Nowhere to Sleep as City Cracks Down on Woods Campin
was out walking around, talking to some of my homeless friends, and they all seemed to have one thing on their mind. As many of you know, it was a hot debate when the state passed laws saying they can’t sleep in public. I’m an advocate for homeless rights, and even I thought it wasn’t a terrible idea. Asking them not to make the streets look like Skid Row isn’t outrageous. If you went down Union Street recently, you’d see why that needed to stop. I help the homeless. I want that to stop too.
But we also need better resources to help people undo their mistakes. I call it “mistake undoing” because a lot of them are out there because of their own bad choices—drugs, alcohol, crimes, whatever else. And yes, we need better facilities for the mentally ill. Those are standing issues.
Right now, though, everyone I talked to is worried about the city council doubling down on the state law. Now they can’t even sleep in the woods. No camping. I have to ask: if they’re in the woods, not destroying anything, not trashing property, what harm are they causing? They’re human beings with nowhere to go.
So what now? Are you going to run them out of town? Or round them up? Many of them were born and raised here in Jacksonville. They’re the product of your bad schools, your broken system. And now you’re going to run them off to make way for rich outsiders?
This is a bad law. Are you going to put them in concentration camps? Big camps? Feed them, take care of them? You could have done that sooner. Instead, you’re taking a bad situation and making it worse. It won’t fix the problem—it will make it worse. And there aren’t enough jail cells to enforce it anyway.
The city council downtown ought to worry about the budget, the debt, the deficit, the bankruptcy they’re driving the city toward. Not some homeless guy sleeping in the middle of the piney woods, minding his own business. That’s my take.Jacksonville’s Homeless Face
#HomelessCrisis
