Jesus Was Homeless. Would You Ban Him?
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| Homeless Jesus Statue, Central Presbyterian Church, Austin, TX |
The “Save Austin Now Pac,” an organization instrumental in bringing Prop B to the ballot, claims that the Mayor and City Council foolishly revoked a long-held camping ban two years ago. They argue, "Residents should be able to walk to a park, or to school, or to their car, without being accosted or feeling unsafe.”
But this proposition fails to answer a critical question. Where will the homeless go? They are also Austin residents. They should be able to walk or sleep without being accosted or feeling unsafe. Pushing them out of sight with no mind for what happens to them is cruel and counterproductive.
If transferred to the edges of the city, the homeless won’t have access to desperately needed employment agencies, social services or medical care. This makes it even harder for them to move to permanent housing.
“But why should we worry about lazy people who just don’t want to work?” This common sentiment defies reality.
Perhaps someone in one of those tents is just a lazy slug who can't be bothered by the trappings of work and a home, but I have yet to encounter anyone like that.
The neighbors I meet on the streets are not lazy. They work tirelessly to survive. Many have jobs but only earn minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, hardly enough for an apartment in Austin. When injured or sick, people can’t work to pay their rent. Women often have nowhere else to go after escaping domestic violence. Others are forced on the streets by an untreated mental illness or drug addiction.
Criminalizing poverty triggers a devastating avalanche. When the camping ban went into effect in 1996, the Austin Police Department openly denounced it. Police were required to issue citations to people without money. The homeless couldn’t pay the fines, and eventually they wound up in jail and then back on the streets.
(https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-brawl-homeless-population/)
A criminal record pushes employment and housing further out of reach. The administrative costs and police salaries associated with Prop B could be applied to solutions.
People camp because shelters and affordable housing units are full. More tents have popped up around Austin since the pandemic began. Police citations will not solve that. Creating affordable housing and opening more shelters will.
Instead of blaming the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder for our unsafe, unsightly streets, we should cast our disdain upward. Wealth has accumulated at the top disproportionately to the bottom.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation has grown by approximately 940% since 1978 while the average worker’s has only increased 12%. Today’s executives are no more qualified or productive than their 1970s counterparts. Their companies are not creating more jobs for Americans. They are contributing to a toxic wealth gap. (https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/)
Executives don’t have to urinate on the streets for lack of public toilets. But the wealthy often blame the stench of trickle down economics on the poor, oblivious that the odor is from their own incontinence.
Save Austin Now claims that “Together, we can bring back Austin’s sense of safety, community, and cleanliness by reversing the misguided relaxation of the city’s longtime Public Camping and Panhandling laws.”
In part, I agree. Together we can bring a sense of safety, community and cleanliness to Austin. But we cannot do it by criminalizing poverty. We can do it by looking at ourselves and working to change a socio-economic system that glorifies greed and despises the victims of it.
