Thursday, November 22, 2007

Hells Angels: Getting To Be A Holiday Tradition

I did my usual homeless census on my AM run as is my habit it seems on T-Day. My route was shorter than usual as I'm nursing a calf injury, which is much better after taking the better part of a month and a half off from running completely. Even so, the tally is 26 Homeless, and a dozen Hells Angels lined up along the sidewalk at the same cafe they were at last year.

For a while, I was thinking the Mayor's programs to clean up the homeless issue was working, but really, they are just dislocated. There were not the same congregations of homeless in the places they were last year. This year, they were spread out, outside of the park on city streets. It's astonishing.

Homelessness has been a problem for a great long while. Why is it that people can figure out how to provide free search engines and email accounts, but can't fix the homeless problem? No wait, I know. It's because there's no money in it, unlike some unpopular wars in foreign lands I know.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...


In reserve, a problem we can solve

Is the war a problem? We can solve the problem by stopping the war.

Is homelessness a problem? We can solve the problem by providing shelter, a room in a SRO hotel.

It's human nature for people to hold in reserve a suite of problems that they can solve. It keeps them from thinking about problems they can't solve, like a third of the world living on $2/day, subsidizing US growers so they can export food and putting third-world farmers out of business, not importing third-world sugar so artificial sweeteners can be marketed economically in the US, etc..

Kick 'em while they're down

A lot of the homeless have made a choice, buy drugs or get a room. Rich druggies aren't forced into choosing, they can have both drugs and a home. Solving the drug problem by giving away drugs would free up homeless' money for housing. The war on drugs is largely a war on the homeless because it keeps up the price of drugs.