THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

July 31, 2023 Rob Taylor

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

By Stan Avery

July 31, 2023

It is sad but true that our growing urban “homelessness” problem has no viable structural solution. Before my wife and I knew each other, we both spent ten years strategically homeless, in cities across America, as radical evangelists.

We kept clean, fed, warm and dry, sought no help from strangers or institutions, and our camps were discrete and immaculate.

Here is what we learned on the streets:

Homelessness is not the problem, it is only one consequence of the real problems, which do indeed have viable solutions, if we can find the societal resolve to enact real remedies. If we merely produce a plethora of modest domiciles to be made available for those who are migrating into urban areas with no resolve to provide for themselves, it will never work, so long as the homeless person remains domestically dysfunctional. After a while, the free shelter will be degraded, and the person will be back on the street. Trying to solve “homelessness” with structures is like someone discovering that we have a demographic suffering from insomnia and trying to fix it by building beds. They need a cure, not a cover.

The main problem is indigence. (Webster: “wanting, lacking or deficient in what is requisite.”) Things any indigent person might lack will vary widely; sanity, sobriety or industry; the most common disabler is addiction to drugs, alcohol or both. Some who are mentally unsound have become so through substance abuse. Regardless, it is a cruelty for society to abandon those who are dysfunctionally deranged, when an institution is their only hope for refuge. Some homeless are simply indolent in character, firmly disinterested in providing for themselves, so long as they can be sustained through the largess of government and private providence.

I must point out that there are indeed a small number of the homeless who are domestically adrift through no fault or decision of their own; elderly who lack the pension or progeny to sustain themselves; a poor family who migrates in response to promised employment, who get stuck with no home, and no way home, when the employment evaporates; and, too commonly, single moms left to their own devices by derelict dads. We have taken into our home here in Bandon more single moms than we can count, with a perfect record thus far of easily getting them on their feet and eventually launching into a hopeful future. These small demographics of the circumstantially homeless can and should be readily rescued by those of us who are able, whether public or private. For the vast majority, those who are homeless due to drugs, dereliction, or dissipation, as Reagan said, “The government is not the solution, the government is the problem.”

We have all noticed that these glaring problems, all labeled as “homelessness”, have been increasing exponentially in recent years, with some cities approaching terminal urban decay. San Francisco is not expected to recover for a generation. Some Portland sidewalks resemble a zombie movie. Seattle has squandered enough funds battling homelessness to provide a free home for every indigent person, yet the blight has only increased.

There are two reasons for this stunning failure of public policy; A variety of street drugs have been made legal and cheap, especially here in Oregon, which has created an accelerating Westward migration dwarfing that of the 1800s. Then, all constabulary standards against bad public behavior, such as intoxication, littering, trespassing, indecency, harassment and obstruction of public spaces have been effectively erased, and the police directed to “stand down”. What did those in power expect to happen? No prognosticator is needed to predict where such policies will lead. The result is death in the cities, and of the cities. The only solution is to return street drugs to being felonious, laws being enforced, and the circumstantially homeless being rescued.