Kill the Homeless?
- Izaak David Diggs
- Aug 16, 2023
- 4 min read
The stories about Portland, Oregon having a problem with homeless people are true. My ex-wife and I owned a house in Lents near 92nd and Flavel which housed a huge homeless encampment. Conservative pundits enjoy pointing out how large “Blue” cities often have a homeless problem be it in Portland, Sacramento, or San Francisco because those towns offer more services to the homeless giving them incentive to continue living their lifestyle. Often the homeless will migrate to these cities because it is easier for them to get what they need. So, which path do you choose? Show the homeless compassion? Kill the homeless?
What conservative pundits tend to overlook is that quite a few homeless people have mental health issues and holding down a job is impossible. It could be something hard-wired into them like schitzophrenia or it could environmental, veterans with severe PTSD, for example. Conservatives don’t want to “coddle” the homeless, but they also do not want to pay to institutionalize those who need shelter, who cannot fend for themselves. To be fair, the Progressive policies aren’t working either. When I went back to Sacramento two years ago I was amazed at all the tarp shelters.
I’m not going to lie, I hate being panhandled. Back in Portland, I did not enjoy how sketchy some streets had become due to all the homeless people. Compassion is easy when you’re not tiptoeing past some sketchy, mentally ill person who reeks of feces and dirty clothes muttering to their imaginary enemies. But…compassion is the correct path. These people with mental health issues or drug problems, they need treatment, they need shelter. Now, some of the homeless are criminals, often they are low level drug dealers. Some choose being homeless as a lifestyle choice, for those two classes of homeless I do not believe compassion is warranted. You can build homeless shelters but a number of the homeless do not want to stay in them because those shelters have rules.
I’m going to pivot to the story of my parents. In their early 20s, they bought their first house in Sacramento, California. This was 1969 and my father was a social worker, that was their one income coming in and they were able to buy a house. Think that would happen today? Of course not. Either you live in a state like California where you make decent money but housing is incredibly expensive or you live in a state where housing is cheap (by comparison) but you make a lot less money. More and more people in this country are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, more and more people are living in vehicles. More and more of us are slipping into the margins. The enemy is not the person living in that tarp shelter nor is it the conservative pundit nor the Progressive written off as a “bleeding heart lib.” Follow the money, you will find our true adversary.
In the American Outback books I keep going back to the healing power of nature. Maybe we should buy rural land and start a farm, a farm with facilities to treat the mentally ill. The homeless would be provided tiny houses and would work the fields or with animals to earn their keep. It could be off grid. You invest in the land and the infrastructure on it, but in the long run it’d be cheaper than what the homeless are costing taxpayers in the cities. You’re creating jobs in the construction and medical sector, the homeless are raising their own food, it sounds like a positive solution all around. The idea is not to kill the homeless, but to kill the status of being homeless. Some people, myself included, have toyed with the idea of buying cheap, rural land and building an “off grid” house. The problem is there are very few areas where you can do that and even in those areas they are cracking down on houses because they do not meet code, not safety codes, they do not meet size requirements or they have composting toilets instead of septic. Those codes are ridiculous and should be scrapped. What about families that need to be in cities for work and school? Obviously, we need more subsidized housing—
What are you talking about, you crazy Lib? Do you want us to be taxed to death?
No, why should us working people shoulder an even bigger burden, be it Red or Blue people. We can solve most of the problems in our society by requiring the wealthy to pay more. Or, you could go real left field and give the wealthy a choice: Either be taxed more or throw in a couple hundred million towards subsidized housing and homeless farms and look like a big hero. No longer would Bezos and Musk be seen as these capricious plutocrats, they would be seen as 21st century Carniges. Think about it.
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