Homelessness, and Jails: The Cult of Vengeance

© by Mark Dempsey

The first rule of the Cult of Vengeance is the same as for Fight Club: Don’t talk about Fight Club. Don’t talk about the Cult of Vengeance either, and certainly never admit you’re a member, perhaps not even to yourself.

The Cult of Vengeance is a seldom-discussed part of our civic religion--the beliefs that bind our society together. It declares that people earn their circumstances. So the wealthy are, by the Cult’s lights, virtuous, while the poor and unfortunate have obviously offended some god, or force of nature and deserve their fate. Punishing them is really just giving them what they deserve. Meanwhile, those wealthy enough to be born on third base deserve to act like they hit a triple.

What can I say? It’s a cult, not science.

The Cult is particularly pernicious when public policy supports it. Sue Frost, my County Supervisor, says she agrees that the plight of the homeless is driven by public policies that include persecuting and evicting them from even the modest shelter they devise in our parks. Yet she recently wrote an editorial condemning the ninth circuit court of appeals for invalidating the County’s anti-camping ordinances. The court concluded the homeless qualify as part of the public entitled to use public spaces like parks.

Let’s grant that Ms. Frost has a tough job, providing public spaces for the entire public--even those whose feces and dirty needles are a health hazard. After conceding that public policy produced homelessness, she defended rousting the homeless out of parks, saying she's a good person despite that. She went on to cite her own charity, her belief in a god, and in the kind of merciful treatment that gives people second, third, and even fourth chances to redeem themselves.

But when it comes to public policy, the best she has to offer is criticism for that court decision. The County has never handled homelessness well, and has added 500 new beds for a homeless population that’s roughly 2,000 people larger this year.

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that Supervisor Sue can’t imagine providing porta-potties, or needle exchanges. Let’s even ignore that the Biblical injunction is not to forgive four times, it’s to forgive “seventy times seven” times, essentially treating people where they are, not where we would like them to be. Clearly she follows a different god.

What we really need to ask is whether the public would stand for a policy that, for just one example, picked up only 25% of the trash, leaving 75% to rot at the curb. I’d suggest that any place with enough spare cash to spend $89 million on an expanded jail -- as Sacramento County now proposes -- is less-than-motivated to make effective public policy dealing with the homeless, no matter how charitable are our individual policy makers. Only membership in the Cult of Vengeance could justify treating homeless people worse than we treat trash.

Enlightened self-interest that might motivate us to treat the homeless better since millions are no more than a bad disease or a mugging away from sleeping under a bridge. And other jurisdictions have demonstrated housing the homeless is actually cheaper than the costs of police and emergency room time. But the Cult of Vengeance deplores anything “free”... The poor and homelessness have obviously deserved their fate and must be punished! How else will they learn?

The Cult also justifies sweeping homelessness under the rug. As Ross Barkan says in the Baffler: “There is no need to remember the savage inequities that produce a society where a few individuals can amass billions while millions live in abject poverty. None of it is sustainable, but all of it can be forgotten.”

Ms. Frost suggests we “find a way to stop the drugs at our boarders [sic]” to deal with addiction that produces homelessness. That kind of dog whistle xenophobia sounds fair at first, but domestic firms like the Sackler family’s Purdue Pharma and its opioid products are among the worst actors here. How about removing the beam from our own eye before we pick the mote out of our neighbors? The Cult avoids acknowledging its own failings at all costs.

The opioid-producing Sacklers are not the first to try to make a buck by taking advantage of people. In 2007-8 Wall Street created homeless people with loan and foreclosure fraud. None of those Wall Street criminals are in jail either while we continue to harass and offer half baked solutions to those suffering from their actions. Perhaps its just my own Cult of Vengeance values speaking, but it does seem awfully unfair.

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Meanwhile, in Brazil, the favelas (we would call them homeless camps) have even worse public health concerns since people don’t just camp, they raise their families there. Picking up their trash is impossible because streets are too narrow for trucks. The response from the City of Curitiba: send trucks to offer to swap a bag of food for a bag of trash. Result: No more trash in the favela. Remember: Curitiba is much poorer than the U.S. and it still manages to make public resources available for its poor. Or would we rather have excuses? I know the Cult would!

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A few facts from a CURB / Decarcerate Sacramento email about that proposed $89 million jail expansion:

Why expand a jail system when crime is down? 3,600 people are held captive in Sacramento County’s two jails [and] the County’s own analysis shows that over the last 10 years there has been a 26% decrease in arrests, [a] 31% decrease in reported crime, and a 38% decrease in jail bookings.

In the past year, over 40,000 people were booked into the jails, which only have capacity for 4,000 people. This alone shows the cycle of mass incarceration that most often could be solved by providing people services like housing.

Jail expansion is an issue of racial equity. Nearly 40% of our jail population is Black, even though Black people make up roughly 12% of the County population. The jail system is racist.

[We could r]educe the 3,600 persons in jail today. (60% of whom who are awaiting trial) The majority of people in pre-trial detention are there because they cannot afford bail and they are poor. … Seattle and LA are leading the way in real diversion that keeps people out of the criminal legal system, which is costly, ineffective, and inhumane.

Sacramento County jails residents at double the rate of some of our neighboring counties. Why? What are they doing that we're not doing and how can we learn from their best practices?

The Sheriff's jail budget continues to grow at $250M while every other Department faces deep cuts, sometimes up to 15%. Why are we cutting services that prevent incarceration and prioritizing funding for jails?

Update: Tuesday, 11/5/19 at 3PM the Supervisors will consider that $89 million jail expansion.

Why not Elizabeth Warren?

Elizabeth Warren...in addition to having some ambiguity about whether Medicare for All is something she endorses...

• Says we need to “stand up to Assad”
• Supports the Venezuelan opposition
• Voted for and supports sanctions on Iran
• Voted to increase Trump’s military budget
• Says we need to “hold Assange accountable”
• Says supporting Israel is a “moral imperative”

Maybe they should also ask about her foreign policy ideas along with Medicare for all. She seems to be another Obama.

“Elizabeth Warren’s New Labor Plan Is Good. Bernie Sanders’ Is Better”
[Vice, via Naked Capitalism 10-7-19]

“Certainly, there is much for workers to celebrate in both Warren’s platform and what it says about the state of the American labor movement…. But declaring Warren’s labor plan “the most ambitious” of the 2020 campaign is a step too far. For all her talk of ‘big, structural change,’ Warren’s platform focuses on workers’ legal rights as individuals, rather than their rights as a collective. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ own labor plan, which issues a more fundamental challenge to the very essence of the American workplace by tackling at-will employment. The overwhelming majority of American workers are employed ‘at will,’ which means that they can be fired for basically any reason, regardless of performance on the job…. Sanders’s Workplace Democracy Plan, which he released in August , calls for the passage of ‘just cause’ legislation, which would prohibit employers from firing workers for anything other than their performance on the job. Warren’s plan leaves this fundamental imbalance untouched.”

For a more complete list of the differences between Warren & Sanders, see Nakedcapitalism.com

Homelessness

© by Mark Dempsey

One of my family members came to the end of her rope, living in her car in a cold out-of-state winter. She’s not evil, or an aggressive panhandler. In fact, she was employed as a bookkeeper until a DUI and other events prevented her from getting a job. Our family sent money, but she drank it up. She eventually found inexpensive housing, and Medicaid to treat the knock-on effects of her drinking. We believe she’s sober now, but can’t be certain. Meanwhile, the rest of the family attended Al-Anon meetings--Al Anon is AA for family members of alcoholics--and got something like a spiritual awakening as a consequence. I’d recommend Al Anon to anyone.

The U.S. currently has more vacant houses than homeless people, so homelessness exists as a matter of public policy, not some economic shortfall, or a moral failing of the homeless themselves. The U.S. epidemic of homelessness actually began when the Kennedy administration decided to close the large “One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo’s-Nest” Federal institutions, substituting smaller, transitional housing within communities. In California, then-Governor Ronald Reagan also closed or scaled back funding for California’s large asylums besides cutting HUD’s affordable housing budget by 75% when he was president.

Then these government entities betrayed the mentally ill, not funding the transitional housing. Daniel Patrick Moynihan condemned it as the most shameful episode in his life of public service. Meanwhile, mentally ill people were effectively dumped on the streets. No, not all homeless are mentally ill, but this betrayal was a start for the problem.

Any population is going to have a certain portion of deviants, mental illness, and addiction. A recent Scientific American reports that deviants are a larger portion of families of the truly innovative and creative thinkers too, so the idea of simply eliminating them is counter-productive, never mind inhumane.

The real question is how we’re going to manage deviance. So far, sweeping the problem under the rug seems to be the preferred solution. My County Supervisor (Sue Frost) recently wrote to praise the effects of anti-camping ordinances, as though we can prevent mental illness and the financial abuse that evicts people from their homes by denying the victims whatever modest refuge they have managed to scrape together. This is not only heartless, it’s ineffective, and far more expensive than the actual remedies.

But the American cult of vengeance will have its pound of flesh, insisting with medieval logic that homeless people have deserved their punishment. Incarcerating people for the crime of poverty is commonplace now, too. With only five percent of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners, the U.S. leads the world in incarceration. In per-capita terms, that figure is seven times more than the demographically-identical Canadians. So...does Canada have seven times more crime than the U.S? Answer: no; about the same.

Incarceration is not a cure for addiction, either, nor does it “scare addicts straight.” Actual medical treatment (rehab) has much better outcomes and is about one seventh the cost of incarceration.

The U.S. leads the world in medieval thinking, dealing with our population’s illnesses by funding punishments rather than treatment. One has to ask who the real crazy people are here, the homeless or the upstanding citizens who believe punishment cures illness. What’s next, jail time for diabetes?

Several communities have discovered that it’s actually cheaper to provide homes for such people rather than to use police to evict them from their camps, and emergency rooms to treat their illnesses. Finland has actually reduced its homeless population significantly with this “housing first” policy. We can do it too. Let’s.

The real tortoise and hare...

From Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

By David Epstein


“...learning itself is best done slowly to accumulate lasting knowledge, even when that means performing poorly on tests of immediate progress. That is, the most effective learning looks inefficient; it looks like falling behind.” p.11


“...it is difficult to accept that the best learning road is slow, and that doing poorly now is essential for better performance later. It is so deeply counterintuitive that it fools the learners themselves, both about their own progress and their teachers’ skill.” p.90


“A mind kept wide open will take something from every new experience.” p. 153

Epstein also recommends Robin Hogarth’s Educating Intuition

At the root of poverty: Government Austerity

© by Mark Dempsey

The lament that the poor have been getting poorer while the rich Hoover up all the wealth is a commonplace. (See Jeff vonKaenel's recent SN&R editorial, for one example) David Cay Johnston summarizes the situation this way: Since 1972, the bottom 90% have seen an increase in their real, median income of $59. If that were an inch on a bar graph, the top ten percent's increase would be a bar 141 feet high. The top 0.1% would have a bar five miles high.

Press attention has lately been focused on Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax as a remedy--something that echoes Bernie Sanders' proposal of five years ago. But that is not the whole story, and there’s sure to be a fight about any tax increase.

A bigger problem is the way government spending has succumbed to the austerity bug over the past few decades. To appreciate how modest is our government’s spending, “in 2010 ...the average [government spending] for the world's 20 largest economies (in terms of GDP) was $16,110 per person. Norway and Sweden expended the most at $40,908 and $26,760 per capita respectively. The federal government of the United States spent $11,041 per person.” (Wikipedia, citing the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation as their sources). So the U.S. is roughly 32% below the average for large economies.

Counting government spending as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks forty-fifth among nations, even without adjusting for its much larger military spending. For that, the U.S. spends 50% more than its nearest military rival, China, as a portion of GDP, but if one reduces calculated government spending by a modest 11% to make the U.S. comparable to other nations, our  government spends roughly the same portion of GDP as Namibia does. So there’s no need to wonder why U.S. infrastructure is third rate and third world.

The campaign to delegitimize collective action has been succeeding, in spades. Rather than the extremely modest, Namibia-like spending, most people believe the U.S. spends “like a drunken sailor,” but the truth is that spending, relative to the size of the U.S. economy, is not just modest, it is third-world modest.

And this has impacts throughout the economy. Not among the rich--they have private parks, schools, transportation, and so on. It’s the poor who suffer the most from a depleted public realm. For just one more example, Federal spending on higher education has declined 55% since 1972. No need to wonder why tuition has increased, and student debts now are second only to mortgages as a burden on the economy.

Perhaps most frustrating is the way our public policy makers say they cannot help the poor even as they shovel money out for bank bailouts ($16 - $29 trillion, says the Federal Reserve’s own audit for 2007-8) and wars in the Middle East ($3 - $7 trillion, says Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz). The attack on social safety nets continues unabated, sending the clear message: “You poor people had better take whatever crappy job is on offer, or suffer the indignities of poverty, even homelessness and starvation.” Government spending on banks and wars indicates this is not only cruel, it’s unnecessary.

What Kind of Development Would Actually Improve Davis?

© by Mark Dempsey

The Davis Vanguard recently published Davis Teeters with an Unsustainable Economic and Fiscal Situation, describing the difficulty in getting sustainable, good development, and the good jobs that accompany it, in the nearby University town, Davis. There, elected officials and the voting public often reject development proposals from the city's largest employer, the University of California, and even those proposed by environmentally friendly developers like Mike Corbett.

As one consequence, residents often commute to nearby Sacramento and Woodland since they can't get good-paying local jobs. And those employed locally are often not paid enough to live in Davis, so they have to commute too. Just the traffic congestion generated by this arrangement is enough to make one question it, but it's clearly less-than-optimum in many respects.

To me, it looks like Davis public policy makers and voters have succumbed to the dark side of environmentalism, consistently choosing a mirage of sustainability over profitable, environmentally-friendly development. Limiting development as they have is not really a favor for the environment since everyone has to commute (and pollute), and, when done correctly, environmentally-friendly development can be more valuable, and even more profitable, than business as usual.

Environmentalists harm their own cause when they blindly oppose development. The worst say things like "let's just make this proposed development into a park." Developers could, but do not answer "OK, we'll make this parcel into a park, and your bank account into my retirement money..." to the environmentalists.

Primed by community meetings that seldom discuss costs and consequences, naive "environmentalists" making such one-sided requests is a commonplace. Perhaps the worst example I witnessed was a woman in a Sacramento County transportation planning meeting who asked the county to build a subway from near her suburban house to near her job downtown. It's an understatement to say a subway would be handy for her commute, but it would be prohibitively expensive.

To be economically feasible, transit requires enough riders be within a comfortable walk of the stops, proportional to the expense of the transit. Bus and light rail require at least 11 units per acre (a little more than duplexes), but a subway is not viable in neighborhoods with less than 30 units per acre (three story apartments). The woman lived in suburban Carmichael--a location that did not qualify for even viable, unsubsidized bus transit.

So how can Davis, and other cities, reconcile economics and environmental responsibility?

1. Revise the Civic Design Process - Zoning practice common throughout California designates parcels by use (residential, commercial, etc.), often decades in advance of actual development. California's cities could designate development intensity instead, and let the market sort out what use works when building actually occurs. This is called "form-based" (as opposed to "use-based") zoning. Hercules, California, and McKinney Texas among other towns employ this planning method, so Davis would not have to reinvent the wheel.

Form-based planning is simpler, and less prone to arbitrary changes (rezones). At the height of the housing bubble in 2004, 35,000 acres in the region were proposed for rezone. A plan that requires so many changes is barely a suggestion, not a plan. The arbitrary susceptibility to rezoning stokes voters' suspicions about development, and requires unnecessarily expensive revamps of infrastructure not suited to the final development intensity, too.

2. Quash Land Speculation - Land speculation is perhaps the sorest subject in all of California's civic design process. Speculators can purchase--or, more likely option--outlying agricultural land for a few thousand dollars an acre, then, once they receive the entitlement to develop it more intensely, sell it to builders for 50 - 100 times more than they paid for it. That 5,000% - 10,000% profit remains immune to even income tax, too, if they exchange that development-approved real estate for income-producing property.

This dynamic also means speculators try to develop the worst possible land--one example would be the floodplain called "North Natomas"--because it is even cheaper to purchase and consequently more profitable. Never mind the invitation to corruption this offers local governments, the final product of such speculation is often a less-than-desirable mess. North Natomas residents were recently informed they would have to pay even more to shore up the pre-Katrina levees that protect them from flooding, for just one example.

 Is there an alternative? Yes! In Germany, the developers have to sell the outlying land to the local government at the agricultural land price, then re-purchase it at the upzoned price. Not only does this discourage sprawling, commute-extending, edge-city development, it means all of that enormous profit--called the "unearned increment"--accrues to the benefit of the public, not the developers' bank accounts. And Germany has a very nice public realm, too. It has excellent infrastructure, free college tuition even for foreigners, and the arts budget for just the City of Berlin exceeds the National Endowment for the Arts for the United States of America.

So what kind of development should Davis encourage?

1. Include Social Justice - Social justice considerations should guide development. This means "inclusionary zoning" that requires builders to build low-cost housing as a certain percentage of their development. It also means building more compactly, at transit-friendy densities, since the same amount of land can house more people. The trouble with good development is that it tends to gentrify, removing lower income residents gradually, so policy makers must take care to avoid that.

2. Mandate Mixed-Use - In the nicest neighborhoods, one can go to work, shop or eat after walking or biking from one's residence. The idea of building sprawl (single use) is an environmental non-starter that mandates a) everyone must own an auto, and b) everyone must commute to every significant destination. Simply mixing commerce, offices and even light industry within residential areas cuts congestion, and when done properly can even cut vehicle miles traveled by one to two thirds.

3. Mandate Pedestrian- and Bicycle-Friendly Street design - Streets that invite all kinds of access--called "Complete Streets"--are now the standard for all new development in California. Davis can model how to integrate these into the community.

4. Start a Public Bank - It's common for half the cost of large projects to be financing, just as two thirds of mortgage payments are interest. With a public "Bank of Davis," this profit could be recycled into the community, rather than being sent to Wall Street. The state just authorized local and regional public banking, so such an institution could be a win for both innovative developers who cannot find financing from conventional sources, and for the City itself as an additional revenue stream.

In short, Davis needs to encourage and finance pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use, mixed income neighborhoods. This means increasing the number of multi-family units, perhaps even building residences over retail in shopping centers, until it achieves transit friendly densities (11 units per acre or more).

What it does not mean is requiring builders and developers to give away the store. In fact, market acceptance for such development is very good. People pay premiums to live in such neighborhoods, and "Lifestyle Centers" that mix residences within shopping centers report as much as 50% more income per square foot as conventional, single-use commerce. This means builders would be building something valuable, not just something profitable.

One final note of caution: low-density, sprawling development is the epitome of what is unsustainable in civic design. It's more than twice as expensive to maintain its infrastructure compared to more compact development, and California's tax policy does nothing to help, since residential neighborhoods cannot pay enough in taxes to cover the expenses for their schools and infrastructure right now.

Davis has a unique opportunity to revise its development practices so that enlightened planning guides environmentally-friendly building. This could be a beacon of hope to the rest of the state. It would also set an example for how enlightened public policy can provide what is both profitable and environmentally sound.

The best Bernie ad of 2020