Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday that he is creating a task force to tackle the steady-rising issue of homelessness. After reports of the homeless rate skyrocketing and the failed attempts at “band-aid” solutions, Newsom has proposed for a 1 billion dollar budget to help finance employment and housing assistance programs. Homeless and poverty statistics for California alone was amongst the highest in the nation, with around 130,000 houseless folks and according to the HUD annual homeless assessment report of 2017, there were over 550,000 homeless people in the US in total.
Although lawmakers had allegedly approved a 2 billion dollar bond to create new and affordable housing over two years ago, no money has been spent to house adults, elders, people with disabilities and households with children as of yet- leaving one to believe that poor people and people of color were left for dead with another “pie-crust promise” backed up by “ghost funding”
The constant demand for housing from highly paid non-natives of the communities (gentriFUKation) and the boom for million dollar “luxury” devilopments (development) in the real estate-snake game has been the primary reasons SF is now known as “tent city” plagued with chronic homelessness and with very little support for residents dealing with mental illness, alcohol and drug addiction, life-threatening illnesses and the trauma of being treated less than human.
Gavin Newsom has also named Sacramento Mayor Darryl Steinberg and Los Angeles county supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas as co-chairs of the task force in collaboration to end the homeless crisis. Someone needs to have the courage to challenge the fact that there is a layer of abuse and a violation of one’s human rights when children, elders and folks with disabilities are forced out into the streets with the extra slap in the face being that it is a crime to sleep in cars, tents or parks when there is nowhere else to go without being dehumanized any further.
What makes sense?
Create affordable housing for low-income, impoverished folks by utilizing empty, abandoned, unused lots and spaces of land that don’t come with multi-million dollar price tags. Instead of spending money on just beds for “clients”, spend money on providing enough space for not only a bed, but a kitchen, bathroom, a bedroom- A WHOLE ROOF! As POOR Magazine does with the HOMEFULNESS project and how many tribes before have done before being poisoned with capitalism and colonization.
Provide adequate resources and treatment to people in need and employ staff or fellow poverty “skolars” who possess helpful, compassionate non-judgemental spirits that don’t take pride in representing the “agents of the state” and meeting “quotas” that contributes to the despair of the people.
Powers that be- stop investing in big money corporations that cruelly displaces lifelong residents by creating “booms” that raises the rent so high that the city caters only to those with higher incomes and privilege thus creating an exodus of evictions and cultural destruction/change. It is known that the Ellis Act and real estate snakeculation (speculation) are in the same bed together and if politricksters focused more energy on putting restrictions on high-powered corporations that evicts children onto the streets instead of restricting a woman’s right to choose then the vote will come in as some sort of progress towards a solution to an inhumane problem.