"For people whose only home is a vehicle, the knock is a visceral, even existential, threat. How do you avoid it?"

"You hide in plain sight. Make yourself invisible. Internalize the idea that you’re unwelcome. Stay hypervigilant to avoid trouble. Apart from telling you to clear out, the police can harass you with fines and tickets or get your home-on-wheels towed away to an impound lot.... In the film ['Nomadland'], Fern, played by Frances McDormand, is startled by a knock that interrupts a quiet meal. She looks up with a start and swears. A face hovers at the window, and a fist pounds once, twice, three times on the door. Then comes a gruff voice. 'No overnight parking! You can’t sleep here.' Watching the character’s panic at the sudden sound of a fist hitting her van gave me anxious flashbacks. Then it made me sad. Then I felt angry, because that scene was just too accurate, and I wished it didn’t reflect the reality of how people treat one another.... Bob Wells, 65, has a popular video, 'Avoiding the Knock,' and has been lecturing on the topic for ages.... In a better world, people wouldn’t have to go to such lengths to stay out of sight.... Some towns have created areas where vehicle dwellers can sleep undisturbed." 

From "What ‘Nomadland’ Exposes About Fear in America/People who live in homes-on-wheels should not have to be in constant fear of 'the knock'" by Jessica Bruder (NYT). 

Bruder is the author of the book the movie is based on. And here's the Bob Wells video. (Wells is in the movie.)

By the way, Meade and I saw the movie. It was the first time we'd been out to the movies in over a year. I was disappointed in the experience. The image on the screen looked dim and dull. I would have preferred to watch it on TV (but not enough to subscribe to Hulu, which is what you need to do). 

I would have walked out if I had been alone. Meade, however, loved the movie. He said it was the best movie he'd seen since he saw "How the West Was Won" when he was a kid — and that movie was in Cinerama (true 3-lens Cinerama). "Nomadland" was my most extreme example of seeing a movie with someone whose opinion of it was the opposite of mine. I said, "I hated it." 

FROM THE EMAIL: Kate writes:

It's not a home. It's a car. In the effort to not shame the homeless, this author isn't helping. Be honest. It has no bathroom or kitchen. It's a car. You want to help? Get serious. Build public parking lots with bathrooms. I've lived very rough, and these kind of euphemisms are silly. Shelter, the basic human need, includes a designated place to pee and cook. Any motor vehicle that provides these services is a camper. (I haven't seen Nomadland yet. When it streams on a service I use, I'll gladly watch it.)

The vehicles shown in the movie have something like a kitchen and bathroom. That is, the toilet is a plastic bucket, and there's some device for heating food. Mostly the vehicles are old and quite ordinary vans.  

As for the word "home," there's a very important line in the movie. Asked if she's "homeless," the main character says: "I'm not homeless. I'm just houseless." A similar examination of language occurs when she's asked, "Are you married?" She says, "I am, but my husband died." The issue is, what really matters? What is a home? What is a marriage? People with less may have more.

AND: Mary emails: 

The good liberals of Madison struggling with the "good" homeless and the "bad" homeless.

On Tuesday, the city council anguished over one block of our Capitol Square:

"(P)eople are scared to death to go there," said Maria Milsted, who runs a property management company with her husband at 106 W. Mifflin St. "We are frightened to go into our own place of work."

In her speech, Milsted distinguished between the "good homeless," — those who are seeking jobs and a place to live — and "the takers" who she believes are seeking handouts and have no intention of behaving civilly....

The mayor, Paul Soglin, the longtime Madison lefty and former UW student radical blamed the world beyond Madison for dumping its undesirables here:

"Statements that some of us have made about Madison being a drop-off point (of homeless people) for other units of government is now getting fairly well-documented," Soglin said.

He also alleged that other cities are driving homeless people into the city of Madison, and vowed that Madison would "drive them right back!"

So xenophobic. Whatever happened to empathy and compassion? We're ready now to see the downtrodden as "takers" and reprobates... when they congregate in a prime residential area and freak out the real estate folk?

You know, one of the nicest condo buildings I've ever seen is on that block. It's terrible if the bad homeless people are hurting real estate values. But if you're not freaked out by a few street people, it might be a good time to put in an offer on one of the places currently on the market. Like that 2-bedroom penthouse, priced at $2,200,000, now down to $1,995,000.

"That's pretty cool. I love the open buckles and how they pick up the silver of the tin foil/duct tape..."

Comments on a Sartorialist photo from the scene of the NYC blizzard:

Awesome! I love the boots, but it's the duct tape in classic silver that made me take notice. It just goes to show that even a homeless person or city worker or whoever this person is can accessorize with wit and style, given what's available to them....

Whoever this person is, there's always a slight line between what's ridiculous and what's considered "fashionable"...nowadays it seems that everything can work and be "cool"! ...

I battled with this photo. It affects the emotions in that it could be of a homeless or an eccentric person. Maybe you could have indicated that the guy is a construction worker. It comes close to the bone....

The "drifter" and the "bug man."

The Daily News reports, in straightforward prose:

The straphanger killed by an exterminator gone mad was a mentally ill germophobe who used his bag to keep people at a safe distance, friends said Sunday.

"He didn't like people to sit next to him," said Phenix Hall, a volunteer who befriended Dwight Johnson at a Manhattan soup kitchen years ago. "Dwight was famous for placing his bag on the seat beside him."

The 36-year-old drifter was knifed in the neck early Saturday after arguing with bug man Gerardo Sanchez, 37, who wanted to sit next to Johnson on the half-empty D train....

A passenger pulled the emergency brake, which meant that the train stopped between stations, with 20 or 30 people trapped with the killer and the dead/dying man. When the train reached the station, the horrible confinement continued, as the doors were kept shut until the police got the killer.

The Daily News has a poll: "Do you believe the authorities did the right thing by instructing the motorman to keep the doors closed when the train stopped, moments after a homeless man was stabbed to death?" Right now, the police are losing, but not by all that much.

The story is interesting for a number of reasons, including — in the text but not the poll — the retro term "drifter" instead of the usual PC "homeless man." Homeless suggests that if only this individual had a shelter of his own, there would be no problem. Drifter implies that there is something inherent in the man's nature that keeps him from putting down roots.

Drifter imputes some romance and mystery to a man's story:

"Oh, help me in my weakness,"
I heard the drifter say,
As they carried him from the courtroom
And were taking him away.
"My trip hasn't been a pleasant one
And my time it isn't long,
And I still do not know
What it was that I've done wrong."

Homeless sounds empty and needy:

I am homeless, come and take me
Into reach of your rattling drums.

But Dwight Johnson's problems are not embodied in either word. The man was mentally ill and terrified of germs. We slangily call germs "bugs," and Gerardo Sanchez made his living killing insects, which are also slangily called "bugs." Now, the Daily News calls Sanchez "bug man." "Bug" can also mean to bother and it can mean to freak out. There is a lot of bug in the story of the drifter and the bug man. Johnson and Sanchez were each concerned with bugs, they bugged each other, and they bugged out.

And now, poor Johnson is dead and Sanchez's life is ruined.

"The number of homeless in this community should not be increasing and it is... We are on a death trip."

"We have a reputation for being very accommodating and that there are no rules. They are not here for housing. They are not here for shelters and it’s time we face up to it.”

Said Paul Soglin, the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, as the city counsel voted 17-1 to override his veto and make the homeless a protected class.

The city already prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, color, natural origin, citizenship status, age, handicap/disability, marital status, source of income, arrest or conviction records and more....

Soglin argued it is part of a legislative body of work that has cumulatively made homelessness worse in Madison and said it would have no measurable effect on the city’s homeless population. His criticism was largely directed at the homeless people who camp out in front of the City-County Building. He accused people living there of not using allotted shelter nights, engaging in drinking and drug use on the property and having sex on the picnic tables where building employees eat.

If you don't know anything about Mayor Soglin, here's a NYT article from 2011 titled "From Firebrand to a Bit of a Grump, a ‘Hippie Mayor’ Evolves." ("A leading Vietnam War protester, Mr. Soglin went on to become a counterculture folk hero here in Wisconsin’s capital by winning election as mayor in 1973 at age 27.... Decades later, Mr. Soglin is back in control of City Hall....) "City Hall," AKA the City-County Building where the homeless are camped out and (apparently) having sex on the picnic tables where building employees eat.

"So he hauled a new generator into his S.U.V., strapped $800 worth of wood onto the vehicle’s roof and drove down into one of the city’s ravines in the middle of the night..."

"... to build... a wooden box — 7 feet 9 inches by 3 feet 9 inches — sealed with a vapor barrier and stuffed with enough insulation that, by his careful calculation, would keep it warm on nights when the thermometer dipped as low as minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. He put in one window for light, and attached smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Later, he taped a note to the side that read, 'Anyone is welcome to stay here.' Since then, Mr. Seivwright (pronounced Seeve-right), 28, has built about 100 similar shelters with a crew of 40 volunteers and more than $200,000 in donations. He has hauled them to parks across Toronto where homeless encampments have slumped into place — jarring reminders of the pandemic’s perversely uneven effects. The city’s bureaucrats called them illegal and unsafe, and stapled trespass and eviction notices to many, informing their residents that the city had rented out hotel rooms for them. They served Mr. Seivwright with an injunction, ordering him to stop putting the structures on city-owned land." 

From "The Carpenter Who Built Tiny Homes for Toronto’s Homeless/Khaleel Seivwright built himself a wooden shanty while living on a West Coast commune. Then he started building similar lodgings for homeless people in Toronto to survive the winter" (NYT).

The box is not much larger than a coffin (which tends to be 7.17 feet by 2.5 feet), but people prefer them even when they know "the city had rented out hotel rooms for them." A city can't allow a shantytown — far below its standards of habitability — to grow up its in its parks. But Seivwright is nevertheless celebrated.

I can see how building these squalid boxes and depositing them around town works as protest art, speaking loudly to the people of Toronto about the poor and desperate people who live in their midst. The city is providing hotel rooms, but if these people are in hotel rooms, the housed citizens of Toronto won't need to agonize about them.

To be in the box is to be inside but outside, seen but unseen. To be in a hotel room is to be thoroughly inside and unseen. That's what the city prefers. I don't think the article explains why it is what the homeless prefer.

(To comment, you can email me here.)

FROM THE EMAIL: Owen writes: 

Sorry, this guy sounds whack. These boxes are not Habitats for Humans but a kind of litter. There’s a reason why cities have governments, poor and stupid and cruel as they may be; and it’s to help manage the risks to health and safety that come with our common lives. Your analysis takes some account of the “City” as if it were a bumbling bureaucracy —easy to mock, that. But what about the *citizens* of the city? The suffering nameless individuals who pay the taxes, try to mind their ways and be decent to each other, try to build lives and raise families, try to *use the (few, crowded, worn) amenities* of the city? Who now find the homeless occupying their parks, cadging and foraging and leaving a trail of trouble, encouraged now by characters like this to repurpose the precious open space into flop-houses and latrines? Do the citizens not get a voice in this little hippie happening?

I think citizens are getting fed up with this. Not just in Toronto, either.

The homeless people who camp across the highway from the Facebook headquarters.

Do they use Facebook? Not all, but many of them do:

Although it is not widely known, phone ownership and even social media usage are relatively common among homeless people, even if not those living next to Facebook. One Bay Area survey of around 250 homeless people found that 62% had phones. A study of homeless youth in Los Angeles indicated that more than three-quarters used social media.

Devices and service plans are readily available because the federal government offers subsidized cellular service to low-income Americans. It is known as the Obamaphone program both to its users and its rightwing critics, but in fact it originated as a landline subsidy during the Reagan era....

“They use the phone for exactly the same reasons we use it,” said Allan Baez, who launched a program that involved giving hundreds of free, Google-donated phones to homeless people. The cameras are particularly popular. “They are individuals, they have kids, they have friends, they have good moments, and you take pictures.”...

"President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to find ways to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction for longer periods...."

"The order... instructs agencies to prioritize funding for mental health and drug courts — and to not fund 'harm reduction' programs that the administration said facilitate illegal drug use. It also called for agencies to prioritize funding states and cities that to the 'maximum extent' enforce laws on open-air drug use, prohibitions on urban camping, loitering and squatting.... Dozens of states have added to or expanded involuntary commitment laws during the past decade. That includes states controlled by Democrats, an illustration that political momentum has shifted toward a more aggressive approach to dealing with the inextricably intertwined crises of mental health and addiction...."

I'm reading "Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people/Trump’s executive order could increase hospitalization of homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders" (WaPo).

Looking for an existing tag that will fit this issue, I stumbled on "Trump's urban renewal." That could work for this... but what was it that led me to create it?

The oldest post with that tag was "Asking for the black vote" back in August 2016.

More relevant to today's post is this from July 2019: "'We have to take the people... And we have to do something... We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.' Said Trump, about the homelessness in San Francisco and L.A." 

About that dog serial killer that had Marina del Rey in a panic...

... that man drowning a dog was not drowning a dog — he was washing a dog that was already dead — and the decapitated dog found in the same area was not a decapitated dog — it was the bloated corpse of a raccoon that wasn't even headless.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had offered a $20,000 reward for — as the L.A. Times puts it ungrammatically — "information on whomever was responsible for the acts of cruelty."

[A] transient came into the Marina del Rey station Thursday night looking for his dead dog The homeless man said the dog had been struck by a car and he decided to take it to the beach to wash the carcass because he wanted to stuff the animal.... The homeless man said he tied the dog’s collar to a shovel to keep the body from floating away. He did this because he said he needed to leave the beach to retrieve some of his belongings in another location. When the homeless man returned, the dog was gone.... 

Question 1: What does a homeless person do with a stuffed dog? How does he get it stuffed? In a do-it-yourself effort? Maybe he envisions the dog standing watch over him while he sleeps — something practical.  Maybe he just liked how the dog looked and it fit a general approach to finding and keeping things things in the street.

Question 2: Should the homeless man get the $20,000?

The Supreme Court rejected a case about whether a city could make camping and sleeping in public a crime.

SCOTUSblog reports.

A group of homeless and formerly homeless Boise residents challenged the law, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment when it is used as the basis for criminal penalties against homeless people who are sleeping outside because they cannot find space in a shelter. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with the challengers, holding that the city cannot impose criminal penalties on homeless residents “for lacking the means to live out the universal and unavoidable consequences of being human.”...

The creation of a de facto constitutional right,” the city argued, “to live on sidewalks and in parks will cripple the ability of more than 1,600 municipalities in the Ninth Circuit to maintain the health and safety of their communities.”

"Houseys" — people who have housing but nevertheless "sleep out" sometimes like the homeless.

Who are these people... and do they deserve to be ticketed for "unauthorized camping"?

Some are activists for the homeless, trying to gain information and experience to help them with their advocacy. But some are (we're told) "Zen practitioners" who "organize meditative 'street retreats'":

Critics might object that “this is a kind of voyeurism or spiritual tourism,” said Sensei Joshin Byrnes, who lives in a New Mexico monastery. But the goal is in fact “to really change our own hearts and minds and the way we view people who we commonly think of as the other.”

Participants in his programs, the shortest of which last four days, are asked not to shower for a week beforehand and arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs, $1, a form of ID, and perhaps a blanket or trash bag for protection from the weather.

I have 5 things to say about this:

1. Should a city be able to criminalize "unauthorized camping"? If you think the answer is yes, would you make an exception for people who have nowhere to go?

2. People living on the streets impose burdens on the people who are managing to take care of themselves by maintaining housing. If you do have a house, you shouldn't choose to add to that burden. It's not a nice thing to do to the people who own or rent housing in the area, and it's making the truly homeless people seem more burdensome than they actually are.

3. The fact that you are concerned with the condition of your own heart and mind does not absolve you of the charge of "voyeurism and spiritual tourism." Thinking well of your own good intentions and religionish loftiness can make you even less sensitive than most people are to the impression they make on others. You can absorb yourself with the way you "view people who [you] commonly think of as the other" and lose track of how other people view you.

4. When is it okay for people to pose as something they are not? Isn't dressing up as a homeless person and acting like them — when you could go home and take a shower and sleep in a bed — a kind of disreputable fakery? Isn't it like Rachel Dolezal taking on the appearance of a black person — not for mockery but out of empathy and concern for people who didn't choose this status? If it is, which way does that cut — pro- or anti- Dolezal?

5. Your imposition of yourself in an environment that is not your own changes that environment. This is a problem I have with travel that is aimed at seeing what people are like in some exotic place. You don't belong there, so it's different once it has you in it. Do you think you are improving it? Do you want to look at the impression you are making on this culture you are curious about?

"The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether an Oregon city can enforce its ban on public camping against homeless people...."

"San Francisco, which spent over $672 million during the last fiscal year to provide shelter and housing to people experiencing homelessness, told the justices in a 'friend of the court' brief that its inability to enforce its own laws 'has made it more difficult to provide services' to those people.... [In a 2018 case, the 9th Circuit] held that punishing homeless people for public camping would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment if they did not have access to shelter elsewhere. The court of appeals reasoned that, just as the city could not punish someone for their status – being homeless – it also could not punish them for conduct 'that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless.'"

Writes Amy Howe, at SCOTUSblog.

Here's the 9th Circuit opinion: Johnson v. City of Grants Pass.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board quickly responded with "Is There a Constitutional Right to Vagrancy?":

"Graphic designer will be 'Homeless for One Week' in Union Square Park to raise money, awareness."

I love the "money, awareness" form in that headline. It's so Onion-y.

Yusef Ramelize, a 33-year-old graphic designer, will leave his Ozone Park apartment Sunday and take up residence in Union Square Park. He won't shower and he won't have shelter during his "Homeless for One Week" project.

"My reasoning for doing this is to inspire people to make sacrifices within their own lives," Ramelize said of his project, now in its second year.

He raised $3,635 in March 2009 and donated it to the Coalition for the Homeless. This year's beneficiary will be the Food Bank of New York....

Ramelize chose Union Square to pay homage to his biggest inspiration, Mohandas Gandhi, who is immortalized with a statue on the west side of the park.

So you're walking through Union Square, and you see Ramelize and a homeless-year-'round person. You have a $1 bill that you want to hand out. Which man gets the dollar?

"Homeless man in Texas wins right to keep bag containing $70,000 in cash, gold."

He found it in a bag down by the river, where he'd gone to wash his feet.

He saw a bag, kicked it and heard jangling. After discovering the wet money inside, he took his find to a First National Bank branch to exchange it for dry currency, The Statesman reported.

That’s when police were called in.

There had to be a notice in the paper first, but after 90 days, it was his, under the age-old legal principle finders, keepers.

The man, Timothy Yost, says: “I’ve been walking for so long, first thing I want is a vehicle.” You might think that a person that we call "homeless" would say the first thing I want is a home. Perhaps in his own mind, he thought of himself as carless.

Some of the people in the comments at the link don't agree with that car-before-home judgment:

70k won't last long. it's a fortune to someone who is homeless but one wonders how he came to be homeless in the first place. if the cause was bad judgment then 70k will be gone in no time. buying a car seems silly when housing, an apartment, clothing should be a priority and finding a job to increase the 70k or maintain most of it. perhaps a good bicycle to start. with a car, he will spend on insurance, fuel, and maintaining it.

Don't you need a car (in Texas) to find an apartment and to buy new clothes and other supplies? You can live in your car in a pinch, but you can't drive around in your apartment. And it's his experience. Needing to walk everywhere troubled him more than having to sleep wherever he did.

Good luck — further good luck — to Mr. Yost.

"Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials... to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments..."

"... the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets....  His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments while others have denounced the decision from conservative justices as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis. The order also comes as Democrats are uniting around Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator and prosecutor from California.... Republicans have frequently pointed to homelessness in California as an example of the state’s purported decline.... In his executive order, Mr. Newsom advised California cities and counties on how best to ramp up enforcement on a signature issue of his administration. He cannot force them to take action, but can exert political pressure through billions of dollars the state controls for municipalities to address homelessness...."

From "Newsom Orders California Officials to Remove Homeless Encampments/The directive from Gov. Gavin Newsom is the nation’s most sweeping response to a Supreme Court decision last month that gave local leaders greater authority to remove homeless campers" (NYT).

"The two biggest 'Housing First' initiatives for the homeless in Madison don't have enough money to continue operating and could be closed...."

"[T]he 60-unit Rethke Terrace project for homeless singles and veterans on the East Side and the 45-unit Tree Lane Apartments for homeless families on the Far West Side... ran into trouble, and [were] declared  chronic nuisances due to a high volume of police calls, which often involve nonresidents, a lack of security and other issues.... Now come the challenges of determining exactly how long the projects will stay open, supporting tenants and figuring out what happens if or when the projects are shuttered and sold...."

From "2 biggest Madison homeless projects could close within months, leaving city scrambling" (Wisconsin State Journal).

"Whether he was high as a kite or hungry as a hippo, he didn’t deserve to be crushed."

Said Darlene Chaney, cousin of Cornelius Taylor, quoted in "In Cities’ Rush to Clear Homeless Camps, People Have Been Crushed to Death/Atlanta’s mayor began a drive to clear homeless encampments. But when heavy equipment came to raze one, nobody noticed that Cornelius Taylor was still inside his tent" (NYT).

In the modest home where they shared a childhood with Mr. Taylor, Ms. Chaney and her brother Derek, both truck drivers, described him as a bright, kind man wounded by a dark teenage episode they did not fully understand. He dropped out of high school and resisted their efforts to help, while complaining that many people view the homeless with disdain. His baptism in a prison chapel raised hopes for change that went unmet.... On good days, friends found him protective and kind. Bad days evoked his street name, Psycho. “If he didn’t get his way, all hell would break lose,” [his girlfriend Lolita] Griffeth said.

"It was Yang’s answers on homelessness and mental health at the final debate that finally settled it for me."

"Every other candidate spoke of homelessness as a disaster for the homeless. Yang discussed it as a quality of life problem for everyone else. 'Yes, mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights?' he asked. 'We do: the people and families of the city.' For Yang, I suspect, a successful mayoralty would mean restoring Michael Bloomberg’s New York, an extremely safe, pleasant place for tourists and well-off families like mine, but one where many poorer people were financially squeezed and strictly policed. Even if Yang could, as a political novice, stand up to the N.Y.P.D., he’d have little reason to, since his remit would be safety at almost any cost."  

Writes Michelle Goldberg in "Eric Adams Is Awful. I’m Putting Him on My Ballot" (NYT).

The passage I've quoted gets very strong pushback in the comments at the NYT. I'll just quote one:

The big piece of evidence Michelle Goldberg uses against Yang is an answer to the homeless crisis that I happen to agree with, and I'm a liberal Democrat. Of course, the homeless need to have workable options of where to go. But progressives are just wrong to defend the rights of the "unhoused" against anybody who would dare challenge their apparent belief that they can set up camp on any square of sidewalk that they declare to be their own. I can't be the only non-conservative person in America who would like to stop the trashing of our public spaces. I mean, is that really the worst you can say about Andrew Yang? Seriously?

"As part of my research in San Francisco, I spent 57 nights in 2014 and 2015 sleeping on the streets in encampments and more than 100 days following people..."

"... as they acquired food, shelter, benefits and money and interacted with the local welfare and justice systems. I also went on ride-alongs with police officers and sanitation crews. I experienced and witnessed interactions between police and homeless people nearly every day, and they were often devastating. Several times, I saw people refuse to go to the hospital to address serious medical issues, afraid that if they were admitted, their tents and belongings would be confiscated by city officials. The move-along orders and sweeps, aimed mainly at keeping people out of sight of other residents and business owners who would call 911, put services, food and toilets farther from reach; created conflicts and encouraged theft among those on the streets; and increased the vulnerability, particularly of women, to assault. Although the officers I observed saw their dispatches as a pointless shuffle — 'a big game of whack-a-mole,' as one described it — for the people they were policing, it was far from that: What the cops considered busywork was pushing people further into poverty and ossifying their homelessness."

From "Democrats hate Trump’s plan for homelessness. But it’s their plan, too/Liberal cities have treated homelessness like a crime for years" by Berkeley PhD candidate Chris Herring (WaPo).

From Trump's plan (released last Monday):

“Of course, policies intended solely to arrest or jail homeless people simply because they are homeless are inhumane and wrong. At the same time, when paired with effective services, policing may be an important tool to help move people off the street and into shelter or housing.” 

Herring opines:

Trump’s infusion of federal money and policy directives may merely expand this punitive approach. So the criticism by West Coast politicians of his attempt to “fix” homelessness in liberal cities is accurate: It won’t work, and we know that because their own punitive plans haven’t worked, either....

While Democratic politicians criminalize homelessness, they at least see its root causes in stagnating wages and a lack of government-funded affordable housing — diagnoses supported by research. Trump, on the other hand, blames high taxes, overregulation, poor public service delivery, mental illness and drug addiction. 

That is, the rhetoric is different — tapping left/right ideology — but the proffered solution is the same unworkable thing. Herring gives the Democrats a minimal pat on the head — "at least" they "see" what they always see.

"Two homeless men... Steve Jones and Chris Parker, were in the area to sleep and beg for money."

Steve Jones: "We had to pull nails out of children's faces."

Chris Parker: "I saw a little girl… she had no legs. I wrapped her in one of the merchandise T-shirts and I said 'where’s your mum and daddy?'"

From "The two homeless heroes who helped Manchester attack victims."

IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek attacks the very poorly written headline:

"The two homeless heroes who helped Manchester attack victims."

So it wasn't ISIS after all?

You'd think a place the size of Manchester would be capable of attacking a bunch of little girls without the aid of vagrants.