Homelessness Update - Mail to the Supervisors

 

Dear public servants,

Supervisor Rosario's latest newsletter persists in describing homeless people as mentally ill and/or addicted. Yep, those are the "root causes" she's "tackling."

While I don't doubt homeless people include plenty of mentally ill and addicts--after all both the state and federal government closed the asylums without providing alternative housing, and homelessness itself induces a kind of PTSD--this ignores a significant "root cause" of homelessness entirely, and needlessly demonizes the homeless.

 

Consider, for example:

That's right poor people have been getting poorer.

 

...and although productivity has been rising, real wages haven't kept pace.

(from the National Office of Statistics)

...and rents have risen faster than real (inflation-adjusted) earnings.

Where's the call for rent support? Or for rent control? The County at least entertained the idea of a $2 billion jail expansion. If the County has that much money how about helping alleviate poverty by subsidizing rent?

Demonizing the homeless also justifies rousting them out of their encampments with police actions, and incarcerating them for petty theft, littering, trespassing, and the public health hazard of no port-a-potties (I've read the County actually prohibited volunteers from providing this last item). Subsidizing rent would be cheaper and more humane than expanding the jail.

Meanwhile, "more than 79% of Sacramento County’s jail population is in pretrial detention, awaiting their day in court. Advocates argue that implementing recent court rulings—such as In re Humphrey (2021), which requires judges to consider a defendant’s ability to pay when setting bail, and Welchen v. County of Sacramento (2022), which found the county’s bail schedule unconstitutional—could significantly reduce the jail population. (from here)

Also...

"... research overwhelmingly shows that criminalizing homelessness perpetuates the problem. It creates a cycle of arrest, incarceration, and release, without addressing root causes, such as economic inequality, inadequate mental health and addiction services and a lack of affordable housing." from here.

I'd encourage you to think of homelessness as primarily stemming from poverty rather than mental illness or addiction. Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) programs and job guarantees have worked in numerous locations, from West Sacramento to Stockton to Mississippi, etc. Please consider addressing the genuine root of the problem.

--Your constituent,

--Mark Dempsey