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A Real Quandary: Homeless Tent Cities in New Orleans and Elsewhere
Homeless tent city outside of Angels Stadium, Anaheim, CA.
I remember to this day the look of agony, desperation and forlorn hopelessness in the eyes of a beautiful young woman begging on the streets of New York City one very cold night years ago. I remember thinking, as she peered up at me from the doorway where she was huddled, that she had been, not long before, a person of some accomplishment and, perhaps even affluence, based upon her now-shabby and dirty clothing. I remember so clearly going back to the hotel room and telling my wife that I would probably never be able to get those eyes, and their nightmarish fear, out of my memory. That was years ago, and those eyes came back to me as I thought about sharing a recent, and very unsettling, experience while visiting New Orleans and seeing its block after block homeless tent city, just one of a number spread throughout the Central Business District.
We had made a trip down to New Orleans to visit my wife’s brother after recent surgery at Tulane Medical Center, located amidst intersecting Interstate approaches and off ramps. Leaving the Center takes one down a street near the Superdome, under one of the major expressways. And here one drives for blocks of what seemed hundreds of tents jammed together so tightly there was hardly room to walk between them. Their occupants slept on the concrete neutral ground which is hard to imagine in mild weather and impossible to comprehend in freezing, rainy, stormy weather so common in our area in the Winter. Turning a corner, we passed very close to the opening of one of the tents, in which a very young mother was tending to her very small child–on the concrete sidewalk.
I had been generally aware of the increasing severity of the homeless problem in a number of major cities and had recently read the excellent and superbly reported articles about the steadily deteriorating streets of San Francisco published recently by The Federalist. These articles, San Francisco’s Homeless Encampments Expose The Failure of a Liberal Utopia, by John Daniel Davidson and San Francisco is Suffering From the Excesses of its Own Liberalism, by Erielle Davidson, paint a vivid picture of the descent of that once-beautiful city into a dystopian landscape, including scenes like the following:
“In November of 2017 alone, 6,211 needles were collected while via the 311 App (the “concerned citizen” reporting app set up by recently deceased San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee), 1,498 requests were made to clean up human feces. The public defecation problem has become so intolerable in San Francisco that private citizens have built an online map to track the concentrations of poop in the city, so that pedestrians may know to avoid certain areas.
“And it’s not just poop. The overwhelming smell of urine on parts of Mission Street and Market Street would make your nose bleed. I recall the first time I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco’s subway system) and was nearly knocked over by the sheer stench of the station. I was surprised to learn that exiting the station supplied little to no relief — the urine smell hangs heavy in the more populated areas of the city and is nearly inescapable. In a dark twist of humor, the city has had to replace numerous different street poles due to urine eroding the foundation.
“What drives a large part of the human waste issue is San Francisco’s homeless population. The homeless epidemic in San Francisco is tragic and frightening — in a 47-square mile city, we have around 7,500 homeless people, meaning there are approximately 160 homeless people per square mile. Unsurprisingly, it’s not uncommon to see frequented streets downtown blocked by what people dismally have coined “tent cities,” large enclaves of tents that homeless people have set up with little to no pushback from local authorities. What makes the homeless problem particularly alarming is that a variety of tents are often juxtaposed next to $4,000-per-month apartments. In a region where the median income is just under $100,000 and where the economic growth — fueled by brilliantly innovative minds — has been nothing short of astounding, there is some of the country’s most abject and abysmal poverty.”
Commenting on the relative recency of the tent city phenomenon, one author explains:
“Homelessness has always been a feature of life in the Golden Gate City, but the encampments—and the concentrations of used needles, feces, and urine that come with them—are new. Dozens of tent camps now line freeway underpasses and sidewalks throughout the city, despite a 2016 ordinance authorizing city officials to clear them out. The best the city can do, according to Mohammad Nuru, director of the city’s Department of Public Works, is stay in “firefighter mode.” “When you have needles or you have poop or you have places with the stench of urine, those are the priorities,” he said in a recent interview. “In Public Works land, that’s like a 911 call.”
“The tent camps have increased visibility of the city’s homeless even as the homeless population has remained relatively stable. A recent survey found there were about 7,500 homeless people in the city, about the same as the last count, in 2015. That’s the year the tents first showed up in large numbers, during citywide cleanup efforts ahead of the Super Bowl. Housing activists feared the cleanup would result in forced removal of San Francisco’s homeless population—and for good reason. “They are going to have to leave,” said the late Mayor Ed Lee at the time. “We’ll give you an alternative, we are always going to be supportive, but you are going to have to leave the streets.”
This article noted that the middle class is disappearing from San Francisco, as a recent report found:
“But while the homeless encampments have made the poor more visible, the middle class is quietly disappearing. A recent report from the real-estate site Redfin found San Francisco lost more residents than any other city did in the last quarter of 2017, and demand for moving trucks in the Bay Area is so high that U-Haul is charging customers as much as ten times more for trips out of the region than for trips in.
“Seen in this light, the homeless encampments are just one aspect of a larger problem afflicting one of the wealthiest and most progressive enclaves in the country. The city’s infamous NIMBY-ism consistently blocks the construction of new housing, which is one reason the median price of a single-family home in San Francisco is now $1.5 million.”
New Orleans has made frequent stabs at solving this problem, but, based on what we witnessed with our own eyes just a few days ago, those attempts have quite obviously been colossal failures. As noted in a piece about a 2014 attempt by the City Council to address the problem:
“In a Sept. 11 statement to Gambit, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s communications director Garnesha Crawford said “last night, the City began to actively notify the public of the new laws that allow for the removal of tents, furniture, and other items in order to keep public spaces clean, safe and accessible. To the extent this amendment affects our homeless population, the City will continue to inform the public that all identified obstructions must be removed from public rights-of-way within 72 hours of notice and to transition those who are camped in areas across the city into clean and safe shelter.”
“The city also wants to link homeless people with the 60 service providers working with the city.
“At the Sept. 4 City Council meeting, which passed the “obstruction” ordinance introduced by District B Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, there were two opposing votes: District C Councilwoman Nadine Ramsey and District E Councilman James Gray. Gray called the ordinance “an attack on the homeless.” Proponents of the measure admitted it’s an imperfect plan and would return to review how to enforce rules and regulations. Today, Gray told Gambit that, “If you’re going to put together a plan to deal with the problem, you need to look at the plan as one unit. You cant make a good decision with the left half of the plan until you’ve looked at that right half.””
The person who cast one of the dissenting votes against the ordinance made a statement which succinctly sums up the humane-and hard-truth which must be faced, somehow:
“Gray said there has not yet been a timeline for City Council discussion for drafting that plan, and he said it will require guidance from the health department. Gray also is concerned about the city’s seizure of homeless property. “Do we really want a storage somewhere where we’re holding blankets and tents of homeless people?” he said. “Do we really want to seize a sleeping bag on a cold winter night? Since we haven’t gotten to those details, we haven’t given thought to them, and once we do, we might need to take a much harder look at this. Right now it’s not cold outside but the constitution still applies.” “
I was moved to start this conversation because (1) I saw a sight in New Orleans with my own eyes which was troubling, to put it mildly, (2)which signifies a serious societal problem to which I do not pretend to have even the beginning of an answer but which leaves me with a feeling, as Andrew Klavan mentioned in a recent podcast, that “it’s just not right” and (3) to which I would welcome any ideas, suggestions, proposals, etc., anyone might care to offer.
Have you witnessed this apparently recent phenomenon lately–a jam-packed tent city in your town? Have you had to dodge or step around needles, feces, piles of broken glass and all the other detritus these tent cities bring with them? Has your City Council or State Legislature grappled with this problem, and, if so, to what effect?
A letter to the Editor of our regional newspaper, The Advocate, stated what many of citizens of New Orleans, San Francisco, and other cities feel in which this recent societal problem has arrived; after recalling his service with the Peace Corps in Ecuador the writer related:
“By my definition, though, Ecuador was certainly “Third World.” The other day I was walking down Canal Street in downtown New Orleans. Over a stretch of about eight blocks, I was approached by five different people begging for money and food. I also saw two people sleeping on cardboard mats beneath storefront awnings. At almost every major intersection in the city, there is a homeless person soliciting for handouts; and, beneath an overpass, there is a veritable city of tents. It reminds me of Ecuador. Years ago, there was a popular bumper sticker that read: “Louisiana, Third World and Proud of It!” Back then I thought it was funny. Today, it makes me feel ashamed.”
As I struggle with the sequelae of this recent development, and recall the terrified eyes of that young lady so long go in New York City, I am left with an abiding conviction that this is, indeed, “just not right.”
What do you think?
Published in General
They’re back.
I moved here in the early ’90s and remember well what the place was like before Giuliani’s election. (I held on to my Oklahoma license for just over a decade after moving but I changed my voting registration just so I could vote for Rudy.) I marveled at how clean and livable so many places you didn’t want to walk in alone after dark became. I started cutting through the parks at night instead of giving them wide berth and subway rides stopped feeling like scenes from The Walking Dead, with glassy-eyed grifters pouring in through every door, clawing for handouts.
But last week, I called 911 for the first time in years, to report a fight outside my window between the squeegee guy and a haggard, drunk man. There isn’t a grocery store near me that doesn’t have a couple of regulars outside with a cup and a sign, there’s an old woman who camped outside the deli on First Ave, near the bridge, until a restaurant moved in next door and added outside tables and since they put benches in what used to be an empty plaza around the corner, it turns into an open-air bar/flophouse when the weather’s mild.
I think the main reason we don’t have it quite as bad here so far as it is in California or New Orleans — harsher weather. It’s not quite “pre-Giuliani” bad but it’s definitely on a downward slide again. I won’t be cutting through the plaza late at night, come summer.
Tough love is oftentimes called for. The alternative tends to make us into enablers.
I don’t have the knowledge (or really the desire) to challenge this strenuously, but it is at odds with my own personal observations and some of what I have read. The absolute view that this is the product of two things, and two things only, seems to ignore a good number of people who are generally OK with living in decent climates in either disabled RVs or tents. I suppose that, ultimately, one could question whether this is because of some form of mental illness, but there are functioning individuals for whom this “lifestyle” is generally a matter of choice, driven by a form of independence.
Yeah. Used to love SD. Balboa Park in particular with the museums , lovely landscaping. Went there one day with my kids early to visit. The army of homeless in the park starting to shamble out to start the day looked like something from a zombie movie or a post apocalyptic scene. Felt uncomfortable with the wife and 2 young ones, so have not returned….
Agreed.
I am actually related to someone who is sane, capable of holding down a job and taking care of herself and who does not lack any access to an extended family support system and resources but for whatever reason, she became homeless last year, by choice, using a communal warehouse space to house most of her possessions and sleeping in an old van. Ditto for many of the “street kids” I saw in NOLA on my last visit there. They seem to think they’re on a fun adventure.
On the other hand, when I volunteered in a homeless shelter years ago, one of the regulars told me he was glad there were so many resources available to him for everyday needs because it allowed him to put any money he managed to scrounge toward drugs. (Eh, I applaud his honesty, at least.) And when the population of the shelter I worked in after Katrina dwindled down from 7,000+ to under a thousand it was obvious who the stragglers were — the mentally or physically impaired, the substance abusers and (no two ways about it), a lazy feckless few who were accustomed to working the system, instead of working.
All that is to say, I don’t presume to know what the chief cause or remedy for homelessness is and I accept that there will always be some in our society whom those of us more blessed, lucky or capable will need to support but I bristle when anyone gives me that “there for the grace of God” line — or laments that the homeless are “all” or even “primarily” people who are down on their luck or just caught a bad break and if we could just get the “greedy rich” to throw more money at the problem and stop being so “judgmental” we could stamp out this problem forever.
No we won’t. Not completely. Not ever. And I didn’t develop that opinion from some ivory tower. I learned it from the homeless.
“There are eight million stories in the naked city.”
As I’ve said, anecdotes are fine for illustration purposes but not for developing a once size fits all solution. Here is one anecdote illustrating your idea:
A young couple came into this area and were sleeping behind the local Piggly Wiggly. The were taken under the wing of a good samaritan that gave them food (in the samaritan’s home!), shelter, transportation and found employment for both of them. No evidence of drug addiction, mental or other handicap. They were told they had four months to get on their feet or out you go. Neither liked the work they were employed for and slacked on it, so were eventually fired. Time was up just a few weeks later and out they went.
Same story with a different samaritan, but it took as I recall two months and his wife sent them packing.
Then they were with yet another samaritan (known to a friend) in a town about 20 miles away. I don’t know where they are now, my guess is Nashville.
Eh, to be honest, the people who are voluntarily living in quirky living circumstances because they prefer it, really aren’t homeless per se. They have a home, it’s just an RV squatting somewhere like on federal land or something. They aren’t then holding up a sign on a street corner saying Anything Helps God Bless, and I think that’s what the original article is talking about: the heartbreaking sight of people in Desperate Circumstances who have Nowhere To Go. I think my comment still stands if we are talking about that group.
I am responding to the sentiment that says “OMG can you believe this is actually going on here in the US? That’s horrible!” I am saying, “yes, because it has nothing to do with money, it has to do with substance addiction and mental illness.”
If someone is truly living voluntarily this way, they then are not people who want to be rescued, because this is their preferred lifestyle choice. I just don’t think that’s a significant percentage of the homeless population, to be honest.
You are, apparently, both correct. The NYT in 1984 (homelessness is only an issue during Republican administrations) had a nice summary of the history…
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html
The guy who sat across the street from my sister’s first apartment in New Orleans every night had a sign reading “Homeless and Hungry, Anything Will Help, God Bless Us.”
And then my sister came home in a huff one day and reported that she’d seen him in the A&P, purchasing 2 pints of Haagen-Dazs, 6 Nestle Crunch bars and a pack of lightbulbs.
“Well, that is annoying,” I said. “We’re so stupid broke that we can’t splurge on Haagen-Dazs but we’re not asking strangers to pay for it!”
“Lightbulbs, doofus,” my sister said. “The key item in the allegedly homeless guy’s shopping list was . . . lightbulbs.”
“Oh. Right. I guess that’s kinda weird.”
She called me “60 watt” for a while, after that.
No, it started in 1957 in California with the Short-Doyle Act. Short and Doyle were Dems, Frank Lanterman was an old fashioned goo goo Republican who was instrumental in passing it. The bill
And encourage deinstitutionalization it did: According to Wikipedia, “[b]y the time of Lanterman’s retirement in 1978, the number of patients in state mental hospitals was just 6,000, one-sixth of the 1957 total.
Historian Clayton Cramer writes
That bill was enormously influential nation wide. When it was being hammered out, my psychiatrist stepfather, (a man with extensive experience in research, teaching, private and HMO practice and administration, and who had worked in prisons and mental hospitals) feared that no good would come of it, that the result of the closure of the state mental hospitals—which was the ultimate goal of the activists behind the scenes—would result in the mentally ill being “on the streets and in the parks.” Sadly, he was right.
According to Clayton Cramer, Lanterman knew what he had done:
Another way to put it: highly restrictive policies have gutted California’s urban housing supply and encouraged people to put in bootleg apartments and in-law units.
While a badly done in-law apartment in a single family residence doesn’t endanger that many people, badly done warehouse/live-work conversions have been deadly. For example, Oakland’s disastrous “Ghost Ship” fire, which killed 36 people, was the result of dangerous construction practices, blind eyes turned, and a policy of being flexible and artist friendly.
Now, cities see a potentially substantial new revenue source in the permitting and inspections that will be required to bring the recently legalized units up to code and ensure that any new ones built meet the building codes.
“More units on a lot” is sometimes also called “Manhattanization.”
Okay, whether or not you agree with Ontheleftcoast, why isn’t he a contributor yet? This is the kind of high level thought I like challenging myself against even when I disagree.
This is depressing, I saw this video about a month or two ago and watched in shocked awe. It’s a bicyclist who goes down the Santa Ana River Valley Parkway and cycles through what seems like endless homeless tents. All under the shadow of the Anaheim Angels Stadium arch. This will depress you.
https://youtu.be/Bhy3zI3wvAo
Don’t be depressed for long. That’s gone. Orange County cleaned it out. They organized it well. It can be done. It ain’t cheap, though.
The fix is broken windows. Of course California will break up first, before any Democrat has the guts to do whats necessary.