I'd like to criticize just two more things about the Western Journal; they gave so much fuel last time that I simply couldn't get to it all.
https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/06/seeing-portland.html
For the first one, I am going to give a point back to Mellencamp (who needs it):
Mellencamp, even though he names Portland, implies the homeless situation is more of an American problem. He is right, in that we are called to help those less fortunate than us. Despite the line repeated in the chorus of his song, “Your tears and prayers won’t help the homeless,” prayer is what many of the homeless need most.
Prayer can be something to do when you have no power over a situation, but it works better as a way of gaining instruction, and will to action. What the homeless need most is shelter, support, resources, and work toward ending the situations where inflated incomes keep raising property prices and rents, and where that desire for more and more causes those people who already have plenty to invest in properties that they keep empty or build storage facilities as tax shelters.
As quickly as the Western Journal admits that we are called to help, they quickly decry those who do help.
They do nonetheless provide an example of an option separate from prayer:
In California, at least one mayor has tried a different approach with great results. Republican Mayor Richard Bailey of Coronado has stamped out urban blight by simply enforcing the existing codes on the books preventing public camping and other misbehaviors.
It is true that Bailey is holding himself up as an example of a tough approach working. There are two problems with that.
One is a problem of scale. In 2020, Coronado dealt with 16 homeless people, down to 1 two years later.
Some of those low numbers relate to the relative isolation of Coronado, which as a town itself has a low population. They are not likely to get a lot of people heading their way.
However, when they do encounter a homeless person, they may just send them to nearby San Diego.
Multnomah County has about 2610, a decrease of about 500 over a year. They will sometimes help people get sent to other cities, if those people have support networks in those cities, but moving homeless people from place to place is not practical or humane.
The most successful programs are those that get people into housing. They also save money.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/11/16/utahs-housing-first-model/
There are people who don't like it, because somehow we have gotten it into our heads that it is wrong to give people things, but if we look at the issues that lead to the economic inequality, we need to be thinking more about our responsibility to each other, and the flaws inherent in unbridled capitalism.
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