The Homeless "Crisis"

Ever try to offer a job raking leaves or yard clean-up to a guy holding a “Will Work For Food” sign at an off-ramp?

Time was, it was a shameful existence—this “homeless” crap. The “campers” were ashamed of themselves, and polite society didn’t tolerate such behavior. Ran ‘em out of town if necessary. Ought to be that way again, and I’m not really interested in any alternative opinion. Just not interested.

The homeless problem, or crisis if you like that better, has been misdiagnosed. This isn’t a problem of a larger homeless population than we have had in the past. There were just as many of these drugged, alcoholic, lazy, incompetent, criminal, thieving panhandlers in the past.

But, like I said, they’re no longer ashamed of themselves, and we forgot how to run them out of town.

You almost never see a homeless encampment on private property. In this country, we still have control over the use of our privately held property (mostly……….mostly). Homeless guy pops up a tent on your front lawn, you get rid of him in a manner of your choosing or call your local sworn protectors for a little assistance. Trespassing, and all that.

The courts have been falling all over themselves of late to grant homeless encampments the right to put up tents, shit on the sidewalks, destroy public parks, and in every possible manner make a mess of things. You might want to call this a “quality of life” crime. And if you might not want to, I might.

Now, I have defined the problem. It’s not a homeless problem. It’s a problem with the courts (and some politicians) running roughshod over the intended use of publicly owned property. The problem is that public entities own property.

I bet you can guess where this is headed.

Take San Francisco or Portland as an example. If the city arbitrarily decided to cede all of their publicly owned property (other than roadways, office buildings, and such that are needed to conduct the people’s business) to private owners, the private owners could get rid of the homeless encampments.

Give the curb, gutter, and sidewalks to the privately owned businesses that sit at that location. It’s no longer a public area. The owner of the property can now decide it’s use. Sell the public parks to Amazon. Amazon can probably figure out a way to make a profit at those parks, and get rid of the homeless encampments at the same time. You already can’t use the parks due to the druggies and homeless who are there, so there’s no loss to the taxpayers.

That’s my plan. Take property out of the hands of public entities and put property into the hands of tax paying citizens. See if that doesn’t shake things up.

Oh. And make panhandling a crime again. A misdemeanor. Same with adults wearing masks in public on any day other than Halloween. Throw people in jail for shitting on the sidewalk. There’s no problem here that we can’t incarcerate our way out of.