Before I begin, if I might paraphrase something I read recently, from someone with much better wit than I possess:
‘Please know that any typos or misspellings you find below are my way of proving to you that I’m actually human, and not the latest Ai chatbot pretending to be such.’
Walk through any city in Washington State, and you’ll encounter the issue of homelessness up close and personal. It’s grown so pervasive that it can’t be avoided.
Government has shown that it is unable to actually solve the problem. Indeed, it has been widely reported in the media that the State of Washington spent 143 million dollars to get 126 people into housing and back on their feet. The State spent 110,311 dollars per homeless person moved from an encampment; 164,706 dollars per homeless person moved from an encampment into housing; and 1,137,256 dollars per person to become stable and exit the system. These are the State’s own numbers.
Actually, it is worse than that. The State encourages homelessness through regulations that dramatically increase the cost of a home. New building code regulations have added 39,876 dollars to the average cost of a new home, all while our homeless population is increasing. This is on top of all previous regulation cost drivers, land use restrictions, and zoning.
There is no charity in existence that is large enough to solve this problem, and government has proven far too inept to do so.
So what do we do?
It is certainly not caring and compassionate to leave people on the streets, in the weather, suffering from mental health conditions and drug addictions. Indeed, that is a sign of an evil society, not a compassionate one.
So how do we fix it?
And can we acknowledge that not all homeless people are the same? That some just need a hand up? That we could do well by addressing these people’s needs first? As a first step towards solving the problem?
I would argue that we, as members of the world’s premier moral society are called upon to contemplate such things.
Over the past few years, my city has been overrun by homeless people. People who are obviously either on drugs or suffering mental health breakdowns. People who are caught committing crimes, often senseless crimes. People who scare others, trash and break things, destroying public areas.
But, not all homeless people are like that.
I am going to admit that I resemble the caricature of the old man who leaves his house to go out and scream “Get Off My Lawn!” to the neighbor kids. I keep an eye on what’s going on around my house, and I’m up to challenging what doesn’t seem right. My wife is the same way.
As a result of this, I’ve come into contact with a couple, man and woman, who live in their car. I think I first talked with them six or eight months ago when they made the street in front of my house their home for the day. I went out, talked to them, and determined that they were not looking to cause any problems. Just people down on their luck. I’ve seen them elsewhere around the city since, and talked with them since.
These are just two people, trying to survive, in a very bad situation.
But, they don’t get any attention from government, or homeless help groups, because they aren’t out there causing problems.
Should we not help them first?
And how can we identify people like that so that they can be helped first, instead of last?
People like this are after all, the way we can begin successfully addressing this dreadful problem in our society.
Last night, about midnight, Melinda and I were watching television when we saw them roll up, slowly and quietly, in front of our house. They had spent the day in front of our house before, but never overnight.
We chatted about it for a few seconds, and decided that we wouldn’t object. We know that they don’t mean to cause any harm.
The thing is though, we could object. Unlike cities in our area where the problem has grown completely out of hand, like Seattle and Portland, our city has a law stating that one can’t sleep in ones car or otherwise camp, on city streets and sidewalks. And it is enforced. So, we could have called the police and had them moved along.
It was an easy decision for us to let them stay.
But it is not the decision we would have made had they been more typical of the homeless population.
I did though, wonder what else we could do. I considered, briefly, running some food out to them. But our own dinner had been put away hours before, they have no ability to cook in their car (I presume) and we didn’t have anything of the pre-made variety.
So, I didn’t.
Shortly afterwards, I went to lock up the house as I do each night. They must have seen me doing this, and assumed that I was instead checking up on them, or taking extra care to lock up the house because they were there.
By the time I was finished, they had started their car and rolled away. About ten minutes later I saw them again, traveling the opposite direction, presumably not yet having found a suitable place to park for the night.
They could have stayed where they were, but clearly they didn’t want to cause a problem.
But that’s the key isn’t it? They didn’t want to cause a problem. That is why, when government and charity looks to address the homeless situation, it is people like this that need to be the priority. Because their desire to not cause problems for others means that a hand up truly can help them escape their dreadful situation.
How on earth can those who truly could benefit from help be identified? Especially since they are off the radar because they don’t cause problems?
I don’t have the answers to any of these questions. Perhaps no one does.
But, I do know that large numbers of people, living without homes, in the weather, in the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth is an evil. And I know that as Freemasons, it is our duty to confront evil.
You are asking good questions and I don't have any easy answers. But I think you are right in your desire focus one on one, human to human. One person here on Substack who is really trying to work on this is Matt Love. Here is one of his posts.
Dec 29, 2023·edited Dec 29, 2023Liked by Cameron M. Bailey
My other observation here is we're limiting ourselves to empathy rather than compassion. We can relate more to those who aren't "a problem", when the ones with addictions and other mental health challenges are even more in need. No one should fall by the wayside in an arguably affluent society, and we don't have to rank people's worth or importance. Distress isn't a contest, though enough memes teach us to pit one group against another.
I think I follow what you are saying, and I don't disagree that we shouldn't rank a person's worth.
But, it seems to me that right now, here in my State anyway, we are providing effective services to absolutely no one. It is my thought that as we (hopefully) begin to take meaningful action, that those who seek to not be 'a problem' would be easier to successfully help than those with more serious issues. And that we could learn from those successes, as they come, gearing up in order to provide meaningful help to all.
Part of the problem I see is as I mentioned, government. Overly burdensome regulations (it is not legal to build an apartment in my city unless one also builds a garage to go with it) drive up the cost of housing, making it more difficult for people to afford. Then when money is finally appropriated, it is just wasted by the bureaucracy.
I do agree, non governmental organizations are the way forward. But, they have to be organizations actually committed to solving the problem, rather than keeping it going for their own material benefit. We do, unfortunately, see a lot of non-profits that seem to lose sight of the mission.
I get what you're saying... It's [the concept of] low hanging fruit in the hope of [the concept of] snowballing success if I'm reading it right... Help those that are most likely to succeed to get them 'out of the way' and build momentum in helping the others that are likely to be more difficult. It sounds good on paper, at least.
As far as your concerns with government go, I'm not sure how you address that problem. On the one hand, it seems obvious to just deregulate, but I would think these regulations have purpose other than driving up housing costs, such as safety and viability. You mention requiring parking to go with apartment buildings, that seems like something that, at least in our automobile-reliant society, is a necessity, elsewise where are are the folks living in the new apartments going to store their vehicles?
Yes, I think that is what I'm thinking. Catch the easy successes, then let those flow into more difficult successes. Building momentum would I think help, and be a part of it, but also learning what works and what doesn't work, so that changes to approach can be made along the way.
I do certainly agree that some regulations have purpose, as you mention for safety and viability. But, I think that they have gotten out of hand, in a big way, over the past few years. And I don't think that housing built ten years ago is less safe than housing built today. But the regulations have grown exponentially. (Of course all of this is locality dependent, I'm talking here about my little city, in my little county, in Washington State. Things may well be different elsewhere.)
Here's a true illustration:
Six or seven years ago, my Lodge replaced all of its windows. It's a massive historic building, and these windows are huge. Plus, there is a lot of them. The fellow who handled all the government work side of things for our Lodge (funding, permitting, historic preservation, all that stuff) kept all the government paperwork he had to read and fill out in a three ring binder. It was a one inch binder, and ended up pretty much full.
We are right now in the process of replacing the roof on that Lodge building. The same Brother is handling all the government work for this project who handled it last time. He reported at our meeting last week that he has now filled a three inch binder with government paperwork, and is looking to start a second binder before the project is done. So, three times the paperwork, for a less 'invasive' project, that increase happening just over the course of six or seven years.
And, with this second project, we didn't even have the historical preservation stuff to get through, as it is a flat roof not visible from the street, those folks don't care.
In some future year, not too far off, we are going to have to do some major work on our exterior walls. The Brother who has handled all this paperwork for our last two projects let us know that he doesn't think he'll be able to handle any further increase, requiring us to hire a project professional to do it for us, driving up costs further.
It's kind of an aside, but the parking requirement for apartments in my little city really does bother me. To be clear, the requirement isn't that there be a parking spot for each apartment, rather that there be a garage for each apartment. And they aren't referencing parking structures, my little city is far too small to have one of those anywhere. They are actually requiring a garage, as one usually has with a single family home, for each new apartment. That adds massive costs to apartment rents, and in my opinion, drives unaffordability and therefore homelessness.
Yeah, I'm a car guy, so certainly think we need to provide enough parking for any given development, but this particular city code exists for no reason than to keep low cost apartments out of the city, and that's just wrong. Especially given that this little city has a fairly low income population.
Just talking about homelessness is an overwhelming issue. Where do you start, who do you start with, how do you help? The issues of mental health and addiction are frightening topics in the abstract let alone when it becomes personalized. Many of the homeless start out as people who have suffered catastrophic financial loss (many with too much pride to ask for help). Being homeless leads to mental health issues for otherwise “normal” people. The lack of sleep, worrying about their safety or the safety of their family is extremely stressful. Trying to find food, trying to stay healthy, trying to maintain personal hygiene are all stressful and in a very short time paranoia begins to set in. How do they maintain necessary prescriptions. The true homeless person doesn’t want to be seen, they don’t want to interact with society and want to solve their own problems. If a Brother became homeless, to what extent would we go to aid and assist him? What if the Brother was from another jurisdiction? Most of us nor our lodges aren’t in a position to do much.
>>>If a Brother became homeless, to what extent would we go to aid and assist him? What if the >>>Brother was from another jurisdiction? Most of us nor our lodges aren’t in a position to do >>>much.
I think that this is undoubtedly true. In our Jurisdiction we have I suppose three only Lodges that I would consider rich. And probably one hundred Lodges that barely survive financially from year to year. They just don't have that much money. And our Grand Lodge is much the same. Sure it has a lot of money invested, but virtually all of that money was donated a hundred years ago or more, with extremely tight restrictions concerning what it can be spent on. There just isn't very much available.
It does though point to a problem within Masonry.
Why are we still relying upon, in our Lodges, and our Grand Lodges, money given by our ancestors? Why did we, in the 1950's stop increasing dues and fees? Why do we object to every increase no matter how badly inflation is eroding the value of our dues?
Until we get those questions taken care of, I fear that we are quite limited in the amount of assistance we can give a Brother. And that's wrong.
I didn’t speak to the homeless with addictions because that’s another issue. Many are dual diagnosis so trying to determine which issue to tackle first, the addiction or their mental health can be daunting. Much of the homelessness issues can be trace back to when President Reagan closed the mental institutions. Most of them were horrific places and needed to be closed but at the same time it put the onus of care onto ill equipped families that lacked the knowledge or skills to take care of a paranoid schizophrenic. And who was responsible to provide care to a 50+ year old sibling when the parents were no longer capable or living. I don’t believe dumping the mentally ill into an institution is the answer but neither was leaving them at home and not providing families with the assistance they required. It’s all so very overwhelming, like how to eat an elephant. It’s all one bite at a time.
I have to provide a correction. It wasn't Reagan, it was the SCOTUS that basically outlawed (via the ACLU) involuntary commitment of people with mental health problems. People keep blaming Reagan, but his and the government's hands were tied. That is the root cause of why the drug addicts and mentally unbalanced (one usually causing the other) can't be helped. They are living on the streets by choice, and until they themselves decide to get help, there is little we can do about it.
That's why I quantified it with drug addicts and mentally unbalanced. Yes, there are a handful of people (as MW Cameron mentioned) that are there due to circumstance, not choice. I also agree with his point that those are the ones we should be helping, but the system is not geared towards solving the problem, see my other comments elsewhere.
I do think that we need to rethink institutionalization.
-Criminals = Jail. Something we've largely given up on here. I read the Police Blotter in my local paper, and all the time I see a line: 'Not booked due to jail restrictions.'
-Folks with drug addictions = Treatment, in-patient if necessary.
-Severe mental health issues = Again, treatment, in-patient if necessary. How is treating someone severely mentally ill, even if they don't want that treatment in the moment, any less compassionate than forcing them to live on the streets in the wet and cold?
Then that leaves the people like I mentioned in my essay, that need a hand up, services to get their lives restarted.
And it leaves those who chose to be homeless. We've always had such people, and that's OK if someone wants to live completely free in that way.
But, it is easy to write what I wrote, hard to actually get it done.
To add to MW Cameron's post - it's not just the city of Seattle's money. They don't tell you how much they have spent of county and federal's tax dollars. All told, we spend around two billion dollars annually to try and fix Seattle's "homeless" problem. That's Billions with a "B". Two billion dollars to try and help around 11,000 people. And this pile of money is spent through dozens of "outreach" non-profits, which spend little on the problem and most to line their own pockets. It's the biggest grifting scheme ever invented. And, for those people, solving this problem would simply stop the gravy train so it is in their best interests to keep that money flowing.
Yes, this is correct. My figures were only State money, for a single State program. There are other State programs, municipal programs, county programs, and a flood of federal borrowed cash.
In the years I worked for the Legislature, a shocking amount of State money was spent every year to build 'affordable housing.' The only people that money has ever actually benefited are the large corporations that act like they are building said affordable housing.
But for the amount that has been spent over all these years, we should have free houses for millions.
I have actually had personal experience with this situation. My wife and I had our landlady in February of 2021 inform us that we had to move because where she was living was sold and she had to have us move out so she could move back into her own house. We had to be out by June 1st of 2021. We started looking for a place to move to. As 2 senior citizens on Social Secruity we found no place that fit into our budget, especially with a cat and dog. Rents after Covid had tripled. We decided to try the RV living and soon found out having a place to park near Centralia was costing more than an apartment or free spots were already claimed by encampments. We did finally find free spots an hour to an hour and a half away. Gasoline costs to travel became an issue. We were parked in the National Forests, Morton, Ashford etc. We lived in an RV from June 1, 2021 to September 13, 2022. We had to move every 7 to 14 days. I was WM of Little Falls during that time which greatly influenced what the "best of my ability" was. On top of that I inherited a lot of noncompliance to the code which I tried to fix.
I think we have to figure out better why they are on the street before we can do much meaningful for them. I have spoken with some of those living on the street over the years and I think there are a number of causes, though I am not sure what the percentages are. There are the mentally ill. There are those with addiction issues. There are those who have gotten down on their luck economically (due to job loss, health issues etc). There are those who the economy has changed against them and now the money that used to sustain them does not. Finally there are those who choose to live homeless. Many probably share more than one of these categories. I may have missed some. Each of these will need money, compassion and commitment to address, if we want to end the homeless problem. The way wrote that least sentence I think demonstrates why we have not solved the problem, I used common language used on the subject. I said the 'homeless problem', not the "homelessness problem" Many people see those experiencing homelessness as the problem, not the fact that they are homeless. I think, my opinion, that people living on the street, or in the rough. is the canary in the coal mine. A first warning of a bigger issue.
About thirteen years ago a homeless fellow showed up at my house, dragging a lawnmower behind his bicycle. If there is one thing I hate, it's mowing the lawn, so I hired him to buzz it off that day.
And he's worked for me, and my neighbors, and even occasionally our Lodge ever since. He's a good guy. He did have drug problems before I met him, and he had a short relapse a couple of years ago, but quickly overcame that. Honest as can be.
But, he works really hard, and he's remained homeless, or on the brink of homelessness for almost all of the years I've known him. He did have one stretch where he had stable housing, but just that one.
So, I just fear that a person without a specialized skill can be in a really bad way, no matter how hard they work.
And I share your view that this is a canary in the coal mine situation.
After my initiation a brother gave a deeply impactful speech. In summary, he argued it was the duty of all moral men to set aright the failures of society. As for how to accomplish this, he was silent.
I appreciate your writing as a reminder to continue contemplating these things, at a time when cynicism and hopelessness is so accessible.
Thank you for this kind note Brother. I really appreciate it. And I agree, we have to remember the fundamental pillars of Freemasonry, even if we feel powerless to address something as huge as this.
But, I also don't forget that at a time when children's health care sucked, we built a chain of Children's hospitals! As a fraternity we can do a great deal, if we put our minds to it.
I was pretty stricken to the vote when a few months ago I looked for a friend who I had not heard from in a few years. I knew him personally in the fitness subculture. He had been a writer and photographer and covered many events for the top fitness magazines in the 70s through 2000s. He had followed my short career in fitness and had written a really nice article about me in about 2014 or so. I wanted to get a quote for him and when I looked for him on Facebook I found he had been homeless for a few years since COVID-19. No one could find him. His family was looking for him, and the last anyone heard he was living out of his car. He was cut off from the world from phone and Internet. So who knows maybe he’s just wandering on the streets in LA. That’s just hard for me to wrap my head around. All I can do is pray for him. 🙏💫🙏
You are asking good questions and I don't have any easy answers. But I think you are right in your desire focus one on one, human to human. One person here on Substack who is really trying to work on this is Matt Love. Here is one of his posts.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mattlove/p/eagles-beavers-a-snowy-egret?r=txq7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for recommending Matt Love. His work is good, and I really appreciate it!
Glad to be of help.
This is why I'm an anarchist. A community can always solve a community problem if beaurocracy didn't get in the way.
NGOs are the solution in other counties but we're too proud to admit we're no different in America.
My other observation here is we're limiting ourselves to empathy rather than compassion. We can relate more to those who aren't "a problem", when the ones with addictions and other mental health challenges are even more in need. No one should fall by the wayside in an arguably affluent society, and we don't have to rank people's worth or importance. Distress isn't a contest, though enough memes teach us to pit one group against another.
I think I follow what you are saying, and I don't disagree that we shouldn't rank a person's worth.
But, it seems to me that right now, here in my State anyway, we are providing effective services to absolutely no one. It is my thought that as we (hopefully) begin to take meaningful action, that those who seek to not be 'a problem' would be easier to successfully help than those with more serious issues. And that we could learn from those successes, as they come, gearing up in order to provide meaningful help to all.
Part of the problem I see is as I mentioned, government. Overly burdensome regulations (it is not legal to build an apartment in my city unless one also builds a garage to go with it) drive up the cost of housing, making it more difficult for people to afford. Then when money is finally appropriated, it is just wasted by the bureaucracy.
I do agree, non governmental organizations are the way forward. But, they have to be organizations actually committed to solving the problem, rather than keeping it going for their own material benefit. We do, unfortunately, see a lot of non-profits that seem to lose sight of the mission.
Yes, NFPs are becoming more of an industry these days. Very concerning.
I get what you're saying... It's [the concept of] low hanging fruit in the hope of [the concept of] snowballing success if I'm reading it right... Help those that are most likely to succeed to get them 'out of the way' and build momentum in helping the others that are likely to be more difficult. It sounds good on paper, at least.
As far as your concerns with government go, I'm not sure how you address that problem. On the one hand, it seems obvious to just deregulate, but I would think these regulations have purpose other than driving up housing costs, such as safety and viability. You mention requiring parking to go with apartment buildings, that seems like something that, at least in our automobile-reliant society, is a necessity, elsewise where are are the folks living in the new apartments going to store their vehicles?
Yes, I think that is what I'm thinking. Catch the easy successes, then let those flow into more difficult successes. Building momentum would I think help, and be a part of it, but also learning what works and what doesn't work, so that changes to approach can be made along the way.
I do certainly agree that some regulations have purpose, as you mention for safety and viability. But, I think that they have gotten out of hand, in a big way, over the past few years. And I don't think that housing built ten years ago is less safe than housing built today. But the regulations have grown exponentially. (Of course all of this is locality dependent, I'm talking here about my little city, in my little county, in Washington State. Things may well be different elsewhere.)
Here's a true illustration:
Six or seven years ago, my Lodge replaced all of its windows. It's a massive historic building, and these windows are huge. Plus, there is a lot of them. The fellow who handled all the government work side of things for our Lodge (funding, permitting, historic preservation, all that stuff) kept all the government paperwork he had to read and fill out in a three ring binder. It was a one inch binder, and ended up pretty much full.
We are right now in the process of replacing the roof on that Lodge building. The same Brother is handling all the government work for this project who handled it last time. He reported at our meeting last week that he has now filled a three inch binder with government paperwork, and is looking to start a second binder before the project is done. So, three times the paperwork, for a less 'invasive' project, that increase happening just over the course of six or seven years.
And, with this second project, we didn't even have the historical preservation stuff to get through, as it is a flat roof not visible from the street, those folks don't care.
In some future year, not too far off, we are going to have to do some major work on our exterior walls. The Brother who has handled all this paperwork for our last two projects let us know that he doesn't think he'll be able to handle any further increase, requiring us to hire a project professional to do it for us, driving up costs further.
It's kind of an aside, but the parking requirement for apartments in my little city really does bother me. To be clear, the requirement isn't that there be a parking spot for each apartment, rather that there be a garage for each apartment. And they aren't referencing parking structures, my little city is far too small to have one of those anywhere. They are actually requiring a garage, as one usually has with a single family home, for each new apartment. That adds massive costs to apartment rents, and in my opinion, drives unaffordability and therefore homelessness.
Ah, that clarification on "garage" drives home your point. I stand in agreement with you there.
Yeah, I'm a car guy, so certainly think we need to provide enough parking for any given development, but this particular city code exists for no reason than to keep low cost apartments out of the city, and that's just wrong. Especially given that this little city has a fairly low income population.
Just talking about homelessness is an overwhelming issue. Where do you start, who do you start with, how do you help? The issues of mental health and addiction are frightening topics in the abstract let alone when it becomes personalized. Many of the homeless start out as people who have suffered catastrophic financial loss (many with too much pride to ask for help). Being homeless leads to mental health issues for otherwise “normal” people. The lack of sleep, worrying about their safety or the safety of their family is extremely stressful. Trying to find food, trying to stay healthy, trying to maintain personal hygiene are all stressful and in a very short time paranoia begins to set in. How do they maintain necessary prescriptions. The true homeless person doesn’t want to be seen, they don’t want to interact with society and want to solve their own problems. If a Brother became homeless, to what extent would we go to aid and assist him? What if the Brother was from another jurisdiction? Most of us nor our lodges aren’t in a position to do much.
>>>If a Brother became homeless, to what extent would we go to aid and assist him? What if the >>>Brother was from another jurisdiction? Most of us nor our lodges aren’t in a position to do >>>much.
I think that this is undoubtedly true. In our Jurisdiction we have I suppose three only Lodges that I would consider rich. And probably one hundred Lodges that barely survive financially from year to year. They just don't have that much money. And our Grand Lodge is much the same. Sure it has a lot of money invested, but virtually all of that money was donated a hundred years ago or more, with extremely tight restrictions concerning what it can be spent on. There just isn't very much available.
It does though point to a problem within Masonry.
Why are we still relying upon, in our Lodges, and our Grand Lodges, money given by our ancestors? Why did we, in the 1950's stop increasing dues and fees? Why do we object to every increase no matter how badly inflation is eroding the value of our dues?
Until we get those questions taken care of, I fear that we are quite limited in the amount of assistance we can give a Brother. And that's wrong.
I didn’t speak to the homeless with addictions because that’s another issue. Many are dual diagnosis so trying to determine which issue to tackle first, the addiction or their mental health can be daunting. Much of the homelessness issues can be trace back to when President Reagan closed the mental institutions. Most of them were horrific places and needed to be closed but at the same time it put the onus of care onto ill equipped families that lacked the knowledge or skills to take care of a paranoid schizophrenic. And who was responsible to provide care to a 50+ year old sibling when the parents were no longer capable or living. I don’t believe dumping the mentally ill into an institution is the answer but neither was leaving them at home and not providing families with the assistance they required. It’s all so very overwhelming, like how to eat an elephant. It’s all one bite at a time.
I have to provide a correction. It wasn't Reagan, it was the SCOTUS that basically outlawed (via the ACLU) involuntary commitment of people with mental health problems. People keep blaming Reagan, but his and the government's hands were tied. That is the root cause of why the drug addicts and mentally unbalanced (one usually causing the other) can't be helped. They are living on the streets by choice, and until they themselves decide to get help, there is little we can do about it.
Many may be living on the streets by their own choosing but not all.
That's why I quantified it with drug addicts and mentally unbalanced. Yes, there are a handful of people (as MW Cameron mentioned) that are there due to circumstance, not choice. I also agree with his point that those are the ones we should be helping, but the system is not geared towards solving the problem, see my other comments elsewhere.
The heart of any organized community response will be a triage system.
Your car couple may need temporary help with housing, maybe job training and the like, or reconnecting with family.
Others may need mental health care, which might mean proper diagnosis, meds, and real ongoing support. For some it might require institutional care.
For those who *like* the impunity of living on the streets, who like committing property or violent crimes - easy, jail.
Solving addiction, or reducing it for some people, will take a variety of approaches.
And for the politicians who approve plans of a $million per person - throw them out of their jobs and homes as a warning to others.
I make that last suggestion (mostly) tongue in cheek, but the poverty industrial complex, as they call it, is a real thing.
Solving “homelessness” is foolish. Identifying more specific problems will at least help some people.
I do think that we need to rethink institutionalization.
-Criminals = Jail. Something we've largely given up on here. I read the Police Blotter in my local paper, and all the time I see a line: 'Not booked due to jail restrictions.'
-Folks with drug addictions = Treatment, in-patient if necessary.
-Severe mental health issues = Again, treatment, in-patient if necessary. How is treating someone severely mentally ill, even if they don't want that treatment in the moment, any less compassionate than forcing them to live on the streets in the wet and cold?
Then that leaves the people like I mentioned in my essay, that need a hand up, services to get their lives restarted.
And it leaves those who chose to be homeless. We've always had such people, and that's OK if someone wants to live completely free in that way.
But, it is easy to write what I wrote, hard to actually get it done.
To add to MW Cameron's post - it's not just the city of Seattle's money. They don't tell you how much they have spent of county and federal's tax dollars. All told, we spend around two billion dollars annually to try and fix Seattle's "homeless" problem. That's Billions with a "B". Two billion dollars to try and help around 11,000 people. And this pile of money is spent through dozens of "outreach" non-profits, which spend little on the problem and most to line their own pockets. It's the biggest grifting scheme ever invented. And, for those people, solving this problem would simply stop the gravy train so it is in their best interests to keep that money flowing.
Yes, this is correct. My figures were only State money, for a single State program. There are other State programs, municipal programs, county programs, and a flood of federal borrowed cash.
In the years I worked for the Legislature, a shocking amount of State money was spent every year to build 'affordable housing.' The only people that money has ever actually benefited are the large corporations that act like they are building said affordable housing.
But for the amount that has been spent over all these years, we should have free houses for millions.
I have actually had personal experience with this situation. My wife and I had our landlady in February of 2021 inform us that we had to move because where she was living was sold and she had to have us move out so she could move back into her own house. We had to be out by June 1st of 2021. We started looking for a place to move to. As 2 senior citizens on Social Secruity we found no place that fit into our budget, especially with a cat and dog. Rents after Covid had tripled. We decided to try the RV living and soon found out having a place to park near Centralia was costing more than an apartment or free spots were already claimed by encampments. We did finally find free spots an hour to an hour and a half away. Gasoline costs to travel became an issue. We were parked in the National Forests, Morton, Ashford etc. We lived in an RV from June 1, 2021 to September 13, 2022. We had to move every 7 to 14 days. I was WM of Little Falls during that time which greatly influenced what the "best of my ability" was. On top of that I inherited a lot of noncompliance to the code which I tried to fix.
The cost of rent now is truly scary. I see single rooms for rent, in this reasonably cheap city for eight and nine hundred dollars a month.
I think we have to figure out better why they are on the street before we can do much meaningful for them. I have spoken with some of those living on the street over the years and I think there are a number of causes, though I am not sure what the percentages are. There are the mentally ill. There are those with addiction issues. There are those who have gotten down on their luck economically (due to job loss, health issues etc). There are those who the economy has changed against them and now the money that used to sustain them does not. Finally there are those who choose to live homeless. Many probably share more than one of these categories. I may have missed some. Each of these will need money, compassion and commitment to address, if we want to end the homeless problem. The way wrote that least sentence I think demonstrates why we have not solved the problem, I used common language used on the subject. I said the 'homeless problem', not the "homelessness problem" Many people see those experiencing homelessness as the problem, not the fact that they are homeless. I think, my opinion, that people living on the street, or in the rough. is the canary in the coal mine. A first warning of a bigger issue.
About thirteen years ago a homeless fellow showed up at my house, dragging a lawnmower behind his bicycle. If there is one thing I hate, it's mowing the lawn, so I hired him to buzz it off that day.
And he's worked for me, and my neighbors, and even occasionally our Lodge ever since. He's a good guy. He did have drug problems before I met him, and he had a short relapse a couple of years ago, but quickly overcame that. Honest as can be.
But, he works really hard, and he's remained homeless, or on the brink of homelessness for almost all of the years I've known him. He did have one stretch where he had stable housing, but just that one.
So, I just fear that a person without a specialized skill can be in a really bad way, no matter how hard they work.
And I share your view that this is a canary in the coal mine situation.
After my initiation a brother gave a deeply impactful speech. In summary, he argued it was the duty of all moral men to set aright the failures of society. As for how to accomplish this, he was silent.
I appreciate your writing as a reminder to continue contemplating these things, at a time when cynicism and hopelessness is so accessible.
Thank you for this kind note Brother. I really appreciate it. And I agree, we have to remember the fundamental pillars of Freemasonry, even if we feel powerless to address something as huge as this.
But, I also don't forget that at a time when children's health care sucked, we built a chain of Children's hospitals! As a fraternity we can do a great deal, if we put our minds to it.
I was pretty stricken to the vote when a few months ago I looked for a friend who I had not heard from in a few years. I knew him personally in the fitness subculture. He had been a writer and photographer and covered many events for the top fitness magazines in the 70s through 2000s. He had followed my short career in fitness and had written a really nice article about me in about 2014 or so. I wanted to get a quote for him and when I looked for him on Facebook I found he had been homeless for a few years since COVID-19. No one could find him. His family was looking for him, and the last anyone heard he was living out of his car. He was cut off from the world from phone and Internet. So who knows maybe he’s just wandering on the streets in LA. That’s just hard for me to wrap my head around. All I can do is pray for him. 🙏💫🙏
I am very sorry to read about your friend, and hope that he can be found and helped soon.
"The gift without the giver is bare."
I like that, Thank you!