I’m Tired of Being a Sugar Daddy
Maybe it’s a little ambitious, but I’m going to ask anyway – got any ideas to help with homelessness? Arizona thinks they do. On election day they voted to adopt Proposition 312. It requires local governments to compensate property and business owners for refusing to enforce existing law or provide for public safety. Make government responsible for addressing vandalism, violent crime, public urination, drug use, and the homeless encampments that promulgate those behaviors, decimate property values, destroy businesses, overrun parks, and damage both public and private property.
Look, I’m not for indiscriminately punishing the homeless. There are plenty of people who have fallen on hard times and need a helping hand. However, there is more to our homeless problem than that. There are outreach institutions in every city built to help those who are down on their luck. From what I can tell, however, there is little to no effort by governments to help those with mental illness. The multi-generational decision governments made decades ago to cut state-funded mental health counseling, mental illness hospitals, and related institutions has helped create this problem. Add to that the tolerance and enablement of drug abuse, and we are now witnessing the endemic results. Why do we put up with this mess? Why do we not demand our governments enforce existing law, begin providing additional mental health facilities and services, and put a stop to turning a blind eye to drug abuse?
To my mind, what our governments have been doing for these last decades is immoral and inhuman. We offer nothing but continued suffering in ostensibly a more comfortable setting. Give me a break. That is a bullshit copout of the worst kind. Every government elected official who votes for homeless tolerance and enforces policies that do not allow the police to do their job providing for public order and safety should be thrown out – on the street, so to speak.
They continue to pass off this illogical voice of ‘tolerance’ as being kind. Kindness is the last thing these policies are – they are cruel. They offer no solution, no way out, no improvement, no caretaker options for the lives of the homeless. A ‘tiny home’ as shelter only encourages drug abuse. It does nothing to encourage reform, self-realization, or anything positive in any way. To think otherwise is foolhardy.
We are spending billions of tax dollars to feed these people and support their destructive habits for a day, every day. We do nothing to help a meaningful number of them. If we did, the number of homeless would be declining not increasing. This is not an economic problem, either for them or for government. This is a question of priorities. Stop spending money on progressive pet projects and begin re-addressing basic needs. Government has plenty of money to address the problem with long term solutions. Build new state mental health facilities, expand the prison system. Use existing law to commit those who need help to mental institutions or rehabilitation centers. Don’t take no for an answer. Either the homeless take responsibility for themselves or we will do it for them by placing them in a state institution. Prison is also an option; it’s where some of these people need to be. Daddy is no longer a sugar daddy; he’s the disciplinarian you should’ve grown up with.
I don’t want to hear the reasons why it can’t be done. Where there is a moral imperative solutions can be found. Government needs to redirect the money it spends on the problem to building and funding mental institutions and assisting in the growth of current outreach organizations. Doing otherwise is just kicking the can down the road because you don’t really want to get involved. Stop denying the hard decisions that need to be made and do what is right for society and for the homeless.
Will it be easy? Absolutely not. Will it be a step in the right direction to help the majority live better lives? Absolutely yes. We can’t make homelessness completely go away, any more than we can ask for every day to be sunny and warm. But we can make an honest and sincere effort to help. What we’re doing now is a misinformed and misguided, immoral farce. Let’s get our act together.
