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Justice can not be evaded forever, even southeast of the 55.
Well, it’s about time. As Santa Ana, Anaheim, and to a lesser degree other north County cities have been jumping through hoops trying to do their share to care for the exploding homeless population, striving to meet both their legal and moral duties, the wealthier cities of the South County (Irvine down southeast through San Clemente, with the noble exception of Laguna Beach) have done jack shit except thumb their nose at Judge Carter and whine that their “higher property values” should make them exempt from having to submit to any human blight, whether caring for the homeless or even seeing them.
These South County cities have even wondered aloud this past year if Judge Carter has any jurisdiction over them. Well, he does now, now that the five largest cities (Irvine, Aliso Viejo, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, and San Clemente) have been sued by the usual suspects (Weitzman, Sobel) on behalf of three new south county homeless plaintiffs; plus the Catholic Worker, San Clemente’s plucky “Emergency Shelter Coalition,” and my own “Housing is a Human Right.” Read the complaint here.
Sure, there are NIMBYs in Anaheim, Fullerton, Orange, and they raise a huge fuss whenever a shelter is proposed or an encampment is seen … but the south County cities take this to an extreme – NIMBY saturation, Peak NIMBY. I’ve described the OC in general (quoting my late mentor Gus Ayer) as a place of white flight dating back to LA’s Watts Riots, where frightened Caucasians flocked to hide from minorities and the poor. In that case, South County is OC’s OC – the Orange County of Orange County. The apotheosis of bourgeois entitlement, South County believes that through its luck and work it has earned the right to have no homeless within its borders, or to exile them elsewhere.
Actually, with their high housing prices and rents, South County is as responsible as the rest of us for our homelessness crisis – by the latest (very conservative) count 400 people, half of them from Irvine. Over the decades they have dealt with these folks by “dumping” them elsewhere in the county, mainly long-suffering Santa Ana. Judge Carter sternly put his foot down on that practice last year, with dire warnings.
A year ago when the riverbed was cleared and the 30-day motel stays were rapidly coming to a close, Supervisors Nelson and Do did their best to come up with the next temporary solution – clusters of large tent dwellings on County-owned land in Irvine, Huntington Beach, and Laguna Niguel. Then-Supervisor (now DA) Todd Spitzer, in one of his most deplorable episodes, immediately undertook a fearmongering tour of those three towns, FALSELY claiming that the homeless who would be temporarily sheltered there would include many “sex offenders” and miscellaneous violent felons, and successfully whipping up popular paranoia so that his spineless colleagues Michelle Steel and Lisa Bartlett joined him in outvoting Nelson and Do.
Meanwhile some entity called “We Irvine” sent a mob of 600 Chinese-American protesters up from Irvine to the next Board of Supervisors meeting, to rally against a “tent city” anywhere in Irvine. It was a crazy and disquieting sight, at least partly funded by Chinese-national investors in Irvine real estate, the same Chinese investors who have made a Veterans Cemetery impossible in that dysfunctional town, as they find dead soldiers equally as distasteful as homeless folks. The proposed site in the middle of the Imaginary Great Park was perfectly suitable – far from any homes or schools, close to transportation, and on an area properly zoned “SB2.” Even so, doting Olive Oyl-eyed Irvine Councilwoman Christina Shea, who had originally helped zone that area SB2 years ago, couldn’t remember that she had done that or why.
Under orders from Judge Carter (whose jurisdiction was still at the time at least partly in question) the South County cities now undertook to find a suitable location for a shelter in their general area. And with great fanfare they announced one – in Silverado! Wait, where? We’re going to need a new map, cuz Silverado sure ain’t on the one above…
As you can see, Silverado (population 2000, area code 92676) is nowhere NEAR any south OC town. It also has no government, so geniuses like our South County Mayors figured the people there could put up no resistance to having their population expanded by 400 homeless folks. But this plan was unacceptable in so many ways, to ANYONE who thought about it, that it just couldn’t have been serious. THIS IS THE KIND OF PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE RESISTANCE WE’VE BEEN GETTING FROM THE SOUTH COUNTY FOR A YEAR NOW.
If there exists an overgrown man-child with a whiney baby-voice THIS side of President Trump, it would have to be Trump’s big fan Don Wagner, Mayor of Irvine and current candidate for Third District Supervisor. Despite not having been sued yet, he did make it to a few of last year’s Carter-paloozas, sniffing that Irvine was doing all it could and had some “affordable housing” in the works – no help to Irvine folks who are destitute and unhoused NOW. Currently Wagner is running – with campaign funds from his kleptocratic backers – ubiquitous TV ads promising to ensure that “no homeless shelters will ever be built anywhere near people’s homes.” Well, given this lawsuit, that campaign promise of his is about as useless as his promise two years ago that he wanted to be Mayor of Irvine.
If you click here and read the 50-page complaint, you’ll thank me – it reads like a Dickens novel with never a dull moment. Pages 9-28 tell a concise history of our County’s feckless failures on this issue over the decades. Pages 33-35 tell the compelling stories of the three homeless plaintiffs. Particularly valuable is the section on “Hypothermia” beginning at page 5, which I’ll quote in full, and which may be of interest to my colleagues who doubt the connection between homelessness and early mortality:
[… Deaths of homeless people in Orange County rose to 210 in 2017, with at least one homeless person dying in nearly all of the 28 cities throughout Orange County. And although the statistics for 2018 are not yet complete, a recent report released by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department found that even more unhoused persons—about 250—died last year.
Based on the currently available numbers, homeless people died last year in all but one of the Defendant cities. The one exception is Aliso Viejo, which has the largest number of individuals who stayed at the ASL in Laguna Beach in 2017 other than residents of the City of Laguna Beach.
In a 2017 interview, CEO and Founder of the Illumination Foundation, Paul Leon, stated that his organization alone provided inpatient medical care to approximately 70 individuals who were living on the streets. Leon’s assessment was that 90 percent of that number would otherwise have died if they were still unsheltered and not living in the IF facility…]
Hypothermia
An estimated 700 unsheltered individuals die from exposure to the elements each winter across the country. Unsheltered individuals are at a high risk of developing life-threatening, exposure-related conditions such as hypothermia and frostbite in the winter and heat stroke in the summer. In addition to the immediate act, a person who experiences hypothermia or hyperthermia and recovers may, nonetheless, suffer lasting brain damage and impairment of other organs, leading to an increased risk of dying from unrelated health conditions in the future. For example, frostbite may result in the loss of blood flow to extremities, resulting in gangrene, a particular threat to individuals with circulatory issues and diabetes. https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/winter/staysafe/hypothermia.html.
Hypothermia occurs when a body loses heat faster than it creates it and body temperature falls below 95 Fahrenheit. Hypothermia is generally caused by prolonged exposure to cold weather, wearing clothes that inadequate to protect against weather conditions and the inability to get out of wet clothes and get to a warm, dry location. See https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseasesconditions/hypothermia/symptoms-causes/syc-20352682. Wet clothing causes a 20-fold increase in heat loss. See The Healthcare of Homeless Persons, A Manual of Communicable Diseases & Common Problems in Shelters & on the Streets, James J. O’Connell, M.D., Editor (2004). When body temperature drops, the heart, nervous system and other organs begin to fail and, if unresolved, may lead to death.
Individuals experiencing homelessness are already at greater risk of illness than the housed population. By some estimates, the number is three to six times greater risk of illness for unhoused individuals. www.nhchc.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/01/Dec2007HealingHands.pdf.
A report by the Mayo Clinic lists a number of factors for hypothermia, all but one of which puts many unhoused persons of greater risk of developing hypothermia. They include fatigue, older age, mental illness tha t may interfere with judgment, substance abuse that impairs judgment, diabetes and other medical conditions that impact the body’s ability to regulate its temperature, and some medicatins, including antidepressants, antipsychotics, pain medication and sedatives. Id. Environmental conditions become more of a threat when the individual has a preexisting infection or sepsis. The Healthcare of Homeless Personi, Part II, “Accidental Hypothermia and Frostbite,” p. 190-91.
Southern California cities, in particular, often tout the good weather here as a draw for persons experiencing homelessness around the country, even though no statistical evidence supports that assertion. Yet, even with our “good weather,” hypothermia is a very real threat when the temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this is a baseline temperature, both precipitation and wind will lower the effective temperature and create a risk of hypothermia even when the temperature is above 50 degrees. For example, if the temperature is 57 degrees with a wind of 15 mph, the effective temperature will be 53 degrees. See https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/windchillbody_txt.html. If, as recently is the case in Orange County, the night temperature drops to 37 degrees, a wind of 15
knots reduces the effective temperature to 28 degrees, well below freezing. Id.
These are the temperatures being experienced by unsheltered individuals in Orange County over the last several months. On February 17, 2019, the daytime temperatures in Irvine, Mission Viejo, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente, and Aliso Viejo were forecast to be around 56 degrees, with nighttime temperatures of 37-38, and winds of 10-20 knots. Orange County Register, 2/17/19, p. A17; Orange County Register, 2/21/19, p. A22. On February 21, 2019, the temperatures were one to two degrees lower throughout South County, while the winds remained the same. These temperatures are more than 10 degrees below normal, while rainfall for the month is already more than twice normal for this time of year. Id., 2/21/19, p. A22. For people experiencing homelessness, the risk of hypothermia or other serious illness is significantly increased.
The County recognizes the serious threat cold, windy and wet weather present to the unhoused. Because of the severe winter weather, Orange County opened the Santa Ana and Fullerton armories all day from Thursday, February 14 through Saturday morning, February 16 at 6 a.m, after which the armories will return to limited access hours from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.
When the National Weather Service issued an alert regarding severe cold temperatures, the County government issued a notice to people to protect their pets from the adverse effects of cold weather, including hypothermia.
Dana Point still life. (Photo by the Register’s Mindy Schauer)
Jones, and Boise. This lawsuit is alleging a lot, and asking a lot. But at the very least Carter should rule that these South County towns are the poster children for Jones and Boise – cities that have done NOTHING to shelter their homeless should be ordered clearly and specifically that they can NO LONGER criminalize those people, ticketing, jailing or removing them for simply existing in public space, whether night or day, sleeping or not.
Whenever this case gets to the courtroom, your Orange Juice Blog will be there covering it! See you there…
The La Palma Mayor, the Judge, the author, the legislator.
I’m going to continue to take a contrarian view on this. Space is limited in OC, and it is understandable that cities may not want to use it for homeless shelters. (Low-cost housing, which will still be out of reach for most homeless, is another matter.)
So I think that cities should be allowed to create overnight and inclement weather housing for homeless people outside of their borders. They should be allowed, at least to some extent, to “buy their way out of the problem.”
The issues are: “how much should they have to pay?” and “what should that money buy?” The answers are: “A LOT” and “high quality shelter and services, including free transit to and from OC.”
Judge Carter could give South County cities a choice: create adequate shelter for homeless within their borders, or create *superior* shelter for homeless beyond their borders, including commercial and residential development of the cities where they homeless will reside. So long as they are paying a reasonable amount for decent lives for the homeless elsewhere, and providing them with the opportunity to visit here, give them the pass.
Here, South OC, pick a sister city (populations are in parentheses) from the High Desert and work with them (and the county) to make a place for the homeless community a bit more livable:
Let’s pick on the least culpable city in South County, Aliso Viejo, as an example of how this might work. I’m provisionally going to assign them … Adelanto! (Land is a lot cheaper there, right?)
Frankly, Adelanto could use the help. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on its economy:
Aliso Elders will need to pay for shelter (“tiny houses” or better), INCLUDING both insulation and cooling (solar powered, of course), potable water, emergency services (probably a direct subsidy to the city would make the most sense there) and affordable food. I can picture an “Aliso Adelanto Market” (a Aliso owned low-end market that would serve the city generally, with homeless refugees being given scrip for purchases) and few Aliso-owned fast food places — again, with coupons for the homeless, to give them some sense of agency and choice — which would of course include “the Adelanto Arby’s.” (Currently one has to go to Hesperia or Victorville for … whatever Arby’s sells. Yes, this is EXACTLY why I assigned Adelanto to Aliso Viejo.)
Realistically, one might find homeless people living there four days a week and three days a week in shared affordable apartments in Aliso Viejo, where each person shares a spot in a four-person apartment to work either a Monday-through-Wednesday or Thursday-through-Saturday shift. Now you have two people contributing to each spot in an apartment in Aliso Viejo — making holding part time work there more possible — and neither of them are homeless. They’re just … commuters.
Or, if you don’t like this, then build/buy the properties and provide the amenities within your own borders. But frankly, this seems a lot closer to a plus-sum solution.
In other words, your position has evolved to agree with what has been proposed years ago :
“The right location is one with plenty of room to grow, where land is cheap. Make it a full services location, live in group homes to address specific problems, medical, rehab services, etc. Less expensive land and erect cement-sided buildings in one week. These people can be transported, processed and put right into the building for their specific needs/age group/gender.”
I’ll stop you halfway through your second sentence: Space is NOT (particularly) limited in Irvine.
While you’re working your way up the 395:
Manzanar (0)
Well done.
Did those sent to Manzanar really get transportation to and from home on demand? I did not know that!
(Neither did you.)
There’s enough you don’t know to make a whole new world.
Whereas you know almost everything there is to know in the world, including the fallacy of the excluded middle. You know everything about that — except that it’s a fallacy.
It’s nice to see you and Ryan on the “tax and expropriate” bandwagon. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.
Excluded middle? Now that’s funny.
Thanks also for the stupidest comment I’ve seen on a blog in 2019. How many hours did you waste finding out the populations of hick towns up and down State Route 395 that would somehow justify building a homeless concentration camp (with daily shuttle service to the beach)?
Pathetic, really. Congratulations. You’ve excelled yourself. Offering moronic ideas doesn’t count as problem solving so don’t wait for Judge carter to call.
Click this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
“False dilemma” is another term for the “excluded middle” fallacy. You should learn about it, if the concept is really foreign to you, which come to think of it I could easily believe.
You’re welcome. Thanks for being denser than plutonium.
P.S. to Vern: I lived primarily in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York from age 24-47, I know what cold winters are and I’ve seen victims of frostbite up close. The issue has never been whether just under two people per day die annually of frostbite — they do, and it probably is largely due to homelessness. The issues are (1) how often people die of frostbite in OC — more than “never,” I’d guess, but I doubt that it’s even one per year — and whether all of the other causes of death among homeless people (such as pneumonia) deserve to be attributed to homelessness.
The test would be something like “would these people’s lives have been saved if they lives in a structure but were unable to afford utilities (beyond the subsidence programs offered)?” For many, homelessness was likely a contributing factor. But people with lots of wear on them die of causes that would still be endangering them even if suddenly taken off of the streets. Some on the rolls of homeless deaths died of factors related to stress, for example; while being homeless is presumably stressful, so is being impoverished generally.
For those clueless bigoted individuals that have missed all the articles and the evidence based reports from UCI and the United Way and the world wide reports on the homeless including the fact based answers I guess this is the picture that they think will work…
Greg – Needles is the place for the camp.
We take them and put them in a far away camp. The trains await, we cram them in with buckets for excrement and piss, a LOT of buckets, in fact ½ buckets and ½ people if we want to be serious.
The little slits in the cargo cars let the people have some air and they can see where they are going if they stand on the bodies of those that succumb as the heat rises to life or death temperature.
Then when they arrive in Needles we open the train car doors and let the survivors out to see their new home. Many will have died but of “Contributing Factors” those with wear and tear on them at the beginning of the journey.
The schizophrenics among them can be directed to the suicide yard with big trees and plenty of nooses.
The drug addicts can mellow out in the rehab building where they will be tied up till they are drug free then released in the poppy fields.
The handicapped will have special “draggers” that will drag them to their appointed pits and thrown in – those that can crawl out will be allowed to live, those that can’t just stay in the pit. The more handicapped you are the shallower the pit the less handicapped you are the deeper the pit – and here is the money maker- to help pay for all this you can have a betting network that can lay down the odds on those handicapped scraping their way to the top or the pit.
The abused, beaten and bloody women that left their nice homes with their occasionally violent partners will be put to work where women should be working – in the kitchen.
The LGBTQ kids that were thrown out of their house and live on the streets need to be directed to conversion therapy camps where they torture you till you fuck pussy if you are a guy and suck dick if you are a girl. Girl/guys they just cut in half for experimental purposes.
Then there are those homeless that were just out of work and for them they enter the nice new camp and the entrance signs says “Work Will Make You Free”, simply enough.
Yes, because that’s the only possible way to do it — in a vile way.
This is what’s known as a “straw man,” FOF. If that’s the alternative, then it’s no alternative. But plenty of people have separate spaces where they work part of the week and live part of the week, and plenty of people move between them by bus, and plenty of those buses don’t have buckets of excrement but instead have air conditioning, etc.
Your evocation of the Holocaust is disgusting. What it shows me is that you have no real argument at all. I hope that someone does show this to Judge Carter so he can appreciate what lamebrains are staking out the far corners of the “homeless should be treated not simply fairly, but like honored guests” clan.
Arbeit Macht Frei. In Adelanto? Ridgecrest? Lone Pine? Next stop Manzanar!
They don’t HAVE to work. But we’re told that they WANT to work. So the South County sponsor city should make it possible.
I’m seriously glad to see that you oppose workfare. Big on support for AFDC, I presume? Or is it only for the poor who are homeless?
Sponsor city? What a cute idea! Laguna Niguel sends its homeless to Independence! Sherpa work up Mt. Whitney optional. Free bus tix for your holiday back to OC. Y’all come back now, hear?
Wow, your reading comprehension has totally gone to seed, It’s nice to know that you have to make up a different plan — sherpa work! — in order to mount an attack.
Read my answer to Ricardo, below, and let us all know if you’ve also forgotten everything you once knew about microeconomics.
I wasn’t aware of Greg’s change on this issue. This is what you wrote, Greg, in opposition to the similar stand (quoted in my comment above) you are now taking:
“The homeless have a right to travel: they don’t have to be relegated to Victorville or Norco or El Centro or Inyo County or wherever the next bright idea as a spot for exile might be. There are good reasons — proximity of jobs, proximity of family, proximity of cooler weather, and many more — why they might want to be in OC, and like everyone else they have the right to travel here. Arguably, they have the legal right to restroom facilities — the “right of necessity” — and if we believe in private property they even have a moral right to a place to keep and store their own belongings. And, finally, they have a right to a place where they can sleep. You can deny these rights if you want, but at some point, even if you jail them kidnap them to another distant community, you’re going to end up paying for it.”
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2015/09/ahead-of-sept-30-homelessness-forum-mercy-houses-larry-haynes-clarifies-remark-on-values/
Since that time, Ricardo, I’ve seen largely incoherent advocates for homelessness go nuts. Some examples:
– Supposedly smart conservatives support expenditures of money to help them that they would never consider for others in need — including allowing developer barons to decide, without regard to zoning or ANY rights of neighbors (which I recall you *trumpeting* re Rio Hondo), to decide themselves (subject only to local boards that they can dominate) who gets to live next to homeless shelters. Public opinion is not merely expected to *make room for* social needs, but to completely — on an arbitrary “which zebra will get eaten by the lion?” way — surrender to them.
– There is no consideration of whether everyone in the whole country is entitled to live in one of the most expensive areas in the country — expensive not just because of its beaches and amenities, but *because of its mild climate* that, among other things, makes frostbite far less likely.
– I’m still VERY struck by how many people bled over Spitzer’s noting that NIMBY’s have a point — that is, have interests to be balanced against social goods — and fundamentally didn’t give a damn about the far more serious affronts on civil liberties posed by Rackauckas.
– Some people like FOF may just not be capable of thinking things through, but people who can are refusing to do so, surrendering to sentiment over sense. Take moral hazard, for example. If I want to stay in Orange County, then under *some* of the less baked of these proposals I’d be better off not paying my rest and getting kicked out of my home with my family; then being homeless I might be able to get housing as good or better than what I have now. That’s nuts. The principle that — with a decent floor of standards everyone gets — people should live where they can afford can be a sad one, but it’s not unreasonable. Scarcity exists, and space to live in Orange County is scarce. Increasing taxes on people who want that benefit so that we can ameliorate the misery of those without resources makes sense. Saying that we’re going to pack your town with homeless who — having won some possibly rigged lottery to get to live in Dana Point — get to live like people who are spending $100,000 a year for lodging when taxing people could allow far more people to live like people spending $25,000/ year for lodging is economically absurd. It’s like saying that we should feed the poor by giving some needy people coq au vin and others pigeon bones to make soup.
– The right to travel deals with the question of whether you can BE somewhere, not whether you can LIVE there if you can’t afford it. Giving people decent places to live in Adelanto but providing for them to come back — whether to work or sunbathe — does not violate their right to travel. Saying that they can only be here if they can afford to be someplace with an available restroom would also violate the right to travel, so I believe that public restrooms must be reasonably available.
What Spitzer said that he didn’t want to happen was for OC to do MORE than its share, and that we wanted courts involved in a regional solution because they were the ones who could ensure fairness of solutions. He made some bad moves also — but what is fundamentally wrong with not wanting to be forced to do MORE than one’s fair share, before what’s fair has even been determined?
Finally (for now), as to “community.” One thing that we were told should be celebrated about the Santa Ana Riverbed homeless was that they had set up their own mutually beneficial community there. And that is indeed something worth celebrating. So tell me this, Ricardo — where is that camaraderie more likely to be replicated, among homeless who are spread out all over the place in San Clemente, or in a community (say, for example, sets of scores of tiny houses around a commons area) in Adelanto? Do you really think that Adelanto is a worse place than living in a dry riverbed subject to flash flooding?
(Note to Zenger and FOF — neither Manzanar nor Auschwitz put people in their own separate and safe tiny houses. They had the sort of barracks that we recently saw in Anaheim’s giveaway to the temporary shelter hosts.)
I wouldn’t characterize bringing attention to Spitzer’s machiavellian first involvement with homelessness, at Kraemer, as*trumpeting*. In the same semantics notes, it wouldn’t be totally accurate to call your current position as *Trumpian*.
The nuttiest, hateful, opposition to address homelessness came from people who proposed the same type of solution you are now advocating. On the other side, it was extremely counterproductive calling NIMBY to anyone who raised concerns, and the reluctance to acknowledge how heterogeneous the homeless population is.
I don’t know whether there is data to confirm that a sizable number of homeless families are moving over here because of the beaches and amenities. There is not a “dust bowl migration” yet. When I lived in Laguna years ago, where there is shelter, homeless were mostly older and single, many leftovers from the hippie days.
The logic used by you and the Spitzer crowd (are they really defenders of civil liberties?) justify the stand taken by HB regarding affordable housing. I wonder to what extent your position has been influenced by the CATO and other conservatives you have comfortably accepted as a font of wisdom.
Just to refresh your memory regarding my concerns :
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2015/04/spitzers-homeless-shelter-proposal-raises-concerns-in-rio-vista-neighborhood/
Spizer’s involvement with Kraemer was in response to Kris Murray and Jordan Brandman’s strangling the Karcher lot plan in its crib — remember, because Jordan said there was some forgotten prior plan for that area that had precedence.
Let me see if I understand your position correctly. I presume that you will agree that land and cost of living are higher in South County than in Adelanto, but if you want to dispute that, go ahead. That said:
You think that it is more important to have perhaps 1000 homeless housed in South County, isolated from one another and targets of antagonism, then it is to have South County buy its way out of housing homeless by providing enough money to serve 100,000 homeless, potentially set up in what could become vibrant communities, in Adelanto, because of some principle that it is more important for every city to live with homeless within their borders than for to homeless to have more decent and worthwhile lives elsewhere.
I consider that to be nuts. I think that South County’s cities are vile for not wanting to have homeless within their borders, but if that’s their position then by all means make they pay through the nose for the privilege of being homeless-free, because the issue is not whether South Countians souls will be saved but what sort of lives homeless well have.
Let them buy themselves out of being part of the solution — so long as the price is REALLY high.
Calling for *exorbitant taxation* of the wealthy is not exactly a Cato philosophy, Ricardo. One could make a stronger case that saying that everyone has to get their hands dirty by being directly involved with solving a problem — say, by being sent to do manual labor on farms — certainly has its political precedents too. But I’m not calling you a Maoist or Stalinist, am I?
Note: you can quibble with the numbers (1000 vs. 100,000) above. The point is that, IF YOU CARE ABOUT RESULTS, RESULTS BEING GOOD LIVES FOR THE HOMELESS, there is some point at which you DO have to make the decision to let people buy themselves out of being a personal part of the solution. The “buyout” cost just needs to be set high enough that the South County cities will have to think twice about paying it.
If you agree in principle with the above, Ricardo, then you owe me an apology. If you don’t, you owe one to the homeless.
I’m just catching up with the discussion in a previous post which includes your evolution : (http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2018/09/fingal-savages-the-honorable-judge-david-carter/).
My stand, so that you won’t use your usual “straw-man” tactic to attribute unstated positions, is rather “the trickle-down Reaganesque” approach. Wealthy communities can absorb a number of poor people without creating a grotesque new type of “apartheid”.
Your macroeconomics argument to justify the South County residents aversion to homeless is not new. Browse any NextDoor website, and you’ll find plenty of vigilantes, even in our less affluent areas here up north.
Acknowledging the concerns does not necessarily mean to accept the hysteria of the hardcore anti-poor crowd. Homelessness is supposed to be a temporary status, but failed policies have kept it is as a permanent one.
The one who owes apologies is you, to both the homeless and to the new crowd you have embraced.
So what is next in your evolution: The right to choose? Embracing a solid “fiscal” conservative approach (austerity for the 99% and greater income inequality benefitting the 1%)? End the sanctuary protection?
Cunningham and GSR must be licking their chops.
Next in my evolution is telling you to piss off.
There’s nothing “trickle-down” about my proposal; your saying otherwise suggests that you don’t understand the term. This is not some blithe assertion that “a rising tide will lift all boats”; this is saying “you’re being assigned responsibility for caring for a certain number of people, and if you don’t want to do it the easy way and take care of them within your own borders then you should prepare to pay a lot more in taxes to ensure that they will not only be able to be lodged elsewhere, but will still be able to travel to your cities.” In other words, “for those who are underwater, you will *build* them boats.”
Until you can figure out the difference, there’s no point in engaging with you.
You didn’t address the question of whether homeless people could better establish a “Santa Ana Riverbed”-style *community* in individual cities in Orange County or in essentially planned communities with affordable (because subsidized) services in High Desert cities that lack the amenities that can give them livable lives.
I presume that that’s because you can’t.
Cook up a dumbass plan because it is more important to look like a prominent important solver than try to be one – that takes real work. Check.
Waste inordinate time researching “facts” that support said dumbass plan (well, at least they don’t contradict it, which makes them plausibly relevant). Check.
Argue and argue and argue ad nauseam with anybody who points out how dumbass the dumbass plan is. Check.
Demand apology from others who fail to see the brilliance of the dumbass plan; failing that demand apology for all those suffering, because hey, if you don’t agree with the dumbass plan you must be insensate to their suffering. Check.
I would suggest that you offer specific criticisms of the proposal, perhaps offer improvements, or at least answer the question of whether you actually prefer a statist “farm collectivization”-style approach that makes those bad South County folks behave even if it means less actual benefit for the homeless.
No surprise there; you’re probably not capable of any of those responses.
Wasn’t the clearing of the Riverbed just “dumping” the homeless by distributing them throughout the county? Clearing the Riverbed exacerbated the problem and made it harder to solve. But perhaps the goal isn’t helping the homeless at all. Perhaps the goal is to continue to enrich those who make money off the backs of the homeless. How much does Vern Nelson make off the backs of the homeless?
Vern doesn’t make any money off the backs of the homeless, so far as I know, and I can’t imagine why you’d think he does.
It wasn’t planned as “dispersing them throughout the county” — and as I recall for the most part that didn’t happen. The plan was just to get them out of the riverbed, period, for some legitimate reasons (e.g. inability to protect them in a flash flood) and some illegitimate ones. Many or most stayed in Santa Ana or Anaheim, maybe Fullerton, etc. You didn’t see it going further than that.
However, as I’ve written before, I think that the plan now may absolutely be to make money off of the presence of the homeless by using their presence to “blockbust” neighborhoods and therefore churn up real estate sales (and higher assessments.)
Someone will probably jump in and say that there is no good reason for to people to fear the homeless and flee if they enter one’s neighborhood. OK, fine — but there was also no good reason for people to fear Blacks and flee when they entered one’s neighborhood — and yet that flavor of blockbusting was a favorite and effective weapon of real estate agents for many years. In both cases, though, there was an economically good (even if morally bad) reason for people to resist blockbusting or flee it if it was effective — because one believed that OTHER people were going to flee, and refuse to move in, and that therefore their property (the main investment in most Americans’ lives) was going to lose its value.
The way to stop this is to make it impossible to flee by integrating (by race, by religion, and now by homeless status) everywhere, so that no one had much to fear in one’s own home (wherever it is) or much to gain by fleeing (to somewhere that would sooner or later be just as integrated.) Unfortunately, that didn’t work for race and may not work for homelessness either — which is why one may want to consider letting people choose between paying higher taxes or taking the supposed risk of integrating homeless into their neighborhoods. But again — creating a lottery where Person A gets to live free in Newport Coast and Person B has to live in someplace far less desirable leaves a lot to be desired as a solution.
“creating a lottery where Person A gets to live free in Newport Coast and Person B has to live in someplace far less desirable leaves a lot to be desired as a solution.”
Perhaps an alternative to a lottery is in order? Try this on…
[EXCEPT FOR LICENSED HOTELS WHICH PAY ALL THEIR TAXES AND FEES], any residence that offers itself on the market for residences for less than 72 hours shall do so without discriminating on the basis of X, Y, Z…. Furthermore, the City may acquire such residence at the ordinary rate, and allocate habitation on an emergency basis to persons otherwise homeless…
Every time I see a city that has the anti-AirBNB signs posted, I’m curious why no one thought to try this particular angle. It would kill any home rentals on any public market in seconds…
I think that your proposal gets at the roots of why anti-homeless prejudice exists. But wouldn’t it also require the cities to be responsible for any damage — and more importantly alleged damage and orchestrated damage or even (for those wanting repairs paid for) solicited damage — that might be reported once homeless persons or families reside in a house? Normally, I vaguely recall, damages would be charged against the credit card used to book the rental. Here, is it the city’s credit card acting as guarantor? I’d e pect a lot of lawsuits — some legit, others spurious or even collusive — against cities under such a plan for damages real, invited, and imagined.
Lawsuits would only occur if homeless actually were placed in the houses. Authorize the city to do this pursuant to budget allocations, and then the only effect is to put AirBnB style investors on notice not to convert affordable rents into pseudo hotels or they might wind up housing homeless people in their exclusive locales.
None of which helps a single homeless person tomorrow. But longterm…could be part of a solution, not a silver bullet.
I’m not quite following: are you saying that this would be some kind of bluff that depended on no one converting to AirBnB?
Try this on: let’s say that I have a house with black mold. I need to replace it. I convert it to AirBnB and accept the City’s demand to allow homeless people to live there. Then I go get bedbugs, bring them into the home, claim (falsely) that the (actually blameless) homeless people brought them in, and sue the city for destroying the value of the property. And, to make it even more interesting, let’s say that I’m a friend of a Council member or someone highly placed in the City Attorney’s Office, who could agree to a favorable settlement.
I’d like to think that there’s a way around the machinations of bad people, but I’m less confident of it than I once was.
Vern’s nonprofit is a plaintiff in the most recent lawsuit.
So far as I know, Vern doesn’t have a non-profit. If you mean OJB, it’s a DBA.
Let them rant and rave. Nobody I know is profiting off this.
Nope. I’ll set the record straight before it gets repeated as a newly manufactured “truth,” thank you.
Why does the lawsuit ask for fees if everyone is working pro bono? Vern Nelson needs to file as a nonprofit so the public can determine your compensation. You should be happy to know that the homeless in these cities will receive no relief. You have tied the hands of all these cities and the OCSD to come to the aid of those who wish help. Good job Vern! I hope your ego is well fed because the homeless of South OC won’t be anytime soon.
Which lawsuit? And WTF?
Um, the lawsuit that Vern is bragging about in this blog? He even has a link to the complaint.
It’s not Vern’s lawsuit, is it? Who’s the Plaintiff?
Maybe I gave the wrong impression when I wrote “my own Housing is a Human Right.” I’m just a member, one of dozens. And the group is not getting any money out of the suit. Nobody I know is. Go find some other chew toy, Mia.
*For all intent and purposes…..each community should vote on whether or not to host
a Homeless Shelter, with size determined per their population. If they refuse to their
social responsibility…..great…..not Cal Trans money or any State Assistance. Not a problem…..time to just vote their NIMBYisms and take the consequences. No rallys
no protests at City Council. Just take the vote of the people! If the BOS had an actual
Homeless Regional Authority….they could simply allocate the various Communities number of beds and shelters required.