On homelessness

I'm sure anybody who lives within a three-block radius of me has noticed this at some point within the last six months: on at least 95% of days, one can expect to see at least one panhandler between one street and the next, particularly in the region between Durant Ave and Dwight or so. On some occassion, one might be treated to the delight of not one, but three different downtrodden individuals in the same half city block, all begging them to spare a few coins or perhaps food or drugs. While some of these may truly be those who have fallen on hard times and have no other recourse, others are little more than young, shiftless drifters, living in unseemly packs of three or four with a mangy dog or two, living from bong hit to bong hit. (I hope you can tell by this point which one I'm rooting for.)

This city has long been reluctant to do anything about its vagrancy problem, an issue few organized groups apart from Cal Patriot writers have been keen enough to point out. (the remaining 99% of politically minded campus activists generally split imagining a problem with campus diversity and pretending to be doing something about it.) Among the arguments in favor of these wanderers is that they somehow give the city a unique character, that just by sitting about in all their ugliness, they somehow make a positive contribution to town culture.

No logic or reason, let alone sense of empathy, can be construed to support that argument. There is no compassion, only cruelty, in letting these people rot away in their disease-infested blankets simply for the upkeep of the city's "character". What with all the attention being paid towards breaching the Constitution (i.e. impeding basic military functions) and other extrajursidictional things by our esteemed mayor and city council, one wonders how much of that effort could be shifted towards building some sort of facility for the socialization of the homeless population here. I'm talking about a housing unit with strict tenancy limits and a job placement office, combined with tougher laws keeping additional vagrants from staking their claim in the city. If the city government cannot even take an initial tep to addressing this issue, and insists on acting on personal opinions regarding matters far removed from its influence, then it does not deserve its authority.