Posting at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll links to a Santa Barbara News-Press opinion piece by local radio host Andy Caldwell. Caldwell who is not best pleased by the homelessness overwhelming Santa Barbara County, writes:
People are homeless because they burned every friend and relative they had. Now they are fixing to burn the town down. In places like Kansas, at least in days of old, they had mercy and compassion on the downtrodden, but they also had reasonable expectations of sentient human beings. That is, they would help the poor but not the shiftless.
And if the shiftless posed a danger to society or themselves, they went to jail or an institution. Pure and simple. But we don’t do that here anymore because “being homeless is not a crime.” Of course, we won’t arrest or institutionalize these people. We are too woke. We are too tolerant. We are too progressive.
Reading between the lines, Caldwell implies: the county's elected officials are too stupid and fearful. I've spent most Januarys and Februarys in Santa Barbara County for the past decade plus. I know the situation he describes is both long-standing and troubling.
Complicating the problem, the weather is too nice. It never gets cold enough to die from hypothermia, nor hot enough to trigger heat stroke - perfect conditions for living outdoors. If you're going to live rough, coastal Santa Barbara County is the place you'd prefer.
