Writing at Hot Air, John Sexton looks at the downward spiral of a now-dead homeless man - Anthony - in Portland, OR. I believe it captures a lot of what causes homelessness, and why places like Portland have gone about solving it exactly the wrong way. Here are a couple of key paragraphs.
Saying this is an affordable housing crisis is an inaccurate trope. What price for a home would make it “affordable” and “fix” this situation? Ten dollars a month? Five? Rent could be five dollars a month, and most street homeless people would put the five dollars up their arm and not to their affordable housing landlord. (snip) We cannot fix what we are identifying incorrectly. We blame it on lack of affordable housing because saying we need personal accountability and tough personal choices to be made, isn’t “nice” or “sensitive”.
Anthony needed mental heath treatment he didn’t get. Giving him a tent wasn’t help it was enabling his downward spiral. So long as residents of Portland are willing to watch tortured souls try to end their pain with drugs on the street, the city can’t and won’t be saved. It will take the strength to tell people like Anthony no more and the resources to give them a viable alternative.
As we keep writing, what is needed is mandatory inpatient care for the insane and the addicted, who are mostly the same people. Anything else is slow-motion suicide, enacted in public, befouling the public square.
