Hard Homeless Data

It seems that there is confusion likely to result in conflating the purpose of a statistical count or sociological enumeration as opposed to the purpose of finding vulnerable folks to help them out.

The use of plain clothes police introduces the appearance of and likelihood of a third agenda, which is investigative/prosecutorial, despite the putative intent of "protecting" the counters. No one would buy or expect that police will not be interested in law enforcement functions. Looking for pot, for instance.

Insofar as the stated intent is to find vulnerable individuals to "help" them, perhaps majority opinion amongst homeless is that they would prefer to decline that kind of outreach if it entails lowering defenses against intrusive law enforcment or vigilante activity.

Remember that Dale Francisco and his minions in the MCA are putatively pushing for a police sweep crack down "suppression-enforcement" campaign.

Remember that the local corporate media rag called for "superhero" vigilantes armed with potentially lethal tasers.

Remember that in France, 200 Roma ("gypsy") camps were recently shut down, leading to mass deportations and outcries from the human rights communities.

Note that the rhetoric accompanying the largest "newspaper" in Santa Barbara is virtually indistinguishable from the language preceding the Roma holocaust; the hate mongers of 1933 promulgated stereotyping, hyper-defensive paranoic rhetoric about "defending Duetschland from vagrants and thieves."

Bottom line: the homeless community is arguably not interested in making itself more vulnerable to harassment - legalistic or vigilante - in exchange for an empty promise of fifty new beds somewhere over the rainbow.

As for the other putative agenda - enumeration for the sake of data - similar objections obtain. And why place homeless folks into increased physical jeopardy so that some college professor has more data to crunch? Seems that there is common ground between the Tea Party and the left in that this government/"humanitarian" effort remains highly suspect.

As things look at this point in time, the count is a well intended effort which might have the opposite of the intended effect and introduce new security concerns to the homeless community

. Don't minimize the potential problems presented in that the millionaire corporate media entity recently ran an editorial calling for individuals dressed up in super hero costumes equipped with tasers.Tasers can be lethal, especially in the hands of paranoid NIMBY types. Application of lethal force tends to introduce complications which take a long, long time to heal.

If malicious actors get their hands on mapping and counting from these counts, maybe the homeless community will take note of the new layer of vulnerability and implement counter measures. What would you do if someone approached you dressed up as spiderman, weilding a taser?

One of the known side-effects from higher grade, potent pot being grown these days for dispensaries is that it produces paranoia in its consumers. Eyewitness might want to take note of that. Data for data's sake is silly. It's what you do with it that counts. The city is on the right track here. In progressive communities like Santa Monica, where they've been gathering the data on a yearly basis, they use it productively to drive service providers to target long-term chronically homeless, and drive for year-over-year reduction in numbers of homeless on the street. It's working, and it's compassionate. They've also withstood a recent ACLU challenge with the judge finding nothing in their collaborative program of helping the homeless is in any way infringing on their rights. How about we put down the bong and take a positive, productive view of the enumeration count, realizing it will surely help with the appropriate targeting of resources to help the homeless?

A snide personal attack, from the cloak of an anonymous user ID,? A new mudslinging low for the so-called "downtown" resident. Also, suggesting illegal drug use, without a shred of evidence, Double dip of a new low.

Sadly, that is what we have learned to expect from that certain narcissistic clique of well-funded connivers orchestrating their campaign to insinuate fear and hatred into the body politic .

All the huffing and puffing by "downtown" is nothing but a cynical, calculated attempt to proliferate "reefer madness" and help convince people to go along with the Hotchkiss Kulturkampf which is intended to gut city departmental staff & social services to hire extra cops to put all the bad people in jail for sleeping on benches and such.

Hello - marijuana is not the topic of this article.

The scurrilous attack post has "downtown's" organizational agenda written all over it,

Lacking proof, I will leave to the reader's imagination exactly which "community action" organization lurks behind the anonymous profile, and the readers can decide for themselves whether or not "downtown" is a legitimate representative of a "downtown" perspective.

No sane person would trust a single issue faction which conflates separate and distinct issues (gangs, youth, homeless, marijuana dispensaries,bulboutitis) into one false, bogeyman play on politicized fear of The Other. There is no cause for a manufactured pretext for a hyped-up Drug War Police State. .There is no call for the propagandistic pretext that an eighty year old woman freezing in the cold rain comes under the rubric of "gangs-homelessness" which, in the new "Republican" (sic) demonology, is but one single issue.

All of this new authoritarianism would be paid for by new tax increases -- salaries, pensions, jail and legal fees. Which library would they close first ?

Perhaps "downtown" needs help regarding the obsession with pot. One of the medications which might benefit obsessive disorders is none other than smoked organic marijuana!

Who wouldn't love to see a dispensary client with one of those big "community association" badges,

If there is otherwise any "paranoia" , it is on the side of the charter school contingent who are afraid of having their kids rub shoulders with public school youth and contend that the mere sight of a homeless person pushing a shopping cart is cause to be "petrified"

The hostility to the poor with which that "downtownresident" is affiliated, is puzzling: what could motivate a concerted propaganda attack on peaceful individuals who only seek a clean, safe and quiet environment in which to sleep. It must be more than mean spiritedness - it's a power grab and it is identical in all of its contours to historical patterns associated with pogroms. That is a factual observation, it has nothing to do with "the bong".

Eyewitness (nice anonymous poster id yourself there) Peabody IS a public school. I live among the poor, in downtown, so be careful where you cast that stone. We do have a community organization, consisting of some neighbors who love and care for their area - what's the crime in this? "Sadly, that is what we have learned to expect from that certain narcissistic clique of well-funded connivers orchestrating their campaign to insinuate fear and hatred into the body politic ." I couldn't have summed you up better!

Good grief....what on earth does pot smoking have to do with this article?

Perhaps "downtown" is just having trouble letting go of his comforting stereotypes?

Anyway...my interest in the "warm body count" is this: where is the money? Who stands to profit most from counting, ear-tagging, and corralling the homeless for funnelling into the various social programs? I confess to being a pretty hard-nosed skeptic when it comes to most things, especially do-gooders and hand-wringers and the "we're from the government and we're here to help" crowd.

Great. You're here to help. How much are you getting paid? Six figures? Yup. It's all out there. 990 tax forms reveal a lot and it's all public information.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be paid for the jobs they do; a fair day's wage for a day's work is critical to keeping a society running. What I find annoying is all the halo-polishing that goes on on the poverty business, the pretending that all these folks are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. T'ain't so. Those executive jobs in the poverty & homeless business pay pretty darn well. Plenty of $ there.

It's a niche business, and once you find your way in, you are guaranteed a good job with full benefits and a fat salary as long as you want it. There will always be poor and homeless people, and there will always be those who want those peop;e swept up and taken out of sight so the illusion of paradise and inflated property values can both be maintained.

Further, ensuring that the "clients" stay dependent on the services is critical. If people gain too much independence from the programs, then there aren't sufficient warm bodies to justify the annual panhandling frenzy directed at funding sources, municipal government and the public. Those six-figure exec jobs depend on it. An odd symbiosis, but one which has been fine-tuned over decades.

The root causes of poverty and homelessness are varied and many, few of which are ever truly addressed. We keep counting warm bodies, sweeping them off the streets & shuffling them into programs, and calling it good. More and more people materialize out there as affordable housing is destroyed and the city is gentrified beyond reach of seniors, the disabled, and the working poor. Like squeezing a tube of toothpaste...the people have to go somewhere.

And we never learn. The elite business hotels replace affordable housing. Jobs harder to find than ever. And we pay people mountains of money to "address the problem".

What a mess, and it will only get worse.

Now Holly!..your cynicism would have nothing to do with the fact that we have a $100,000 per year gang czar yet the powers-that-be don't dare address issues of mass migration, the overcrowding caused by it, and racial attitudes ingrained into the American pysche?..would it?

Holly, you're right. The count should not be used only to drive hysteria over homelessness, and call for more services, more money, more people helping the homeless. We should take that data, and note who's FROM here or the county, and prioritize services accordingly to our own first. Assuming the burden for other jurisdictions, and growing the industry, as you point out, is not a reasonable path. It feels like right now we're trying to help everyone, house everyone, and that's not realistic. Being truly effective at what we're doing regarding the homeless would be an improvement.

I also resonate with your statements on squeezing others. I am a struggling single mom, and I despair at times of ever being able to buy a home here, of being able to make it. This is a hard town to find great job prospects, and I've been tempted to leave for better career prospects, but my daughter is anchored here, and we've stayed to honor her need for stability. It can be demotivating at times to struggle like this, and then to see a chronically homeless man from out of state get housed within a year of arriving here, at our expense. I've known Santa Barbara-born families on the wait list for affordable housing for more than 5 years. Something's not right about this model...

I am volunteering for the count because I do care, and do want to make a difference, but I agree with what Holly articulates. The net goal should not be to ratchet up the call for ever more services, but rather use the data to drive the right services to the appropriate individuals. We do a lot of helping around here, but is it actually working?

All of my statements were demonstrably true. It seems everytime Roger Rouse (who may or may not be an advertiser) is mentioned in a negative light in my posts, it is deleted as well.

There should be a plan detailing what we will do with the data once it is gathered. Otherwise we will find out we gathered the wrong data.
I like what Rudy Giuliani did in NY City. He stopped most all hand outs and gave people jobs. No one thought the city could afford the 'jobs' but it turned out to be cheaper than the hand outs.
Most people like to contribute if they can.
They current Mayor of NY gave homeless one way tickets out of town if they could show they had relatives/friends that would take them in.
What is the SB plan for homeless? Or at least a set of alternatives that could be executed depending on what the data shows.