Since you are reading this newspaper, the odds are good that you are a sane, sober and intelligent adult. Nonetheless, the government doesn’t consider you competent to act in your own best interests.
The District of Columbia requires you to wear a seatbelt when you are in a car. If you own a restaurant or a bar, it forbids you to allow patrons to smoke on the premises. The law — not parents — dictates where children sit in the family car, that they wear a helmet while riding a bike, even how late teenagers may stay out at night.
Yet the same local government that deems adults too dim-witted to take care of themselves and their children won’t second-guess the judgment of deranged people who choose to sleep on street grates and park benches. The nanny state extends to everyone except the citizens who need supervision.
It is likely that most people don’t fully understand the state of “homelessness” in the Washington area. The most common misunderstanding is that individuals living on the streets have nowhere else to go. Yet the Washington metro area has more than 200 agencies that provide services to the homeless — including shelter, food, clothing, medical care, legal and social services, job training, treatment for substance abuse, spiritual guidance, education and cultural activities, and more.
According to city officials and organizations such as the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, there are about 9,520 shelter beds and a population of 350 living on the city’s streets. Many of those beds are available, but too many homeless people refuse the offer.
Another myth is that people live on the streets because our society is too calloused to care. To the contrary, the city’s 2004 “Homeless No More” initiative reported that the District spends $25 million each year on programs for the homeless, the Department of Housing and Urban Development contributes another $15 million, charities provide around $5 million, and millions more are spent by private groups such as faith-based organizations.
Additionally confusing is the fact that most of the people categorized as “homeless” are not. To get funding, agencies have to demonstrate that they have a population to serve, so they inflate the numbers — counting as “homeless” those living in supervised facilities, shelters, transitional housing, or any situation that is tenuous, i.e., where there is no lease. Defining absurdity, HUD refers to this population as “sheltered homeless people.” To be sure, many of them might be on the streets if they weren’t in temporary housing. Nonetheless, describing people with a roof over their heads as “homeless” misrepresents the situation.
The term used by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments for those who actually lack shelter is “chronically homeless” — defined as “an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition.” That begs the pertinent question: What sort of society allows people with disabling conditions to live on the streets?
No one argues that Alzheimer’s patients aren’t better off in secure settings. No one says it is inhumane to insist that children be supervised. Homeless people, with their “disabling conditions,” are no less vulnerable. The National Coalition for the Homeless says there were 142 known attacks last year against homeless people, 20 of which resulted in death. Why should the mentally ill be uniquely free to endanger themselves and others?
If the justification for prohibiting imprudent behavior such as not wearing a seatbelt is that the costs of being injured in an accident are ultimately borne by others, then that same argument should apply to people who degrade public spaces. As pitiable as it is to see filthy people curled up in sleeping bags on park benches, it is also unacceptable that citizens who pay for those parks cannot enjoy them because they are littered and reek of urine.
Why are city officials so ginned up about the health risks of secondhand smoke but not about the health risks of public spaces being used as public bathrooms?
Like most of us, they probably fear being accused of lacking compassion. But there is nothing compassionate about leaving helpless people to fend for themselves on the streets. If it is defensible to require people to wear seatbelts for their own good, it is certainly defensible to require people to take shelter for their own good. A city so eager to protect citizens from themselves should redirect its attention to those who need it most.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria.
