Erica C. Barnett
“Needless to say, all of this drives me—a bleeding-heart liberal, privacy advocate, and a person in recovery myself—bananas. I react viscerally to the notion of making food and shelter contingent on treatment, and the comments I see on places like Nextdoor suggesting that we let homeless people die in the streets if they “refuse to help themselves” make my eyes well with tears and my fists clinch in rage. I don’t care if a homeless person uses my $1 to buy drugs or a sandwich, and I believe fervently that you can’t reach someone if they’re dead, so the best thing to do is help and hope the suffering addict stays alive long enough to find his or her moment of clarity (and that help is available when they do). I don’t judge people for being addicted, and I don’t think there’s any point in “applying all the laws equally” when what that means is confiscating people’s only asset when they can’t move their RVs as often as a homeowner moves her Mercedes.
“So it may come as some surprise that I recoil with almost equal force from suggestions that the only thing we have to do to solve the “homeless problem” is have more compassion—that if we just stopped demonizing our homeless neighbors and celebrated our shared humanity, the solutions would take care of themselves. Much as I believe that compassion and empathy are muscles too many people allow to atrophy, I’m also convinced that embracing the abstract principle of “compassion” too tightly can be just another way of talking past the problem.”
Read more at The C is for Crank (and as always, if you like what you see, consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site atwww.patreon.com/ericacbarnett).