I live in NYC and I see homeless people every day, and I don’t know what lawmakers expect from them. Our lawmakers make legislation that essentially criminalizes being homeless, but being put behind bars repeatedly for small infractions makes it impossible for them to hold down a minimum wage job. Consider this scenario.
Jane has been living paycheck to paycheck and is behind on her rent when her employer downsizes and she’s out of a job. She misses a paycheck and is evicted from her apartment because the landlord feels she’s fallen too far behind to ever catch up. Now Jane is homeless and looking for a new job. Shelters have waiting lists, and the better/safer the shelter, the longer the list. Rolling the dice and running the risk of being assaulted or robbed in an unsafe shelter is an option, but the weather is decent, so Jane decides to take a chance on the street. She uses a friend’s address on her job applications and lands an interview which leads to a new minimum wage job. She needs to save up a few paychecks before she can afford the first month, last month, and security deposit, but she’s getting by, hitting the local soup kitchens and dumpster diving for food while sleeping on the subway, on bus stop benches, in the park, etc.
The police fine Jane for sleeping on a park bench — $250 for being in the park after closing time. She obviously can’t pay it because she’s saving up for a place to live, and then Jane gets another ticket elsewhere in the city for sleeping on the subway or peeing in an alley, but this time there’s a warrant for her arrest since she failed to pay her first fine. She’s taken to jail and can’t post bond and has to wait until her case is heard in front of a judge. Meanwhile, she loses her job and has $750 in fines and court costs to cover once she’s free again.
How exactly do we expect Jane to get on her feet without major assistance from social programs who see their budgets slashed every year by the federal government?
The government finds creative ways to cut funding for shelters and welfare programs every year. There are always more homeless than there are beds in shelters and lawmakers want to give fewer and fewer funds to support the less fortunate with every budget discussion. It costs taxpayers less money to provide food, shelter, healthcare, and job training to homeless people than it costs to continuously cycle them through the judicial and penal system, but we’d rather punish people for being homeless than “give a handout” to people who desperately need help.
But how exactly do we expect homeless people to just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life? It’s hard to get a job without a place to live and you can’t pay for a place to live without a job. People have to sleep, eat, and relieve themselves in order to live, but when you have no money to afford a place to do that, those functions are criminalized. The natural processes of your body are illegal because you don’t have enough money to afford to do them.
I’m a liberal socialist because this makes no sense to me. I see homeless people sleeping over subway grates in some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. People who routinely spend $35 for one lunch draft legislation to cut budgets for soup kitchens that can feed fifty people for less money than that. Your worth as a person should not be contingent upon your credit score, bank account, or 401K, and America has bought into this lie that rich people deserve to be rich, which means poor people deserve to be poor. And homeless people deserve to be homeless because of some character defect or flaw in their moral fiber which has forced them into homelessness, and their inability to rise above is confirmation of what terrible people they must be.
Most of the people in this country are less than three missed paychecks away from homelessness. Every homeless person you pass on the street *could be you* if the perfect set of financial catastrophes befell your life in quick succession. Think about the kind of safety net you’d wish existed if that were you begging for change, and keep those wishes in mind when you’re deciding which candidates to support for office.
Profound insight
Where are homeless people supposed to go?
Published
ugh 