Juan says:

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment. I appreciate your thoughtful response and I feel that I understand your position on this issue better as a result. I will only respond to your comment because I believe you’ve made a good-faith effort to understand my position and to convey your message as well. I don’t plan on commenting again, but I will read your response. Sorry for the wall of text.

I’d like to begin by stating that I work in indigent defense, and am pretty familiar with what my county and the county I work in offer for social services. I’m not just blowing smoke. Any indigent “suspect” who is in the criminal justice system is not treated as innocent until proven guilty. It’s quite the opposite. Many are treated as criminals merely for being accused of a crime, and yet we are supposed to be Constitutionally protected from this kind of treatment. The vast majority of my clients (~70%) are homeless or on the verge of homelessness. Many become homeless as a result of even temporary incarceration because of the burden put on them by merely being accused of a crime. Many lose their jobs. Many pay thousands of dollars they don’t have to the system regardless of innocence or guilt through fines, fees, court-ordered classes, bail, etc. It’s pretty sad to see. And I wont act as if some of these clients are angels, but the majority of them are just regular folks who are just trying to work and live their lives like any one of us.

I mention all of this because most people just don’t know what I’ve seen on the job and have no way of knowing without wading into those waters and trying to understand people without judgment. And I’m not innocent either. I make snap judgments too, but I try to keep them in check before turning my judgments into action. I don’t think you were wrong to assume that I was insinuating that you were judging people from your keyboard because I question how much experience you’ve had with the homeless or addicted or indigent population. I think it’s fair to state that making a categorical assumption about a wide swath of people based on one or two experiences is unscientific. Valid polls and scientific studies have large sample sets, and people should question conclusions built upon inadequate sample sets. I’m not asking you to corroborate your experience, but it sounds like you’ve only had a few personal experiences that have informed your opinion. And that’s fine if you’re creating your opinion so that you can navigate your life, but when you take to a public platform and preach to people from an assumed place of authority without having earned that authority, then it’s fair to call that into question.

I’m glad that you agree that affordable housing in cities is lacking. There’s actually a lot of evidence that strongly suggests that it’s because a large majority of new construction in most major cities was for luxury housing. Luxury housing is housing that is affordable to a household with an income of $70K (more or less, depending on the municipality). I can provide the study results if you’re interested. (In fact I could talk about affordable housing all day.) And I agree that the denizens of a municipality should look to their local ordinances and leadership to provide answers to the hard questions we’re facing about housing, minimum wages, environmental impact, decision making, etc. I appreciate that you and your family donate money to those in need, though I will caution you to examine how those dollars are spent within the organizations you choose. Many use a significant portion of their proceeds for administrative costs.

I agree that I don’t know you and made an unfair assumption about you based merely on what you said and how you said it. That said, the only assumption I made was that you embrace Conservative (possibly Republican) party line politics. And just taking a look at your blog history and at the content of this post, it seems very likely that my assumption is true. I also think either I didn’t clearly communicate my point, you misunderstood it, or both. What I’m referring to is the point I was making about taking homes, and all the benefits of having one, for granted. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what you understood from my statement was that “people like you” take for granted that you have a home. What I was trying to say was that people like you take the safety of a home for granted.

A home is a place that provides shelter; warmth; privacy; storage; access to basic amenities like water, power, and (increasingly these days) internet. A home is literally your personal safe space. To do whatever you want to do (as long as it doesn’t harm another person or infringe upon the rights of others). And even to do those things that most people find unsavory, disgusting, or “immoral” (let’s not get into a morality debate). While I don’t want other people to do heroin or methamphetamine or to abuse, assault, or harass people within their homes, they CAN do it. However, they must be willing to accept the consequences if/when someone complains about their egregious behavior. But since I’m not a fan of hyperbolic arguments, I brought up cannabis and alcohol usage: two activities which are only acceptable in designated spaces (like your home). Other such activities are nudity and sex. Two seemingly unavoidable things in life that homeless people are forced to do without or to do in public spaces because or to pay for a private space to do. (Also, I know there are homeless shelters where people can sleep and take showers, but there is limited space and a booming homeless population in Portland, as well as strict rules which are extremely difficult to abide by when you have an addiction issue.)

I agree that money management among many homeless people is deplorable. It’s one of the most frustrating things that I encounter at work though, luckily, that falls outside of the scope of my job. I think there’s a partial misconception that homeless people are buying drugs, per se. I won’t say that it doesn’t happen, but there are many who essentially barter for drugs with other substances or for services (prostitution, drug running, etc.) It’s not easy for homeless people to get jobs and for those who have addictions or mental health issues, keeping a job is nigh impossible. And it’s extremely difficult to reason with an addicted person or a person with mental health issues. The system doesn’t treat these folks well or even humanely in some cases, and so there’s no rapport between service providers and those who need what they offer. There’s lots of reasons for that: worker burnout, worker and recipient bias, lack of cooperation by the person receiving services, lack of funding which leads to triage-oriented provision of services, and regular old neglect. I think the biggest contributor is lack of funding because many of the other reasons are dependent upon funding.

I think another reason could be lack of motivation and discipline. Some people are content with their government-provided lifestyle or with a lifestyle of squalor, but it’s disingenuous to purport that most people who receive government aid are in this category. I also take issue with the lack of scrutiny given to people of means who abuse the system, especially because they frequently do so with impunity. Corporate welfare runs rampant and there is no outcry against it. It’s barely a talking point even though we all know it happens. Corporate welfare takes the form of tax breaks, relaxed regulations, the abysmally low capital gains tax (which is the only real tax some wealthy folks pay since they have the luxury of shuffling money into untouchable accounts). An example you can relate to as a Seattleite is Amazon. They are a heavy user of the infrastructure in Seattle (as well as many many other municipalities) and yet they were granted tax breaks which shield them from paying their fair share for the maintenance of the very infrastructure upon which they depend. Let’s not forget that Amazon’s impact on roads and bridges is significantly larger than the average American’s. I get that we consumers are providing the demand that causes that usage BUT why does that exempt Amazon from paying that business cost? Small businesses pay that cost. But I digress.

I too have tried offering panhandlers food rather than money and, yeah, sometimes I get yelled at, but I don’t take it personally because many panhandlers’ lives are terrible. I can’t judge them through the same lens that I would judge a rude barista or an angry, reckless driver. I think the most accessible analogy I’ve used to help people understand how powerless people can feel and be in their addiction struggles is to think of them from the lens of a person with PTSD. My example is a good childhood friend of mine who joined the Army out of high school who came back traumatized from his service. This once happy-go-lucky friend returned incapable of coping with his experiences (which include killing civilians as well as combatants) without alcohol. My friend became a suicidal, fall-down alcoholic and it was increasingly difficult for him to participate in normal society. Staying at a job for 8 hours a day was too difficult and he burned through jobs until he took work with a family member who was sympathetic to his plight. Not everyone is so lucky though. I’d like to note that many homeless people are the veterans that the government forgets once their tour of duty expires. Support our troops does not translate to veteran support. That said, I’ve met veterans that thrived in and out of the military.

I’m sorry about your uncle. I think we agree on the failure of the system, though we differ on the how to solve the issues. I’m not an expert and won’t purport to be, but what I have noticed in Portland is half-hearted attempts. A problem is identified and citizens and/or community leaders propose a solution or a ballot measure. Oftentimes a study is commissioned, and experts quantify the issue so they can suggest solutions before recommending a ballot measure. However, when it is put to vote opposition groups merely turn out to negate the effort, rather than offer an alternative solution. It has happened countless times in my 8 years here. Alternatively, if the legislative route is taken (where legislators champion an issue and put it to vote in the legislature), a study will still be commissioned to identify how to address the issue. Then legislators chip away the most impactful provisions, for one reason or another, and then if something is passed it is a shell of what was proposed at the outset. Then sometime in the future disingenuous politicians point to the “failure” of the legislation, while omitting the fact that what was passed was doomed to be ineffectual. This happens at the local level, in Salem, and in Washington D.C. I will refer to a point made in my first post about the Right 2 Dream homeless community that never really succeeded in Portland. The city has no problem “sweeping” homeless camps, but does not allocate money to relocate them. There’s no plan except to get them out of sight. Just the language (sweeping homeless camps) can be used as proof of what outcome is desired. Sweep them away!

I think you might be interested in how the Sackler family (of Perdue Pharma fame) contributed to the opioid epidemic. I recommend listening to a podcast by investigative journalist Robert Evans called “Behind the Bastards.” He chronicles the negative impacts that powerful people have had on society from an American perspective. I will be up front and state that Robert Evans is a leftist, but he has a bit of a Libertarian bent that I’m quite familiar with. The episodes about the Sacklers are Episodes 56 and 57. The reason I bring this up is to address your point about community leaders targeting corporations rather than mental health policies. I still maintain that the issue is funding, but I will add that responsible management of those funds is to blame. Of course there is an upper limit on how much money can have a positive impact, but many mental health programs are woefully underfunded, and they are often nonprofit organizations so they are dependent on outside funding (donations and tax dollars) and not revenue. I think the reason corporations like Perdue Pharma or tobacco companies or fossil fuel companies should be targeted is because they extract profits from communities while damaging them at the same time. And they do not contribute back to the community in a meaningful way. Maybe they did at some point, but that is a thing of the past. So of course they should be held to account. They owe us that money. They falsely advertised their drugs as non addictive, they lied about the addictive nature of nicotine and the damaging effect of the multitude of additives in cigarettes, they damaged the Gulf and Puerto Rico and ANWR and Standing Rock and lied about the effects of greenhouse gasses. And someone has to pay for remediation/restitution. Why should the American people be saddled with that burden when they were just taking the so-called industry experts at the (lying) word?