It seems that both sides are realizing that leniency toward public encampments is not a compassionate policy.
Homeless encampments aren’t good for anyone, especially the residents. Politicians on both sides are starting to catch on. A bipartisan coalition of state politicians is seeking to overturn a slew of lower-court decisions that “have protected the civil rights of homeless individuals” (translated: have prevented the use of executive force to remove residents from homeless encampments). As reported by the New York Times:
In a surge of legal briefs this week, frustrated leaders from across the political spectrum, including the liberal governor of California and right-wing state legislators in Arizona, charged that homeless encampments were turning their public spaces into pits of squalor, and asked the Supreme Court to revisit lower court decisions that they say have hobbled their ability to bring these camps under control.
How did we get those lower-court decisions in the first place? It seems to me they arose primarily from misplaced compassion. The oft-used narrative persuades a gentle heart: “They have nowhere else to go; can’t they at least stay somewhere without being forcefully removed?” The reality is a bit more complicated, as evidenced by the experience of Portland:
Many homeless people refuse help. . . .[A] Portland [legal] brief reported that about 75 percent of some 3,400 offers of shelter were turned down from last May to this July.
Ah, the mysteries of free will — but the refusal of shelter is often the choice of those living in encampments, and this choice has been protected by law:
The courts over the past five years have seriously hobbled [Portland’s] ability to force recalcitrant people out of tent camps and into supportive housing.
There are some cases in which an individual’s choice ought not be legally respected, especially if the individual is not of “sound mind,” which (according to Black’s Law Dictionary) means “having the ability to think, understand and reason for oneself.”
I am sure I do not need to detail the squalor, violence, drug abuse, and unsanitary conditions of a homeless encampment. Why is it kind to let anyone live in such a state? This especially holds true when one considers the prominence of mental-health problems and intellectual disabilities among the homeless population. Why is it so controversial to say that it is simply bad for a person to live inside a homeless encampment? Would not the more compassionate route be to move them (even if by force) into a shelter, a recovery program, or, at the very least, a designated camping area that contains health and sanitation resources?
If the answer to these questions is that state-run institutions are underfunded, oppressive, horrible places, my response is this: Shouldn’t we then focus on improving such institutions rather than disbanding them? Former Buckley fellow and current associate editor at City Journal, John Hirschauer, is an active advocate for saving and bettering such institutions. He has written and spoken extensively on the problems of deinstitutionalization.
While it is certainly true that many such institutions were rightly infamous as custodial centers of abuse 50 to 60 years back, the national aversion to institutionalization has remained, while the standards of care at the remaining centers have improved exponentially. Ghosts of past horrors continue to fuel efforts of activist groups to shut down the remaining institutions in the U.S. In a conversation with Hirschauer, Brian Anderson, editor of City Journal, summarized the problem thus:
When the mental asylum started being closed for real histories of abuse, the alternative often became homelessness on the streets. A significant part of our homelessness problem in this country is made up of mentally ill people who’ve been deinstitutionalized or never institutionalized. It’s a very significant problem and a human tragedy.
Of course, not all homeless individuals are mentally ill, but studies from homeless-assistance providers and advocacy groups (see here) show that the majority of chronically homeless people suffer from some kind of mental illness. It cannot be denied that the many who have such problems pose the greatest challenge to the communities trying to both provide care for them and uphold public-safety standards.
All in all, this is a hopeful post, as it seems that both sides are realizing that leniency toward public encampments is not a compassionate policy. Perhaps we are not so far away from a future where well-funded, well-run, medically sound centers can become a home for those with severe mental illness and nowhere else to go.