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I live in New York City and, yes, you cant leave your apartment for a walk on its streets (and I walk them miles a day) and not pass homeless, sometimes visibly disturbed (or unnerved) people standing, sitting, or lying on the sidewalks, sometimes even with signs suggesting their desperation and asking for any small sum of money that those passing them might care to give (as I sometimes do). And yet, after all these years traipsing the streets of New York, Im well aware of the urge to ignore, if not avoid them completely (though its hard sometimes not to at least glance at them and imagine what drove them onto the streets of this city and into such misery).
Only recently, Donald Trump has taken up the issue of homelessness in American cities. While calling the National Guard into the streets of Washington, D.C., hes denounced the homeless. As he wrote angrily on Truth Social, We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you dont have to move out. Were going to put you in jail where you belong There will be no MR. NICE GUY. We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Recently, however, pastors in Chicago wrote an open letter to the president, who has been threatening to send troops into their city and potentially others that just happen to have Democratic mayors, urging him to focus instead on Chicagos socioeconomic inequality. As they wrote him, The real violence in Chicago like real violence across America is not the violence of the streets but the violence of policy: underfunded schools, disappearing jobs, healthcare deserts, food apartheid, and a criminal justice system that treats poverty like a capital offense.
As Nick Turse pointed out recently at The Intercept, Housing all of Chicagos homeless people would cost about $383,000 per day, a sum that equals roughly one-quarter of the expense of a deployment of 3,000 Guard members to Chicago. And if that doesnt put our present moment in grim perspective, what does? With that in mind, let TomDispatch regulars Mattea Kramer and Sean Fogler acknowledge the humanity of those who have been dehumanized for so long on the streets of American cities. Tom
Pushing People into a Really Bad System Will End Really Badly
Living on the Streets in the Age of Trump
By Mattea Kramer and Sean Fogler
The federal takeover of Washington, D.C., rightfully attracted extensive media coverage, but an executive order called Ending Crime and Disorder on Americas Streets, quietly issued on July 24th, received remarkably little attention. Perhaps it didnt make a splash because it wasnt specifically about policing (or, for that matter, National Guarding), but more generally about how we should treat people who already exist on the outermost fringes of society, human beings who have long been reduced to labels like addict or homeless.
Indeed, the Trump administration is counting on us to renounce those living on the streets, while struggling with their mental health or the cost of housing (or both). And if history is any guide, that may be exactly what most of us do. While the current moment may feel shocking in so many ways, the presidents order to end what hes labeled disorder represents a further development of norms that have been in place for all too long. They are also norms that we have the power to change.
Identifying a very real crisis, the presidents July 24th executive order noted that the number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration 274,224 was the highest ever recorded. The order went on to state that the majority of those who are unhoused have a substance use disorder, with two-thirds reporting that they have used hard drugs at some point in their lives. What followed was the administrations solution: Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings will restore public order. Precisely which institutions was unclear.
One thing we know is that the use of substances is often connected to past trauma or current hardship, including oppression and poverty. Regardless of that reality, not just the president but all too many of us tend to believe that people who use drugs are undeserving of our compassion or support. In 2021, a national survey found that seven of every 10 Americans believed that those who use drugs problematically are outcasts or non-community members. (And yes, those were the terms used.)
The presidents executive order fuses drug use and homelessness into a single issue without revealing that homelessness can cause or exacerbate substance use disorder because people use drugs to cope with privation. As addiction expert Gabor Mat has said, Dont ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Much like those of us who reach for wine or social media in order to escape, when people who are unhoused use drugs, they are usually searching for a way to make life tolerable. At the same time, they come to be regarded by their peers as non-community members, making it so much less likely that this nation will fight the president on his plans to round them up and erase them from our world entirely.
Meanwhile, many of us with homes never pause to consider our common habit of avoiding unhoused people in every possible way. We cross the street, shift our gaze, anything to avoid the briefest glimpse of their humanity perhaps terrified to see ourselves in them. Heres a thought, though: if you dont want to acquiesce to the presidents way of doing things, might it not finally be time to make eye contact with those neighbors of ours who are homeless? Might it not be time to acknowledge their humanity and, in doing so, recover some of our own?
Arbitrary and Prolonged Detention
The Los Angeles nonprofit L.A. Ms helps residents build security through collective economic power and home ownership. As Helen Leung, its executive director, put it recently: Families whove been in their neighborhoods for generations are getting priced out. Vendors who work multiple jobs are sleeping in their cars. Kids have classroom friends disappear mid-semester because rent went up again. She noted that immigrants and working-class households in particular are experiencing acute displacement pressure, which ultimately pushes some to become houseless and now they find themselves in the crosshairs of the presidents July executive order.
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