Peter Brown on Homelessness
By: F. William Bracy
Ventura Co. Local Politics - May 1, 2010
Peter Brown
Ventura Social Services Manager
Seen on Ventura Channel 15 speaking against panhandling (4-1-2010)
I happened to see you, Mr. Brown, on the Ventura channel while I was staying in one of the local motels in town. Hundreds of homeless folks didn't see you and probably never will because the price of a warm, safe motel room with shower and TV is far beyond their reach.
An Apple a Day
You suggested to the 110,000 or so remaining Ventura residents that they hand the panhandlers a piece of fruit instead of currency when seen at crossroads and store entrances. Let me suggest to you that if the situation were reversed and you were suddenly thrust into their situation, an apple or orange handed to you by a well-heeled resident from a car window would feel like a slap in the face ... not in any way a helping hand. Why? Because few to none of the homeless in affluent Ventura are in actual starvation mode.
I cringe at the callousness. What's a dollar versus an apple? This isn't WW2 Germany, you know. A homeless person knows where to obtain bare necessities like a few canned goods, a banana, an apple, a candy bar or a few pieces of fruit. But you're not in this position. You're on TV, operating out of a spacious office, setting policy and orchestrating a veritable symphonium of charitable causes. I would even go so far as to say that the scenarios you work so hard to prevent could never take on any real life meaning for you personally.
I chuckle a bit when I think of all the people who enter the social services without ever having experienced first hand the environments that produce, or should I say, interrupt, what is thought to be a normative human lifestyle. You see, in almost every other service profession the way a job takes on the aspect of practicality is through field work or hands-on experience – a step you felt justified in skipping, no doubt. This is to say that without tenure in homelessness, asking a person to work on the homeless problem would be like asking a war correspondent to report on battle scenes without ever having visited a war zone. We live in such a zone, do we not Mr. Brown?
Smackdown
Now let's just say for the sake of argument that the position of Commandant -- for lack of a better word -- in the War on the Homeless in Ventura County had just opened up. With me as the interviewer and with you as the applicant at the table, I ask to see some practical work experience in oh, I don't know, Human Blight Removal I suppose. Assume further that I had seen the video just described with your thinly veiled disdain for the less fortunate among us. I must say that the interview would have ended then and there. In other words, it would be supremely clear to me that you do not have the work experience necessary to round out the position.
We've been told that all politics is local. Actually, it doesn't get any more local than this nor any more political.
Let me play back something that sounds very close to that which crossed your lips. (I was typing as you spoke, paraphrasing to some extent) “We're concerned about the quality of life for all including the general population who are forced to bear the sight of human misery ... the sight of sores on the skin, dirt in the hair, shoes with holes and filth. This is ugly and ruins the quality of life for the rich who, with their shopping bags full to overflowing, are making their way toward their hillside homes.”
And yet we need to talk about something that is truly ugly, Mr Brown ... far uglier than the sight of an elderly man or woman wrapped in dirty blankets while pushing a shopping cart past a fine, upstanding citizen's living room window. We need to talk about elitism.
Elitism is the forerunner of racism, which is the forerunner of totalitarianism. If you disagree, then perhaps you've never read Orwell's Animal Farm. Through your video I can envision a scenario so close to Orwell's, it makes my hair stand on end. Hand them a piece of fruit. Or, better still, “Let them eat cake.” This eases your conscience, which is the whole point, and yet does nothing to solve the problem. What it does do is misdirect public opinion, suggesting to other elitists that since this kind of rationalization works for you, it might work for them as well.
Reading the Tea Leaves
You use arguments heard over and over by folks who think they know far more than they actually do. Is it necessary to go through them all? You say that panhandling promotes drug and alcohol lifestyles. You couldn't possibly have supporting data for this. Ideas like this come from sheer presupposition and bias.
Looking for a reason why California hosts a homeless population greater than the next (x) number of states combined, you cite the accommodating weather. Well of course. Using the (faux) scientific principle of Effect-and-Cause, you begin by looking for observable causes, rather than the other way 'round. Eventually you find one. “Ah-h,” you say. “It must be the weather.” It couldn't have anything to do with human marginalization tactics (like political biases against unionism and other forms of job-killing corporate greed) that trickle their way down from on high, now could it?
You say that the defiantly homeless are homeless by choice. What you are really talking about here is institutionalization, which, like addiction, trumps choice in virtually all cases. Compare by asserting that without taking institutionalization into account, “the defiantly incarcerated are incarcerated by choice.”
Read the section in quotes one more time. It's your logic, not mine, and you can see how silly it is. I won't go into this further. You either grasp the connection or you don't.
You say that the chronically homeless consume resources in a manner that is out of proportion to their numbers. The key idea here is consumption, of course, and with the emphasis placed on consumption, a very strange implication surfaces. It takes the focus away from homelessness and places it elsewhere, as in, “Gee, if we could somehow eliminate homeless consumption, the homeless problem might just vanish into thin air!” … yet another example of effect-and-cause thinking.
Furthermore, the consumption of resources you're talking about are law enforcement resources – thinly veiled – with the perennial presupposition of guilt before innocence on the part of the police. I see them, sir, and it happens repeatedly … the violation of citizens' rights against unreasonable searches and seizures … the indignation of being asked for identification and sat down on curbs like a common criminal. You really should try it sometime. I walk up as they're being questioned. I even take pictures and I have them to show if you'd like … documentation in an ongoing war of choice … the War on the Homeless in Ventura County.
And then there are the episodically homeless, guiltless beyond having been saddled by officialdom with yet another identity crisis. Did whoever came up with this syntax think to use a Thesaurus? What's wrong with circumstantial homelessness for heaven's sake? Episodically? … I had to convince myself that episodic is even recognized in the English language. And if you simply must use a variation of the noun episode, bad as it is, then see how much better the adjectival form sounds in the phrase, episodic homelessness. Also, adjectives are often better from a readability standpoint than are most adverbial forms considering how often the structure gets inverted. (Rather than preceding a verb, adverbs follow, usually.)
Sisyphus is Happy
Finally, the so-called “Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in Ventura County” deserves commentary in a treatment all its own, but one that must be postponed for now. Yet if I were to make a couple of amalgamated points I would proceed with this:
“Why would anyone think that it will be any easier to end homelessness during the next ten years than it has been at any time in the preceding ten? … or twenty?” While failing to address such an ambitious and necessary undertaking during economic boom times, why now? How during the greatest recessionary period in 80 years and in the face of a very long recovery period according to many economic analysts, would anyone see this move as anything but disingenuous at best and rife with political motivation at worst?
You do know – or maybe you don't – that ordinances are being passed by our dear concerned local officials that limit motel guest registrations to one continuous 28-day period. Forget minor fiscal augmentation schemes, which will, of course, be first out of the box in terms of their stated rationale. Tell me in all honesty that this isn't simple mean spiritedness … a desire by people who seek public office to do one thing and one thing only – to work their will on others, consequences be damned. Forget health care. How's this for government intrusion into the private lives of ordinary Americans? Any staunchly conservative Republican replies?
I'm sorry, but with social services leadership like that of you and others, Mr. Brown, you folks make me feel ashamed of my own humanity.
Signed,
“Fritzwilliam”
A.k.a. F. William Bracy, Author & Novelist