So along about 4:30 yesterday, along came a message from the local homeowner’s club announcing that a pow-wow was to be held at a church in a different North Central neighborhood on the subject of the rapidly growing transient problem — at 7:00 p.m.!
Jeez.
So I skipped rehearsing the dog & pony show I was supposed to give this morning in order to go to that.
Turned out to be an interesting meeting and one well worth sitting through. It’s too bad they didn’t get the message out soon enough — quite a few people showed up, but a LOT more would have, had they known about it in time.
The “homeless” situation has exploded, especially in this part of town. The county, state, city, and a homeless rescue mission have developed ways to turn at least some people around, and they’ve now got enough understanding to distinguish between people who are down on their luck and open to rehabilitation, and chronic street dwellers and drug addicts who are by and large impervious to treatment efforts. They’re also figuring out that a certain set of homeless people will need permanent welfare housing, period — and again, they seem to be developing the insight to recognize who will never be able to care for themselves and who might be helped back onto their feet
Two things they admitted that I’ve never heard a politico or bureaucrat fess up to:
1. The endlessly ballyhooed light rail has hugely exacerbated the problem in our neighborhood; and
2. In our part of the city, it’s not so much a “homeless” issue as a “drug addict” issue.
The addicts ride the light rail to get into the air conditioning. They ride it to the end of the line, which is Dunlap, where they have to get off. From there, they disperse into the surrounding neighborhood.
One of the audience members remarked that you can’t use the fancy new QT the city’s so proud of, across the street from the new “station” because when you get out of your car to pump gas you’re accosted by panhandlers, and another person said that the Fletcher Tire guy told him he has to chase off around 15 loiterers every morning to move cars into his shop for servicing.
They’re going to build low-income housing a couple blocks west of Conduit of Blight Boulevard — fortunately, it will be for the elderly, but one wonders whether that’s just the foot in the door.
Meanwhile, someone brought up the (endlessly sore) fact that no one alerted the neighborhoods before a private subcontractor inserted the methadone clinic at the same locale. This was greeted with guilty silence — obviously that oversight was deliberate.
However, they did openly admit that the meth clinic does draw addicts into the neighborhood.
A couple of people then reported that businesses around there have been under siege from addicts who go there to pick up their meds and then don’t leave. They hang around the area for the rest of the day, particularly at the Circle K across the street. The Circle K manager told one woman that the employees were afraid to go out to gather the garbage and dump it out, because they had been stabbed by needles.
The authorities sounded genuinely surprised by this. One of them said they hadn’t heard about it and that they would contact the neighboring businesses to learn more.
Overall the meeting was pretty interesting. They are trying to do something about the homeless issue, but the City of Phoenix apparently has the worst homeless/drug addict problem in the state. The outlying suburbs don’t have such a large problem with it — apparently they actively send their bums to us. 😮
I reported to WonderAccountant, who was unable to go because she’s still wrestling with clients’ business tax returns.
Said she:
Some cities like Gilbert have done away with the Salvation Army giving utility subsidies to residents in their cities. They just don’t allow it. So even though they are a private charity, they can’t help people in that town. I’m not a fan of Gilbert. It may be a nice place to live, but I think that there is an element of unkindness in that sort of policy. Even though you don’t really want “those people” in our neighborhoods, we cannot permanently ignore the fact that they are part of our society, the least among us, if you will.
Nice! Let’s just legislate poor folks out of existence..
Probably a bunch of Trump voters. We’ll build a fence between us and the poor people, and make the drug pushers pay for it!
The Salvation Army guy was really interesting, because he’d been living on the streets himself, after becoming addicted to an opioid prescribed for an athletic injury. He stated the obvious: that like any group of people, the “homeless” are not homogeneous. He felt they fall into three groups, broadly speaking:
• Those who desperately don’t want to be on the streets but are stuck because once you have no place to live, wash up, and call “your address,” it’s almost impossible to get a job.
• Those who are too ill — mentally or physically — to care for themselves and have no one who will take them in.
• And those who truly are criminal, mostly drug addicts who support their habit with petty theft and burglary.
Their most successful program has been an outreach to the first group; they’ve done pretty well with strategies to get jobs and temporary housing for people who are seriously down on their luck. For those who can’t care for themselves, the city, county, and state have finally (I say…don’t know how recent this revelation is…) recognized that permanent housing must be provided. And they’re working on building exactly that: facilities to house people who would otherwise be on the street because they simply can’t do anything to earn enough to keep a roof over their heads. As for the rest: “please call the police.”
I have no idea how this view of the problem matches up to reality. But it surely sounds reasonable. And at least somebody is trying to do something.
The costs, though, defy belief. One homeless soul costs the relief services and taxpayers $40,000 a year. The city had to shut down a bare-bones shelter because operating costs were running in the millions of dollars, and they flat ran out of cash.
Gilbert, eh? So which is it? Gilbert, or a new German shepherd?
I’ve heard SLC has a housing program where they just house as many folks as they can (including the temproary homeless, mentally ill, those with addiction, etc) and they’ve determined doing so would be cheaper than running facilities for the homeless, jailing for vagrancy, and their medical care which is worse when out on the street all the time.
I’m glad to live in a city where most of our homeless are sheltered (98%ish). Much more humane than where I used to live, where they bussed folks out to San Francisco rather than build facilities in the area.
SLC: Salt Lake City? I dunno… This doesn’t look so great: http://www.good4utah.com/news/local-wasatch-front-/salt-lake-city-launches-war-on-homeless-problems
Nor does this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/27/utah-homeless-shelters-housing-first
It’s an intractable problem. We have this upbeat NPR report: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how
…but then six months later this: http://fox13now.com/2016/06/22/advocates-for-the-homeless-say-slcs-rio-grande-district-more-unsafe-than-its-ever-been/ and even more disturbingly, this: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865653081/Utahs-homeless-problem-still-rages.html?pg=all
It’s strange….I’m struck by the homeless and their plight. More specifically….how did they get in the position of being homeless. Was it one BIG mistake or a series of missteps….Where is their family….children….what job/skill did they have before they were homeless? Why them…Why not me?
In another life not so long ago I was an outside sales rep and from time to time got to “inter-act” with the homeless. I used to sit and chat with one particular homeless guy, a “Mr. Johnson”, on a bench right in front of the Baltimore Sun Offices. He was unique and pretty smart…street smart that is. I had the opportunity to sit and chat with him and he was very open about what happened to his life….In a word “alcohol”. He freely admitted he drank too much and wasn’t a good husband. And one day his DW had enough and picked up the kids and left. She was done with him and best I can tell so were the kids. The crazy thing was he could remember the address where they lived and the date his wife left him. As our “friendship” developed it seemed like such a waste to me. It was clear this guy wasn’t stupid and things could have been different. He was always respectful and I was always respectful of him. And we shared many a conversation and many a hot dog on that bench….
The truly sad thing IMHO…was the Sun was showing signs at the time of “just going thru the motions” and their stories were basically off the wire service. BUT if they just would have walked out their front door and let Mr. Johnson tell his story….their publication could have been unique once more with a local human interest story…From time to time I wonder what ever happened to Mr. Johnson….
Most of them are on the street because of drug addictions. People who watch them gathering around the train terminal and the convenience store parking lots say you can see the pushers preying on them, if you know what to look for. It’s pretty sad.
But…sad or not, a woman alone still feels unsafe. What will a person who’s desperate for a fix or a drink or something to eat do if he catches you in a unguarded moment?
Consider what Mr. Johnson was telling you: he must have sunk to such a state that no one in his life was willing to have him around. That’s what he’s saying: she left, he had no friends or relatives who would take him in or put up with him…. He must have been out of work or close to it when she left, which suggests he was already pretty far gone in alcoholism. A woman doesn’t pick up the kids and run away for nothing…
It is sad. I hope he managed to turn his life around…you never know. Some people do.
Until we’re willing, as a society, to regard all addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling, whatnot) as _sickness_ rather than as a weakness of will, we’ll have people living on the streets. Part of the problem is a function of our inability to believe that people can’t just decide to buck up and make themselves “well,” and part of it is the utter failure of mental health care in this country.
Here’s the crazy thing…During one of our conversations he shared that being homeless MAY have saved his life. His thought was because he couldn’t afford the booze…he quit drinking. Said he needed to concentrate on “surviving and you need your wits about you to do that”…I know it sounds convoluted and he may have had a hint of mental illness BUT he recognized he needed to change and he did. He was not your ordinary beggar and I saw him decline money many times. I would stop and get a couple of hot dogs….sit on the bench and ask him to” help me out” as I had bought too much food and could he eat the other hot dog. He resisted a bit BUT I guess realized I was genuine and there was no expectations. He knew where to get food….where to sleep…where to stay warm in Winter…And hated litter… He would “police” in front of the building and put collected trash in the can…It was pretty amazing really. I asked if he needed help and why he didn’t go to a shelter many times….His answer was always the same ….” I don’t really need any help and the shelters had too many restrictions” on what he could bring with him in the way of possesions. He had a cart that he had…”acquired”…that held all his stuff. He may have been poor but he was his own man….
@ Jestjack: “His own man”: There’s something to be said for that, isn’t there?
You know, if you’re good at camping and reasonably resourceful, and you actually aren’t a drunk or a drug addict, in its way living in the rough could have its appeals. No bills to pay. No car to have to take care of. No pool to have to clean (hmmm…..). No floors to have to vacuum, no bathroom to scrub, no windows to polish, no furniture to dust, no idiot boss to keep happy…. Sounds better the more you think about it, doesn’t it?
We had a good time and a number of interesting adventures. We met a lot of interesting people. In fact, if either of us had been inclined, we could have made money off the experience by freelancing stories about it — SDXB had just come off a years-long gig as editor of what was then a Scripps-Howard regional business weekly, and I was still actively writing for local and regional rags. A book about it, given the right spin, would undoubtedly have sold.
SDXB and I lived off the land, more or less, for three months — backpacking and hitchhiking through the back country of Alaska and Canada. Now I will say: we _did_ have enough money that once when it rained for three days we could rent a motel room, and we had enough to buy a bus ticket to ride across the plains. But otherwise… Let me put it this way: including the plane tickets and the ferry ticket up to Dawson, I spent less than $1,000 during the entire three months. Significantly less. And we did see a fair chunk of the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Plains.
Think about that. If you weren’t flying planes, it would cost you less than that. Less than $4,000 a year to live?
Hmmmmm…. Have we missed the boat…again?
A friend of mine used to do outreach work through a church-based charity, can’t remember the name of it. She told one story about how a group of homeless people literally surrounded them and took all of the blue jeans they were giving away. She said jeans are essential for people who live on the streets. She also said that some of the charity workers, male and female, got manhandled and “felt up” while being overrun by the people they were trying to help! Made me really not want to get involved with the cause.
Also, I’ve had almost as many panhandlers approach me inside stores as outside them in the parking lots. I’ve finally begun telling them, “Sorry, I don’t carry cash any more since I was robbed.” So far, that’s gotten rid of them pretty quick.
I’m officially a member of the working poor and just don’t have anything to give these days. I just deposited a check from my 83-year-old dad so I can pay for textbooks this semester. I used to feel sorry for myself because I was lower middle class. Shoot, I can’t WAIT to be lower middle class again! ;o)
Yup. A lot of street people are that way because they’re…not very nice. Some are harmless, some are not.
Did I ever tell the story here about the time one of Dear X’s law partners was tooling home from a grocery trip — this was when we were still very young, in our late 20s or early 30s — and he spotted a panhandler standing on the corner of two major thoroughfares holding a “Will Work for Food” sign. Partner didn’t have any money with him, but he felt sorry for the dude, so when he stopped for the signal he handed a bag of food out the window.
When he glanced into the mirror as he drove away on the green, he saw the guy throwing whole bag of groceries in the gutter.
I haven’t had anybody approach me inside a store — you can bet I’d go straight to the manager if that happened. However, I avoid shopping in the stores around here, because of the number of pests in the parking lots. Like a lot of the neighbors, I drive across town to shop for food and sundries.
LOL! “Since I was robbed”: Nice extra filippe! I tell them that I don’t carry cash — which happens to be true. That usually bounces them, though occasionally one will look like he’s thinking “I’ll bet the bitch will cave if I keep at her.” Only once, a guy went off on me when I told him I didn’t have cash. He started screaming at me. When I got into the Dog Chariot and locked the doors, he parked his wheelchair behind the car and sat there yelling. I couldn’t get my car out until I leaned on the horn, which caused him to give up.
Needless to say, I’ve never been back to that store. I also park my car pointed out now, the easier to make a quick getaway.
🙂 “Starving student” is a slightly different classification from “working poor.” True, you’re working hard and true, you’re poor. But you have a fair chance of movin’ on up in a finite time.