect low-wage workers. Duh.
You cannot provide permanent housing to people who do not work sufficient to house all the homeless as long as the working poor can barely afford housing. Think about it for just a second. If you could, who would struggle in low-paying jobs to just barely house themselves and their families?
What is needed to reduce homelessness in this country is a living wage, national health care, affordable housing everywhere — not just out in Lancaster — and immigration control everywhere. Again, homelessness is not separate from a growing poverty in general.
Although well intended, Milton Billingsly (SMDP, July 4, page 4) trivializes the reality of homelessness by quoting the Beatles lyrics, “All you need is love.” Seeing an old woman lying in the alley at night, he states that he shows his “love” by calling the police to see if they have any suggestions. This is about as realistic as calling a butcher to help a heart attack victim. The police’s job is to cite the homeless for “lying in an alley.” After you leave the scene “Mr. Do-gooder,” that cop will issue that poor old woman a citation. That’s their job. You walk away with your sense of morality intact feeling as though you care, but in reality that person gets the opposite of care, they get punished for loitering.
As far as Carole Orlin’s commentary (SMDP, July 4, page 5) about how her rich visiting friends from back east “became quite adept at stepping over bodies (of homeless people),” it reminds me of how easy it has been for millions of people to “step over” and ignore the genocide of millions of other people. These human beings are just “vagrants” to you and so many other cold-hearted people in this country, state, county and city. Just step over them and head up to your kind of classy restaurant on Montana Avenue and feel disgust at how these vagrants soil your world. You ought to send your rich friend an apology letter that they had to endure such discomfort. I feel sorry for you, literally, and all the other cold-hearted homeless-haters who would see people as so much trash that they should somehow be gone. You, who have never spent time with homeless people to know that they are as human as you, are blinded by your ignorance and mean heart.
There is an alternative to the streets for many of our homeless. S.H.E.L.T.E.R. (Supporting Homeless Existence Leading To Enabled Recovery) is an organization with a concept that actually can do something for the homeless right now. S.H.E.L.T.E.R can’t stop poverty, but it can provide private, secure sleep-ins to the vast majority of people now sleeping in the alleys Mr. Billingsly writes about. S.H.E.L.T.E.R can also provide toilets, storage and showers for those now on the streets. S.H.E.L.T.E.R can get homeless people out of the retail, recreational and housed districts at night and spread them evenly throughout the county. S.H.E.L.T.E.R neighborhoods can be located on county-owned land, such as unused public works land and other land such as vacant industrial buildings and parking lots where the owner can receive county property tax discounts and federal tax credits for allowing this use. Daytime drop-in facilities can be created to facilitate people’s needs such as eating, showering, washing clothes, getting job information, medical diagnoses, psychological care, legal and a postal location so that they can have an address of record. The idea here is not to punish homeless people or neglect homeless people, but to squarely meet the needs of these people now.
The S.H.E.L.T.E.R concept provides real human service and resolves the housed community’s sense of being infringed upon in every district of their city. S.H.E.L.T.E.R gives the community a positive way to pad the abyss of homelessness and reduce its guilt over this shameful reality that exists today. S.H.E.L.T.E.R is a serious attempt at realistically dealing with this growing problem instead of the lame, pseudo and hypocritical blather we hear today.
Go to www.s-h-e-l-t-e-r.org and support what can be a realistic way to help the homeless and help solve your personal crisis of ignorance, repugnance and clue-lessness regarding homelessness.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 8, 2005. Read the original PDF.