Who are the Homeless?

from Pictures of a Gone City by Richard A. Walker

    John Donne's Meditation XVII makes his case for us all being in this together.  "No man is an island entire of itself," he wrote, and "any man's death diminishes me,/because I am involved in mankind."  Alameda's special election April 9 will show whether the "Island City" thinks Donne's words apply to us, despite our surrounding waters.

    The issues on the ballot are to approve Measure A, which creates a Wellness Center providing services to the poor and elderly; or B, which precludes the center out of concern that the homeless would swarm across the drawbridges and overwhelm our little island, if word gets out that we're a place where they can get warm and dry.  The only cause for homelessness that many B supporters acknowledge is substance abuse, which makes them people to avoid.  But in my experience there's another factor to consider: higher education.

    Last November I learned that one of the students in the Computer Science class I teach at San Francisco State was living in his car.  For study time, he relies on the library staying open 24 × 7.  He's far from being the worse off; other stake out spots under the luxurious campus shrubbery.  And SF State is no outlier in California. According to Michael Greenberg in his 1/17/19 essay in the New York Review of Books called "California in Crisis," a UC Irvine professor estimates that fully 10% of his students live in their cars.

    How many of those who lost their homes say it was because of money issues, such as college students who can't afford their education?  58% according to Richard A. Walker, Professor Emeritus of Geography at UC Berkeley, in his 2018 book about the SF Bay Area called Pictures of a Gone City.  Mental health issues are in 2nd place at 14%, substance abuse in 5th at 10%.  48% would not be homeless if they had rent assistance.

    The subtitle of Walker's book is Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it's about life in a megalopolis where worlds collide: we have the highest density of billionaires on the planet, and a level of inequality on a par with Guatemala.  The collision is especially violent when it comes to housing.  As throughout California, the effect of property tax laws and zoning restrictions is to maximize home prices.  Great if you have a mortgage you can afford, not so hot if you're forced out to live in your car or on the streets.

    But it must be acknowledged that some of the homeless really are mentally ill substance abusers, and seeing someone on the sidewalk shooting up, or arguing with his demons, is a glimpse into a deep circle of hell. But if the goal is to minimize public expenditures, remember that we all ready pay an exorbitant price for the homeless services provided by courts, jails, prisons, the police, and hospital emergency rooms. From harrowing first hand experience, I can tell you that an addict could be in out of county jail 5 times a year, with attendant court hearings and police encounters.  My guesstimate is that the cost was more than an average Bay Area mortgage.

    The Wellness Center would have been far cheaper, but those costs would be borne by everyone, while the benefit of making the homeless invisible in Alameda would flow to property owners.  But even assuming Alameda's goal is simply to maximize housing prices, refusing services to the homeless may not be good policy.  The problem is that it's a popular approach throughout the Bay Area, and our region is quite a reputation for being heartless.  Which isn't good for real-estate prices either.  Who wants to live in the land of the selfish creeps?  There's always the risk that your daughter may come home from high school after encountering John Donne, and start giving you searching looks.

MEDITATION XVII

by John Donne

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.