Watching and reading news from other parts of the country, I’m reminded that homelessness is something we are grappling with at the local level, but it is really a national problem with national roots. How else do you explain that the same thing is repeated in city after city across this country?
And if it’s a national problem, it is something that is going to take national resources to address in more than band aid fashion.
The roots? Here are two suggestions.
• The dramatic rise in economic inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1960s.
• The impact of Reaganism and the decline in federal funding for mental health services and other “social safety net” services over the past four decades.
The decline in available community mental health services in Hawaii contributes not only to homelessness but also to the costs of imprisonment.
More communities are realizing that homelessness is a form of emergency that needs an emergency response. Now Congress has to get the message that local communities need federal resources they would be eligible for if this were a natural disaster like a hurricane or tsunami.
See: You can easily find lots of examples in recent news stories, but here are a few.
What Don’t We Understand About Homelessness in Portland?
Searching the stories of the homeless for meaning and understanding about how it happens
“State of Emergency”: Special Report on California’s Criminalization of Growing Homeless Encampments
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Meth.
Which really became a problem when the feds started pouring money into things like Green Harvest. “No more pakalolo? I can get meth quick and cheap.”
It’s hardly that simple. But anyone who decides to use meth because they have a hard time finding pakalolo is a goddamned fool and gets no sympathy from me.
Long ago, when i was practicing law, i represented a man locked up at Kaneohe. He had been charged with malicious destruction of a padded cell at the police lockup.
After several visits, the staff opened up to me, went to a closet and retrieved plagues and framed citations
honoring patients who had won awards for growing excellent produce at state fair.
The “mental hospital” was a farm that produced food for themselves and the market!
Staff at Kaneohe told me that the farm program was abandoned as unsuited to modern life.
Many “homeless” would have been living in mental institutions a generation ago, and at Kaneohe, they would have meaningful work as farmers.
But now they are thrown out on the streets and advised to take their meds.
Excellent article.
In my community, I would suggest that most of the homeless are mentally ill. Really Hawaii, America should be ashamed of this inhumanity.
Homelessness is falling in America overall, but rising in the big cities.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/10/17/homelessness-is-declining-in-america
So things are getting better AND worse.