Redding, Northern California, USA
The Shasta County Courthouse sits on landscaped grounds with a manicured front lawn, having cement walks leading along its edges, and faces east to metered parking along the four lane Court Street in downtown Redding, California. The courthouse is as unimaginatively designed as the street is named. It is a rectangular 3 story building of the soft and plain brutalist style many government buildings employ to convey strength and officiality. The public defender office is in a separate office-park building on the south side, there is a parking structure to the north, the district attorney is at the rear of the main building, and the law library is neatly tucked away in the basement. The law library is not an unwelcoming place for citizens, however it is useless to anyone without a law degree they said. I was told the best place to find resources and gather information would be the public library.
The resources and information gathering were needed to build a defense against the criminal misconduct of “Sleeping in public places (and certain private places)”. It is a law clearly intended to punish the poor for being homeless, not for a responsible driver like myself stopping to rest when tired.
I had looked tired and appeared poor, so I was treated as such. I was angered at being treated like a homeless. I was angered at the thought of being mistaken for one of them. Then, I was ashamed.. Ashamed I had allowed my own idea of the tired and poor to fall into a discriminatory less-than-me category, a group far removed from myself. I simply categorized them as vagrants, transient degenerates, unproductive citizens. I categorized them as people for whom it would be reasonable to enforce the criminalization of sleeping. Sleeping. Why not just make it a crime to eat in public, to breath in public, to be seen living in public (and certain private places). I had felt it was a fair law to enforce on ‘them’, but not one meant for me. I felt above a law like that, I was above them.
My parents raised a man better than that, better than to have such an arrogant outlook, contemptible attitude. I was ashamed.
So, as it was made clear that the law library should be used only by those with the appropriate education you must put it to the past and move onward to the plebian part of town. As a person nears the Redding public library they are likely to see people pushing stolen shopping carts or pushing curbside rubbish-cans. If you ever happen to be there you may see someone attempting to ride a dilapidated bicycle with some kind of dignity. You will probably see many more not bothering with attempting any dignity. In winter you will see them congregating at any place that allows the Damp a thaw for their chill. You will see them, wandering aimlessly, or moving with a purpose basic and immediate, or congregating in loose groups off the sides of entrances. They might appear to you, as they did to me, more like a group of abandoned Christmas puppies, or dangerous mangy street dogs, than as human beings. The difference in their appearance will depend on the amount of time they’ve lived on the streets and your personal prejudices. You will most definitely see someone pushing trash. Trash to you, their entire life belongings to them. You will see notifications stating rummaging through bins is illegal.
rummaging, aka ‘dumpster diving’ is generally allowed in most places in the United States, and rightfully so. However, in Redding, as Jeffery Morrow put it, “My daily life as a downtown business person would be made more pleasant if I didn’t have to constantly deal with Dumpster divers and their trashy behaviors, their needles, their nasty feces, their rude, f-bomb laden insolence.”[1] In response to public pressure Redding outlawed rummaging. And camping. And sleeping.
The strategy in Shasta County, as in most of California, for solving the homeless problem is a strategy concerned with making the life of the downtown business person more pleasant. More than that, it is sold as being for the betterment of every resident whose life is made unpleasant by needles, feces, and rude behavior.[12] There is none who argue eradicating those things to be an unfair objective. The concern is to make the lives of the downtown person more pleasant but the strategy itself is to make the lives of the homeless person more miserable. The strategy is simply to punish anyone visibly existing at the bottom of the social spectrum. The problem with inflicting a punishment directed toward an entire class of people, other than the obvious immoral dehumanization, is that not all homeless are shooting from needles, shitting on the sidewalk, or acting insolent. Some people are truly just trying to survive.[6] It has never been adequately explained how the criminalization of searching in trash, sleeping, simply existing in however undignified a life as it may be, how the criminalization of surviving is a solution. It is not a solution, it is a punishment to force ‘them’ out, away, not-in-my-back-yard.
As I drove the easy 4 minute downhill route from the courthouse, out of the business district, across the train tracks and past the police station, it occurred to me that the same trip would be an exhausting 30 minute walk if I was required to cart all my belongings. Adjusting my temperature control I followed the navigation to the main parking lot on the side of the public library. Although as tall, and built in the same common rectangle as the courthouse, the architecture and large windows were more inviting, and smooth edged sculptures identified it as a place of culture. The front entrance, facing the side parking lot, was a little disorienting but upon turning the corner it was neither the inviting architecture nor the bright symbols of culture that drew my attention. It was the numerous bodies, reminiscent of the struggling poor of a developing nation, milling about with a general disposition of helplessness, hopelessness hovering over them like clouds. This is what we commonly refer to as the homeless problem. For some the homeless are the problem, for others the people living without home is the problem.
Response In Kind
It had been a long time since I had been approached with such aggression and disrespect. I had forgotten that respect does not always mean treating someone like a person, but can mean treating someone like an Authority. Officer Knight did not respect me as a person and so I responded in kind refusing to respect him as an authority. I had forgotten Authority also had a gun and a badge.
Respect. It is in very short supply on all sides of the issue. I certainly heard a few of the people standing in front of the Redding library using profanity. They seemed to spray it outward from deep wounds, the f-words and c-words and s-words and n-words. Most were silent. Some quietly expressed themselves to nobody. Some waxed sentimental to anyone who would listen and one accused a patron of threatening to have his dog removed. But a few sprayed their emotions out wildly like a soldier lost and afraid and firing at anything that was in earshot. Of course the general sentiment in Shasta County, and California, from many of the ‘regular citizenry’ concerning the homeless is also, and I paraphrase, “Fuck the homeless.” Of course, the downtown business person says it without the f-bomb laden vulgarity. But in this, the verbiage of the business person and the bum may be two different sides of the same page, yet written with the same lines;
“You only get what you give away
You'll only get it if you give it away
You only get what you give away
So throw your hate away” [2]
I was handcuffed and the criminal ticket was handed to me with a few repeated warnings that sounded very close to threats; “You can, technically, go to jail, okay?”, “...you could always go to jail.”, “No one got hurt, that’s the important thing…”, “Where do you normally reside? So, you don’t stay here in Shasta County?”, “Okay, so are you just passing through?”, “This was just a pit stop for the night?”, “...you are gonna be on your way…”, “if you don’t ever come back you may get a warrant, but (long pause), he’s not taking you to jail or anything like that…”, “you don’t have to agree with or like the ticket, But… The alternative to the ticket, obviously.”
The Redding area has what some call the most brutal response to homelessness in the United States. Past actions had potential to be deemed cruel and unusual [11] but the city council smartly revised the enforcement definitions to avoid potential 8th amendment litigations. The political procedures of our city councils, in Redding, and in San Diego, and in whichever town you may call home, does little to reduce the fear that brutal cleanups of the homeless do nothing more than provide a temporary out-of-sight out-of-mind ‘fix’. The fix being on the side of cleaning up the business district, not for helping the poor unfortunate souls being dismissed from the public view. Yet we continue to codify strategies into the column of ‘good guy’ action, alter definitions to blur the moral line of ‘bad guy’, and then enforce the resulting ordinances. This is all city hall action of course, not street action where the only thing that changes is the justification for the “clean up”, not the manner in which the cleaning is done.
While I was being handcuffed I demanded to speak to a supervisor. I explained to the Sergeant my situation of being tired from a long reunion and goodbye to my brother in San Fran whom I hadn’t seen, and barely spoken to, since our fathers funeral a year ago. I explained that a few days prior I had dropped my wife off at LAX and had spent days hiking Big Sur. I explained I was only passing through Shasta County on a final roadtrip to deliver sentimentals to my mothers home in Oregon for safekeeping. He didn’t care about any of this. He cared about a man planning on sleeping in a car. He cared about a man who was tired from a long road ahead and an even longer one behind. He cared, but was not concerned for me, only concerned where I would end up. He knew people in similar situations sometimes gave up, and when they gave up they often couldn’t get back up. He only cared that I didn’t give up in his town.
I knew I wasn’t giving up. I knew I wasn’t a man in that situation, but we both knew that’s what all of us think.
In NorCal the homeless problem, and the conflict between the classes, is a representative example of all California. And while the total number of homeless are lower in Shasta it is significantly higher per capita than most other parts of California. This seems counterintuitive given the many rumors of warm breezes blowing through sunlit palm trees all winter long down Southern-Cal. The Redding homeless would all move to tropical San Diego or to Los Angeles it would seem. The reason they haven’t is obvious enough when considered. Most homeless live where they were residents before… before homelessness, in their past life, when they were human. They live where they had connections, where they had threads embracing them in the fabric of society and they live close to those who loved them.
It occurred to me that if I had already given up in life, that the cops were not offering even the least bit of warmth or assistance, they were not concerned with my story, they were not interested in anything other than making sure I would be on my way. They were only offering not to put me in jail as long as I carried on, ensuring that if I did break down it would be in another jurisdiction, somewhere out-of-sight out-of-mind. Perhaps the warm weather of San Diego and of The City of Angels might be slightly exaggerated but the general police attitude toward the homeless in these cities is as cold as in Shasta. Even so, the people without proper shelter in Redding must be dreaming of palm trees and sunshine because winter temps in Redding average in the thirties with lows in the teens. It is certainly not tropical. There are no tropical winters in NorCal.
The California Strategy
While I was hiking deep in the Big Sur backcountry, three days before criminally sleeping in Shasta, Governor Newsom delayed over $1 billion [14] in funding to local governments because they were not being aggressive enough in sweeping away the homelessness.
The California Strategy: The Legal War Against Unhoused People [8]
If you were to enter the Shasta County public library on a winter afternoon you would be greeted with a spacious, open welcoming area, receptionist area ahead on the left, some centrally placed computers, bookshelves and the books they hold further back on the right, and a broad stairway leading to the upper level. The upper level has an equally open floor plan, comfortingly tall ceilings, wide windows presenting tables and chairs to the rays of the late sun, and, as was the lower level, the entire space mostly filled with homeless, most of them sitting absolutely silent, looking out the windows or down at the table in front of them. Some read books. All available computers, occupied with slightly disheveled people hunched over them tapping or scrolling away.
The Los Angeles area, by conservative estimate, has over 50,000 people homeless.[17][18] Fifty Thousand. Some of those people are sleeping on the streets, diving in dumpsters, behaving rudely, insolently, and anti-socially. Some of them are just surviving with as much dignity and humanity as they can scrape up. Some are living in the purgatory between angry rebellion and quiet suffering, a backward motion of social physics. The acceleration of the object, the human, has ended and there is a velocity of zero. This is the point where inertia has been overcome by drag. A movement of no movement, or even backward movement; a negative velocity. I don’t want to reduce the homeless to social science theories.[7]
The San Diego homeless population has the highest number of veterans in California, and California itself has the highest number of homeless veterans in the nation.[4] California has nearly 200,000 people living homeless. 200,000. San Francisco is 10% of California’s homeless population. The Golden City has a budget of 1 billion dollars dedicated to eradicating unsheltered humans.[14] 1 Billion. That would amount to $5000 per homeless citizen if given the funds directly. Not that I am suggesting that as a strategy, however the actual strategy employed doesn’t seem like a better idea. The results of the current homeless eradication strategy is the same as all extremely lucrative government contracts. I can’t say the homeless are living better lives, but someone is.[5] The Los Angeles homeless, the San Diego homeless, the Chico homeless, the San Jose and Santa Clara homeless, Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco; they all rank among the highest in national total homeless populations[18] and highest in homeless veteran populations]. I don’t want to reduce the homeless to statistics.[3]
If you had been in the Redding public library and heard a couple of the not-homeless patrons discussing property boundary grievances about their neighbor, it might have occurred to you such a conversation would be emotional for the two dozen people without property sitting within hearing distance. Maybe, you think, the homeless would consider how lucky they are to be free, to not suffer such burdens of society… or maybe they would feel jealousy that someone has any property to make complaint about and feel perhaps they might feel a depression of their condition. But if you had looked around, as I did, looked at their faces, in their eyes, it would be clear they were only thinking about the sun rays lengthening and fading on their tables. They were considering the closing time of the library, and the approaching winter night.
The San Diego area politicians and proponents applaud the great steps and accomplishments they, and the city, have been taking against homelessness. They espouse the successes of the MHSA and STAR programs, the SIP (Serial Inebriate Program), the dozens of other elaborate and expensive efforts to ‘fix’ homelessness.[8][9] They use social theories and pages of statistics, they use a plethora of acronyms for the program names, agency propositions, and all the various implementations of connected projects [see appendix]. There are also dozens of titles for the people, organizations, agencies involved in shelters, micro-shelters, storage, nutrition, health, all the coalitions and interagency collaborations, all in various phases of success, every possible section of society and government redesigned in diminished capacity to support the homeless. And all with more reports on file than a person could burn to keep warm. The resources are there.
Let’s not pretend the Covid crisis didn’t cause a lot of American’s to lose savings and slide just a little closer to homelessness. Maybe that’s it though, we can’t look straight at that idea, that ‘we’ might become ‘them’, maybe we need to believe it is only a moral self-determination and not life circumstances that can put us there, because if we admit life circumstances can sometimes be enough we must face the reality that most of us are just one hospital emergency, or uninsured debilitating car crash, one more pandemic, an emotionally devastating event, or simply just a poor judgment mistake away from a life of base survival on the streets.
I rummaged through books and articles at the Redding public library, I searched the internet, I met and spoke with the librarians, and with the people standing outside. I didn’t find any answers to these types of social inequality situations. I didn’t find anyone who knew where to find answers, except those who suggested letting ‘nature’ take its course.
I know that is not the answer. But I don’t know how to get us to a better California. It must evolve beyond social darwinism, beyond discriminatory and brutal responses. If we are to make progress with a holistic solution it must be designed and implemented with compassion, with empathy. It doesn’t begin with threats of violence, theft of what little possessions a person has, or with the criminalization and dehumanization of an entire socio-economic class.
I keep coming back to the Anderson Sergeants statement, “...if you don’t ever come back you may get a warrant, but if you show up in court you can plead your case, it can go somewhere, it can go nowhere, that’s up to you…”. You can plead your case. It can go somewhere, it can go nowhere, that’s up to you.
It’s up to you.
[1] Morrow, Jeffrey. “Make Dumpster Diving Illegal In.” Redding, 29 June 2017, www.redding.com/story/opinion/speak-your-piece/2017/06/28/make-dumpster-diving-illegal-redding/437380001.
[2] Is Tropical. “The Greeks.” Native To. Maison Kitsuné, 2011.
[3] The NorCal Continuum of Care. “2022 Point in Time Report.” 2022, www.shastacounty.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/housing_amp_community_action_programs/page/3427/2022-norcal-coc-pit-report-final.pdf.
[4] Painter, Lora and Staff. “Study: Largest Number of Homeless Veterans in US Live in California.” ABC10, 22 Nov. 2022, www.abc10.com/article/news/national/military-news/largest-number-homeless-veterans-california/103-5988aa9c-2831-4d56-8970-c8c8660883ab#:~:text=HUD%20says%20homeless%20veterans%20in,the%20national%20homeless%20veteran%20population.&text=RANCHO%20CORDOVA%2C%20Calif.,of%20Housing%20and%20Urban%20Development.
[5] Ohanian, Lee. “Only in San Francisco: $61,000 Tents and $350,000 Public Toilets.” Hoover, 9 Mar. 2021, www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-tents-and-350000-public-toilets.
[6] Mabhala, Mzwandile., et al. “Homelessness Is Socially Created: Cluster Analysis of Social Determinants of Homelessness (SODH) in North West England in 2020.” MDPI, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/6/3066.
[7] “The Physics of Homelessness.” Act for Libraries, www.actforlibraries.org/the-physics-of-homelessness.
[8] San Diego Housing Commission. “City of San Diego’s Homeless Shelters and Services Program.” SDHC, 18 Oct. 2022, www.sdhc.org/homelessness-solutions/city-homeless-shelters-services.
[9] Storage Centers | Homelessness Strategies and Solutions | City of San Diego Official Website. www.sandiego.gov/homelessness-strategies-and-solutions/services/storage-centers.
[10] Lichter, Daniel T, and Martha L Crowley. “American Attitudes about Poverty and the Poor .” PRB, 30 May 2002, https://www.prb.org/resources/american-attitudes-about-poverty-and-the-poor/#.
[11] Scheide, R.V. “Is Redding Cruel and Unusual?.” A News Cafe, 14 Jan. 2019, www.anewscafe.com/2019/01/14/redding/is-redding-cruel-and-unusual.
[12] Korte, Lara, and Jeremy B. White. “Rising Homelessness Is Tearing California Cities Apart.” Politico, 21 Sept. 2022, www.politico.com/news/2022/09/21/california-authorities-uproot-homeless-people-00057868.
[13] Garrow, Eve., et. al., “Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People.” ACLU, Oct. 2021, www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/outsidethelaw-aclufdnsca-report.pdf.
[14] Beam, ADAM, and Janie Har. “California's Newsom Pauses $1B in Homelessness Spending.” OPB, 3 Nov. 2022, https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/03/california-governor-newsom-pauses-1-billion-homelessness-spending/.
[15] Dawson, Danielle, and Cody Dulaney. “San Diego Police Increase Homeless Arrests as Shelters Grow.” Inewsource, 2 Dec. 2022, https://inewsource.org/2022/06/10/san-diego-homeless-arrests/.
[16] Levin, Sam. “As Police Crack down on Homelessness, Unhoused End up in Mojave Desert.” The Guardian, 18 July 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/18/california-homelessness-crisis-mojave-desert.
[17] Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. “2022 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count - Los Angeles Continuum of Care.” LAHSA, 7 Sept. 2022, https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=6505-coc-hc2022-data-summary.
[18] de Sousa, Tanya, et al. “The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress.” HUD User, The US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Dec. 2022, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-AHAR-Part-1.pdf.
[19] Kilduff, Lillian. “How Poverty in the United States Is Measured and Why It Matters.” PRB, 31 Jan. 2022, www.prb.org/resources/how-poverty-in-the-united-states-is-measured-and-why-it-matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment