{"id":9764,"date":"2014-06-25T12:39:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T16:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=9764"},"modified":"2014-06-25T12:39:58","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T16:39:58","slug":"anti-homeless-laws-with-teeth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/anti-homeless-laws-with-teeth.html","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Homeless Laws with Teeth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

China has added a new, less subtle trick to the annals of anti-homeless architecture. \u00a0Park benches in\u00a0Yantai Park in Shangdong province now work according to coin operated timers<\/a>. \u00a0Stop feeding the meter, and little iron spikes pop out to prick the unwary sitter. \u00a0According to the article:<\/p>\n

Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialisation of modern life.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe thought he was exaggerating. He didn\u2019t foresee that a very practical country like China might actually use them for real,\u201d said one critic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The spiked bench attracted attention, because it was so transparently grotesque, while other anti-homeless measures pass as normal, because their cruelty isn\u2019t as viscerally painful for the reader. \u00a0Last week, the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>ran a feature on the new, anti-homeless initiatives taking shape in Hawaii<\/a>. \u00a0Look at the kind of language used:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time to declare a war on homelessness, which is evolving into a crisis in Honolulu,\u201d Mayor Kirk Caldwell, a Democrat, wrote in a provocative essay that appeared in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser this month. \u201cWe cannot let homelessness ruin our economy and take over our city.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Caldwell is appropriating the language of Johnson\u2019s War on Poverty to wage a war on the\u00a0intrusion<\/em> of poverty into the lives of the well off. \u00a0The new laws he\u2019s marshalling for his war make it a crime to be poor, to have nowhere to sleep, or to have no access to a bathroom.<\/p>\n

In addition to seizing the belongings of homeless people, Honolulu is closing public parks at night and banning tents and lean-tos in public spaces. The City Council last week began debating legislation that would authorize the police to roust anyone found lying or sleeping on a sidewalk or in a public space; a second law would impose fines of up to $1,000, or 30 days in jail, for public urination or defecation in the beachfront neighborhood of Waikiki. The council also authorized a $47 million program to create low-cost housing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The low-cost housing will have to be very low cost to be affordable for people who are facing a slew of new fines and penalties for their presence and who are being pushed out of the city center (the most remunerative place to busk or beg). \u00a0Hawaii, more than other state, shouldn\u2019t just try to\u00a0hide<\/em> their homeless, since, as an island state, they can\u2019t pull the trick other cities have used, and hand out one-way bus tickets to shunt their homeless to another city<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Utah is exploring (with success so far) a more radical and compassionate solution: just giving the homeless homes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Utahns like Pendleton came around to seeing the wisdom of providing housing without strings attached. Though it may at first sting a bit to see someone getting something he didn\u2019t work for, over time most recipients of free housing take responsibility for their lives, Tsemberis says. Once they have the stability of housing, they can beat addiction, manage mental illness, seek more education, or find employment. Housing, critically, must come first.<\/p>\n

In that spirit, Tsemberis argues that the Housing First model doesn\u2019t just help the homeless. It helps the rest of us. \u201cThere\u2019s a price that we are paying for homeless,\u201d he said in 2012. \u201cNot noticing is costing not only the people still homeless on the streets but it\u2019s costing us. If we take for granted the feeling of seeing a homeless person and walking by, we have to shut down part of ourselves in order to tolerate the pain we\u2019re walking past. In that we are together in a shared suffering, that actually can be alleviated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d love to see more states and cities give this kind of solution a try, and for \u201cfixes\u201d like Hawaii\u2019s to be met with as much disgust as China\u2019s booby-trapped benches.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China has added a new, less subtle trick to the annals of anti-homeless architecture. \u00a0Park benches in\u00a0Yantai Park in Shangdong province now work according to coin operated timers. \u00a0Stop feeding the meter, and little iron spikes pop out to prick the unwary sitter. \u00a0According to the article: Park bosses got the idea from an art […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":9768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morality-in-practice"],"yoast_head":"\nAnti-Homeless Laws with Teeth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"China has added a new, less subtle trick to the annals of anti-homeless architecture. \u00a0Park benches in\u00a0Yantai Park in Shangdong province now work\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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