The current world health crisis shines a light on two groups of Americans we seldom want to see: the homeless and the incarcerated. It is time we looked directly at them and asked ourselves. “Can’t we do better for our fellow human beings? What can we do to help improve their lives?”
The poor and homeless are always with us. In America there are more than 500,000 men, women, and children living on the streets, or, if they are lucky, in temporary shelters, but “intermittently.” There are also millions of people, including whole families, living in cars and vans. Here in Santa Maria we have Good Samaritan, United Way, the Salvation Army, First United Methodist Church, and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church doing the work we all could do. That’s still not enough to meet the overwhelming need.
COVID-19 moved Good Samaritan to create beds for the homeless in the Santa Maria High School gym. Those admitted were welcome to stay all day long and were provided with three hot meals from the Salvation Army and regular showers. They could also be connected with counseling, drug treatment, and more permanent housing. Unfortunately, Good Samaritan does not accept people under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Other cities practice “harm reduction,” accepting people whether or not they are clean and sober and finding them the services they need to reassemble their broken lives.
Recently, in the Santa Maria Sun, there was an ad for the Humane Society that read: “No animal is ever turned away from our shelter. Not the sick, neglected, abandoned, or injured. Animals will never be turned away due to lack of space, age, or ailment.”
Aren’t the homeless at least as valuable to us as stray animals? Don’t they deserve to be treated humanely all year long? Doesn’t the holy Bible teach us this lesson over and over in the words of Jesus?
The temporary gym shelter, which recently closed, was created to keep the homeless safe from the virus and to keep them away from the rest of the population, who fear they could infect them. To date, no Santa Maria homeless person has tested positive for the virus.
Normally the city of Santa Maria policy is to make life so uncomfortable for the homeless that they will move on to a more hospitable place. The library is a good example of this philosophy. The long benches were replaced by single chairs and then removed altogether to leave the plaza bare and unfriendly, to keep the homeless from public view. There is a guard at the library “welcoming desk” to keep the homeless from spending too much time in the bathrooms. Public bathrooms in the city have disappeared, and they have few other places to go.
The city has also fenced areas off between the library and City Hall to keep the homeless from congregating, lying down for a nap, or sleeping overnight. There are city fences all over and rules about how many backpacks the homeless can set down, where they can sit, and their needing a lock for their bikes. The punitive nature of our policies is wrong and ill conceived.
On June 2, the City Council may pass an ordinance that will exclude the homeless from city parks, plazas, and buildings if they carry and unpleasant odor.
Studies show that when cities work to find permanent housing, the homeless can receive services and thrive. Homeless people are not bad people. Why can’t we treat them as compassionately as we do our own brothers and sisters?
The same is true of the men, women, and youth who are incarcerated. COVID-19 has been especially hard on the prison population. Look at Lompoc prison. American society has thrown men and women away and lost the key. Poor food, poor sanitation, overcrowding, and a broken health care system increase their vulnerability. COVID-19 shines a light on how inhumane their treatment is.
Prison reform is long overdue. Rehabilitation has proved possible around the country when we provide programs in the prisons to heal the prisoners’ lives. Former prisoners can survive and flourish in the community if we don’t release them in the middle of the night with only $20 and a bus ticket. Like with hospitals, there needs to be a discharge plan. Our brothers and sisters also need supportive programs on the outside to help them integrate successfully back into the community. They have done their time and deserve the same love and respect we all do.
COVID-19 has taken the blinders off and allowed us to look at the reality of homelessness and of prison life. Now that we see how cruel and unfair our response has been, it’s time to make plans that will directly deal with the human needs of all these Americans. The virus has shown us that there is more than one kind of healing that our country is waiting for.
Gale McNeeley writes from Santa Maria. Send comments to the editor at clanham@santamariasun.com, or submit a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2020.