Get those people out of Center City
There’s a new initiative planned to clean up Philadelphia — um, Center City — so that the homeless people who are mentally ill will be less visible downtown. I am distinctly queasy about this (speaking of voluntary/involuntary treatment issues). From the Inquirer:
With the street population of homeless at more than 300 and climbing, business leaders and residents in Center City are wondering whether the city is backsliding in how it deals with the problem and are calling for new approaches.
Among them: The Center City District recently trained some of its workers on what can be done to force the mentally ill homeless off the streets.
It’s a new assignment that makes many mental-health experts uncomfortable. But it reveals the degree of frustration in the downtown community with the increasing number of street people, who account for 10 percent of the city’s overall homeless population.
Philadelphia police said there were 352 people living on the streets last week, but some homeless advocates estimate that the summer population may be as high as 500.
“The homeless wind up in one neighborhood – Center City,” said Paul R. Levy, president of the Center City District, which supplements city services for downtown businesses and residents through a surcharge on property owners.
I think it’s pretty naive of Levy to say the homeless end up in only one neighborhood. It makes me think he doesn’t get out much.
Tougher steps signal Philadelphia’s frustration over homeless
liz | 4:25 PM | Uncategorized
Maybe I’m a little off here, but this almost sounds like a “Final Solution” for the homeless by Center City District.
The most frightening part of this article is that when it talks about “what can be done to force the mentally ill homeless off the streets”, it doesn’t say where or to what it wants them to be forced into. It might not be so bad if they had some vacant housing units available somewhere nearby that they wanted to send these people to. But if they just want to move them to some other neighborhood without doing anything about their lack of shelter, or to incarcarate them for the crime of being destitute, or to give them a bus ticket out of town to some other city that may be equally unprepared to deal with them, then I think that is pretty sad.
I think we might all be better off to think of those who are down-and-out not as some kind of “other”, as many politicians and economically secure people often seem to do, but just as how we ourselves might be under different circumstances. (Or, to put it another way, “there but for the grace of God go I.”) And we might also be well-advised to heed the advise of Mark Twain when he said:
“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now. That is a simple rule, and easy to remember.”
Anyway, on a personal note (to Liz), I’d like to add that I think I may have been TUI – Typing Under the Influence (of the Bee Gees) – when I typed my final comment of the day yesterday. I hope you understand – I may have blogged when I should have emailed [or something like that]. Hearing some kinds of music can have an affect on me almost like that of being drugged – even when I haven’t ingested any kind of drug at all – and might even lead me to seem something like temporarily insane at times. Leonard Cohen is another one who can sometimes have that affect on me [in addition to the Bee Gees]. But I think I usually agree with your wisdom in deciding what to post and what to block out. I just hope you will think seriously on the above mentioned words of Mr. Twain, and possibily give them as much creedence as I do.
You write “the homeless people who are mentally ill” and “homeless mentally ill,” just wanted to make sure you know people aren’t homeless because the don’t take their psych meds, they’re homeless because they have no homes, and thus become mentally ill.
Story about efforts to make the poor and homeless less ubiquitous in American cities (from “The Spoof”):
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i23550
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