A Letter to Sacramento County Supervisors about Homelessness

 

Dear Public Servants,

I recently attended one of Supervisor Rodriguez's public meetings and was nonplussed by the way she spoke about homeless people. To her (and her accompanying policeman), homelessness is a "choice," driven by mental illness or addiction.

On the other hand, recent surveys of the homeless population say that the number one cause of homelessness is that they are too poor to afford rent, as the following graph amply demonstrates.

 

Truth be told, there are more empty homes than homeless in the US--five times San Francisco's homeless population! Is there any discussion of doing what Vancouver (B.C., Canada) did successfully, enacting a vacant home tax to discourage investors from buying homes and leaving them vacant to artificially curtail the supply of housing? Not that I've heard.

There are some signs of progress in addressing the lack of affordable housing--the Beech Hill Apartments on Beech and Greenback in my neighborhood, for one, but these are slow to appear. And the narrative that says homelessness is the result of some shortage of housing, or a "choice" by the people, or mental illness, or addiction, doesn't help.

Evicting homeless populations from their camps and/or criminalizing homelessness are the County's responses. Even worse are the moves to incarcerate people for the crime of being poor. The County Jail is full, true, but 60% - 80% of its prisoners aren't convicted of anything except being too poor to afford bail. Any discussion of no cash bail or supervised release? Not that I can detect. 

Incidentally, the US and the Philippines are the only countries on earth that require cash bail, and both Illinois and Washington, D.C. have successful no-cash bail programs.

So...are they really mentally ill/addicted? Really? 

Even our response to addiction is misdirected. Here's a video entitled "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong." 

 

 

 

I encourage you to view it and take it to heart. Sacramento County's management of homelessness and addiction needs to make a U-turn.

Your Constituent,

Mark Dempsey