One more growing tiresome response to the fact-challenged Blaska and a thought about the Mayor’s recent comments.
Just a few comments:
I did Mitch Henck’s Outside the Box radio program Tuesday morning. Sure enough, Brenda Konkel called in. Mitch and I had a devil of a time getting Brenda to admit that there was any kind of problem. The alder even posited that the Bassett neighborhood predators are not homeless. Perhaps they leave their homes in the morning for their daily aggressive panhandling shifts. Gotta go, honey. Get the kids off to school.
Odd that the police would call them “transients.”
I said the problem is aggressive panhandling. I won’t say that it is all homeless people mooching off “the system” that are aggressive panhandlers. There is an important distinction. As I told Mitch in an email after the show. Aggressive panhandling is bad. Aggressive panhandlers are not all homeless. Homeless people are not all aggressive panhandlers. I’m sorry that isn’t a good enough answer for you, but its the truth. You can’t just lump everyone together. Remember, the dude they caught knocking and entering homes on the day of Zimmereman’s murder was one of Cliff Fisher’s tenants – i.e. aggressive asking for money but not homeless. I’m not sure if this is one of the people the police consider “transient” but we can’t just lump all these behaviors together and say they’re all homeless people.
Later, in talking with city staff, it seems that the police are estimating it is about 2-3 dozen people causing problems. There are thousands of homeless people that use our shelters every year and that is a small percentage of that number.
Oh – and Mitch emailed me and asked me to call in.
Late Tuesday afternoon, I attended the homelessness pow wow at the WilMar Neighborhood Center on Jenifer Street. Who else cross-pollinates like Blaska’s Blog?
The stated subjects were: “hunger, homelessness, and profiling.”
Profiling? After a very decent interval, wherein all present had an opportunity to get their thoughts jotted down on a giant Post-It sheet, I ventured this topic: “behavior.”
Brenda, who runs the Tenant Resource Center, objected. “Where would we put it?” I suggested that Joe Lindstrom, one of the facilitators, was a bright fellow and could write it wherever he wanted.
Nice characterization. We had three note pads for listing solutions. The categories were education and outreach, policy and program. I simply wanted to know what category he wanted it placed in so that it was where he wanted it. It was placed under “program” and he kept saying we refused to write it down, but Linda politely pointed out she had written it on her flipchart.
I have been frustrated with the Left’s unwillingness to come to terms with the behavior issue. But Ed Jepsen, who was with Friends of Yahara River Parkway, offered up a carefully worded critique about “making public spaces accessible to all people.”
We see the people who live in the parks … and transient behavior that some people interpret as anti-social and scary behavior they don’t understand.
Some people interpret? Put me down as one of those “some people.” Ed, understanding scary behavior doesn’t make it any less scary. Given what we are learning, understanding that behavior ought to scare the bejesus out of all of us.
I thought we were getting somewhere and not lumping everyone together, but I see he quickly slipped back into his stereotypes. Homeless people living in the park must be those aggressive panhandlers and maybe even murderers, eh?
The guy who came closest to what I have been saying was Dean Loumis of Housing Initiatives. He started off by saying that he wasn’t going to pray for anyone — that could not have been lost on the other note-taker, Linda Clifford of Madison-Area Urban Ministry. At last week’s homelessness group hug, Linda led a prayer session for my poor, sand-blasted soul.
Linda Clifford?
And lest the casual reader not understand Blaska’s attempt at humor, no one, in fact had any prayer session.
Dean said, “No program will succeed without responsibility.” His Housing Initiatives program places 130 people — two-thirds of them men — in low-cost housing. The program picks up two-thirds of the cost, thanks to state and federal grants. “If they fuck up, we kick them out. Same thing as at a job. You are held accountable.”
Then he said this:
It’s O.K. to point fingers at programs that are messing up.
In a chat afterwards, Dean said most of his clientele are SSI recipients, people with mental issues. They are easier to help. It’s the booze-addicted who are the hard cases. No surprise, there.
You know, I think this is a good idea. Let’s point fingers at the “bad programs”. Where are all these free flowing services that don’t require people to be held accountable? Come on, give us some details David. Let’s talk facts.
Toward the very end of the session, another fellow (and I did not catch his name) asked, “What should happen in Brittingham Park and what should be done on the Yahara River?” where there are encampments of homeless. (That is the unreported story of this issue.)
The other fellow, was Manny Scarbrough from the Parks Commission. He chairs the committee on alcohol in the parks. This issue about the Yahara River was discussed at the last Parks Commission.
The bottom line from Tuesday’s Wil-Mar session was that more coordination would be nice — a point made by Dave Glomp — but more services are what is needed. And that requires more money.
And yet Madison and Dane County offer the best set of social services in the state. Even some of the WilMar participants quietly acknowledge that. Over half of Dane County’s $440 million annual budget goes for a wide range of social services.
Funny, he leaves out the part where Ralph Middlecamp from St. Vincent de Paul says that the funding for his programs remains about the same as it was 20 years ago and that he has to do more with less every year.
If we get more money, right now, I vote that more money goes to the police. Law enforcement remains the greatest social program going.
Interesting. I’m not sure the police feel like it is their job to be a social worker. And, police are an expensive solution. It’s probably far more cost effective to have services provided that help people get out of the state of homelessness instead of having the police spend so much time on on the problem behaviors with no long-term solutions. Just giving the police whatever they want, as Blaska suggests later in his post isn’t going to solve this problem. Outreach, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health treatment, jobs, transportation and housing. As a side note, of the 7 people from Brittingham Kristin Petroshius got into housing, 4 of them now have jobs.
Almost a full hour after the formal program ended, a nice lady who has taken on a personal project to study homelessness — she has testified at City and County budget hearings — asked what I think in my innermost mind when I see a man crumpled up on the steps of Grace Episcopal Church in downtown Madison.
I did not fully answer her question then and so will here now.
When I see such a person, I hope the hell the poor bastard gets the help he needs if he is willing to take it and better himself.
Poor bastard? Seriously? Sigh. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with baby steps and the small mea culpa offered.
As for the Mayor’s comments:
Given this back and forth between people like Dave Blaska and Brenda Konkel, what would a more rational discussion sound like?
I haven’t read the discussions, but I can sort of imagine what they’re saying. I don’t think that highly-charged rhetoric on either side of the issue is useful. I don’t think either fanning peoples’ fears of the homeless or condoning uncivil behavior are useful. What we need is a balanced approach that enforces standards of behavior and has an element of compassion to it. We need a discussion about solutions instead of pointing fingers.
I’d challenge the mayor to a) read the discussions before commenting on them b) see the failed amendments offered last year during the budget (outreach coordinator, transportation and eviction prevention) and c) read the city’s plan to end homelessness. The solutions are there, people have talked to you about them. What we need political will and to look at the solutions beyond throwing more money at the police department and bright lights to move people somewhere else. Those are temporary solutions. Moving “the problem” doesn’t solve it. And, it would be helpful if your discussions about Brittingham Park were held so members of the public, neighborhood resource teams and the parks commission members could participate.
