Shelter

On Tuesdays my brother, my cousin and I bicycle about 17 miles, some of them along a beautiful, tree-shaded greenway that follows Santa Rosa creek. That puts us cheek-by-jowl with homeless people, who also love the bubbling creek. We say hello and talk about safe topics.

In a fine op-ed piece in our local newspaper, Jason Tauches laid out why the homeless camp out along the semi-wild creek. Sonoma County provides enough public services to help about 20% of its 4,000 homeless.  The others often camp near the creek with a few friends. That's not legal. Every few days the police cite them, and we see the homeless moving to another partly hidden site. Or they go to trial and end up in jail for a few days. When they get out, their sleeping bags have vanished, their friends are hard to locate, and they need a tree to sleep under that evening. In short, our solution to homelessness is to drive these people from one grove of trees to another, confiscate their gear and jail them from time to time.

That solution is, needless to say, expensive. The cost of police time, court time, public defender time, jail time, etc., is roughly ten times what it would cost to house these humans as they do in Europe. But there's a catch. Providing shelter for the American homeless would not adequately punish them for their mental illnesses, bad luck, physical failings, low wages (some have jobs), etc. We pay ten times as much for a chance to sock it to them.