Columnist Cynthia Tucker addresses an issue that I feel should be dealt with seriously. I give you an excerpt:
Perhaps the most curious thing about the pro-panhandling crowd is that they seem to think they are helping the poor by supporting a right to beg. (Mayor Shirley Franklin makes an interesting point: Some panhandlers are hustlers, not homeless.) Wouldn’t it be more compassionate to help the poor get into decent housing and to help the alcohol- and drug-impaired get into treatment?
She is on target!
She also gives this short account of a recent encounter with the homeless:
I long ago gave up grimy, urine-drenched Woodruff Park. Though the city and private philanthropists spent nearly $6 million to refurbish the park a decade ago, it quickly fell into ruin as the homeless took it over again for “urban camping.” They were assisted by advocates for the homeless, who protested a city law to ban sleeping in the park.
…A scene from my Tuesday afternoon stroll through Barbara Asher Square, as I headed for City Hall:
A grizzled man (who happened to be white) with bushy hair brushed by me, muttering loudly: “I’m tired of asking for quarters!”
I responded: “So stop asking.”
A black man in a suit nodded at me and said, “That’s right.” (more…)
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I think all of us know of parks (if you live near a major city) that started off as a very beautiful oasis but gradually transformed to a pissed-up “paradise.
Not too long ago, I wrote about the homeless situation in cities like Santa Monica and San Francisco California. In short, it’s very bad. As Tucker mentions, the pro-panhandler crowd seem to be more for the homeless’ right to beg then actually helping them get off the street. To see homeless men and women walking down the same streets of multimillionaires is very heart wrenching. Here in very Liberal California, we had laws that actually gave the homeless the RIGHT to beg in front of local businesses and public thoroughfares. I say HAD because the one thing you will not hear from the Liberal camp out here is that there is a growing number of municipalities in California that are now reversing insane legislation.
Not too long ago, some city officials in San Francisco were slammed by critics for allowing the destruction of cardboard houses that were located in a public space. For a city that is known for its “speak for the common man” politics, why is it that this city is known to have one of the worse cases of homelessness in the United States?
(San Francisco is also known as ‘homeless island’ by the homeless in that city.)
I will doing a piece on this subject sometime in the near future. Stay tuned!
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