The Border Between Authorities' Proposals and The Homeless Crisis

The crisis is progressing faster than the solutions.

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash

Watching how the situation is handled makes me want to cross the border again to the other side and yell at society to have more conscience and respect for their neighbor’s human beings and rights.

The crisis is progressing faster than the city is trying to solve the problem. I understand that Mayors or State Governors propose plans and solutions, which take time to be accepted and approved.

But neither I nor anyone else realized it when they approved safe-inject sites where the homeless congregate.

Come on! What is the idea?

Help or cooperate with the destruction of individuals.

If I can raise my voice as a citizen, I would like to know who came up with that solution.

Here in Boston, where I went through my worst time as a homeless, there is a place that has even been specifically named Mass and Cass, where the epicenter of the biggest homeless crisis in the city is located.

There is already a place to safe-inject.

Safely of what?

Of bypassers looking at you, or safe to use drugs without breaking the law?

Does the city want to push them to a place where no one sees them self-destruct?

This kind of solution raises my questions about how they intend to confront and counteract the situation. However, other cities are taking additional measures that seem to be taking another direction that proposes to help more.

The city should take into consideration what is working elsewhere.

Examples:

• Housing first.

• Placing of mentally ill homeless in hospitals.

• Targeting drug dealers around homeless people.

• Continual removal of encampments on the sidewalks.

These approaches seem more based on helping and not making them disappear from plain sight to self-destruct.

*New York Mayor Eric Adams proposed a mental assessment and placement solution to help the homeless. Placing those with mental illness that prevents them from meeting their basic survival needs of food, clothing, shelter, or medical care seems more reasonable—or humanitarian.

The Mayor proposes to give the police authority to evaluate the individual if he needs to be hospitalized, even against his will. It is planned to open a hotline that the police can use to assist in the evaluation.

Then a trained clinician, after an evaluation, can determine if the person should remain for further treatment or be released to the public under medication.*

*(Excerpted from the newspaper NYDailyNews of Nov,30,2022)

I think a proposal with no data that it has worked on before is simply unsubstantiated, but one that could work.

At least we are going in a more fully thought-out direction. But, like all proposals, it will always attract criticism or unexpected praise.

I think Major Adams has experienced and confronted situations with homeless people since he was an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York City Police Department for 20 years.

From my ex-homeless point of view, I think homeless people should be classified between those who require mental health care and those who need a rehabilitation program, depending on their medical records.

Thanks for reading.

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If you know someone going through emotional problems who lacks control over addictive substances, that person may be on the brink of losing their home and falling into the abyss of homelessness and addictions. Please call a helpline.

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