Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Brent Nyitray's avatar

After the riots of the 1960s, the suburbs of big cities took legal actions to insulate themselves from the bad decisions of their urban neighbors.

New York City suburbs like Westchester have passed laws that allow them to give the Heisman to HUD, Albany, and NYC.

At the end of the day, the urban areas have voted for the crime and homelessness. They got what they wanted. In a perverse way I think they don't mind it really. It makes them feel good about themselves.

Call it the Hairshirt Of Virtue.

Expand full comment
Laurie Mitchell Dunn's avatar

I agree that homelessness is a very complex issue. Some people are homeless by choice, not circumstance, and more shelter beds won’t make a difference for them.

One example: I have two friends, an unmarried couple, who are traveling musicians. They’re so dedicated to touring that they refuse to settle down in one place and get day jobs in order to pay rent (as do the rest of my musician friends). As a result, they mostly car-camp in summer and scrounge temporary housing from friends around Texas and the Mountain West the rest of the time. Even doing that, they still have to ask friends for financial help much of the time. Ironically, most of their stuff is NOT homeless; it lives in a storage unit in Texas. They acknowledge that they can’t keep doing this indefinitely - they’re both over 50 - but they still choose this lifestyle.

Another example: We also have a pretty sizable itinerant population (mostly single men) in the northern New Mexico mountain town where I live. Many of these folks refuse to go to our local men’s shelter, which bans alcohol, drugs, and dogs. Most of them do leave in winter, which is harsh here, but not all. They live in tents and bundle up in blankets and sleeping bags. If our town built a bigger shelter, “tiny homes,” or other accommodations for them, I suspect a good portion of them still wouldn’t want to stay there. They, too, are homeless by choice rather than by circumstance.

Expand full comment
21 more comments...

No posts