Actually, in King County, Washington, there is no such thing as a “homeless czar,” and that might be one of the problems, according to Mark Putnam. Until last month, he was executive director of All Home, the coordinating board that serves the whole county. Before that, he worked for almost two decades in the homelessness alleviation field. Putnam explained to interviewer Jonathan Martin that responsibility is shared by All Home, the county, and the city of Seattle.

If not for the fabled Gold Rush that made Seattle the jump-off point for sailing to Alaska, it might still be a fishing village. Back then, population growth was a great thing, because it might bring to town the cabinetmaker who could fix your antique credenza, or the doctor who could cure your baldness, or the blushing young lady who would become the mother of your children. A city should be proud that people want to join it.

But things are different now. In recent years, Seattle’s population has exploded, and so has the number of unsheltered people, which is reckoned to have doubled since 2014. Critics have charged that Seattle makes abject poverty look so easy and attractive, people even come from out of state to be homeless and enjoy the amenities.

In reality, most new arrivals come (as in the Gold Ruch days) because they hear rumors of opportunity and success. Putnam says:

I talk with families from Arizona and Georgia… I don’t hear that, somehow, people in Atlanta know Seattle has a good soup kitchen, or something. When we asked, 5 percent — 50 out of 1,100 people — said they came here homeless and because of the services.

At the same time, there is undoubtedly a magnet effect within the county and even the state. Putnam says:

We have most of our services in Seattle, and therefore we have most of our unsheltered homelessness in Seattle. When Bellevue or Federal Way says, “We don’t want to become the next Seattle,” I don’t think the solution is to not have the services.

It seems obvious that if other cities provided comparable services, people in need of them would not flock to Seattle. If the availability were spread out, the clients would be more evenly distributed, rather than bunched up. This is the kind of dilemma that bureaucracies tend to go round’n’round with.

The accountants point out that economy of scale can be achieved by centralizing services. But people who come from far away to access those services are poor, so they don’t have any place to stay in the city. If they begged a ride from a friend — or took a bus — and ran out of money, they might be stuck without a way back to the small town they came from. The homeless statistics grow.

So, then it is decided that local branches for services are much preferable. Or an agency figures out a plan where a traveling social worker hits one town each day on a rotating schedule. Different jurisdictions handle things differently, as they should. The day inevitably comes when the financial pragmatists say, “Hey, this is costing a lot of money. Let’s put all the services in the big city, and make needy people go there.”

It is one of the eternal problems that every city has to deal with. Like all responsible policy-makers, Putnam and All Home would welcome more research, saying:

I’d be interested in seeing how recently all Seattle residents have come to this community, and where they came from, and what they were earning, and why they came…

There seems to be a particular lack of communication with people who live in cars and RVs, making up an estimated 40 percent of Seattle’s unsheltered folk. There is not much information about their needs, or what could be done to improve their situations. The city nudges agencies to concentrate on the people who live in tents. As far as Putnam knows, no agency applied to the city to do outreach to the vehicle dwellers.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Putnam illustrated the old saying by mentioning a meeting where it would have been advantageous to be a homeless czar, because bringing in a bunch of people can make things cumbersome. Though the project was in the exploratory stage, 12 city and county officials felt they absolutely had to be there. The consulting firm they met with seemed baffled, and not totally pleased when such a mob showed up for a very preliminary talk, whose results could easily have been shared by sending out a memo.

In this case, the three-way sharing of authority worked well because of the personalities involved. But it could so easily have been different, and in many places, it is different. Which is why Putnam feels that the chain of command, rather than being relationship-based, needs to have clear-cut institutional parameters.

What would a different structure look like? He admires how the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health runs its show:

That department director is responsible for all things public health, and she reports to both the mayor and county executive… It’s not the solution to homelessness; it’s not going to solve everything. It would just put in place a structure that people will know who is accountable and will drive toward results, delegate and everyone knows who is making a decision.

What causes homelessness?

The journalist asked, and Putnam answered:

It’s not always an individual failure. It’s what has happened in their lives, and it’s what has happened in society… The causes of homelessness are far more complex than I even knew. I probably learned the most from people who were experiencing homelessness, getting to know them and why it happened.

And what is happening in society?

Putnam says:

The spike on the charts is very similar to the spike in rents. It’s the same line… I don’t think it’s the only thing, but I think it’s the thing that pushes people over the edge, that rise in rent…

We’re being asked to end homelessness, which also has multiple, national factors at play that are really outside the control of one of the thousands of counties in the United States…

I think everyone at the local level has felt it is unfair for the federal government that isn’t doing its part to encourage mayors’ challenges, and local responses and local taxes, when there hasn’t been much movement beyond treading water with our federal funding for decades.

Reactions?

Source: “King County’s former homeless ‘czar’ on homelessness,” SeattleTimes.com, 02/21/18
Photo on Visualhunt

This is the last of a connected series of posts examining first the phenomenon of families living in motels for years at time; the activities of the giant corporation known as Airbnb; and then asserting that these two things together constitute a monstrous crisis.

In any municipality where more than half of Airbnb’s listings are entire houses or apartments laws are probably being violated. If a city decrees that the owner must be present on the premises to make it legit, landlords with multiple Airbnb listings are obviously out of compliance.

Not long ago, it became widely known that in many cities, in the words of journalist Tim Redmond, “the vast majority of units rented out through the company are not rooms in apartments or flats but are entire buildings.”

Could it be greed?

What landlord in her/his right mind would settle for hard-working long-term tenants, when several times the profit can be made by renting to a series of travelers from out of town. The lavish availability of Airbnb spaces does not do much for the middle-class or lower-class American.

The poor who urgently need to travel for family emergencies or in pursuit of employment are probably not prospective Airbnb customers. In former days, they would stay in cheap motels. Now, when motels are filled with people who are one step from homeless, how do impoverished travelers cope? Spend nights in the parking lot of the hospital where the relative they came to see is dying?

Some perceive Airbnb as an upper-class mutual aid society. Sure, landlords take advantage of the situation to extract every possible dime. But their renters are often members of the same class, who are property owners back where they came from. Yet they have the means to occupy another place that is not their home — a place that could be an actual home to a local family —
if prices were not so absurd. Airbnb affects low-income people by removing from the market the kind of rental stock needed by families of modest means.

Airbnb regulation

In some places, even having a job does not make it possible to live under a roof. Airbnb enjoys a brisk trade in Telluride, Colorado. The people who live in the mountains, and do the work to make things nice for the tourists, sleep in tents and cars, and spend hours per day commuting in winter weather conditions.

The Verge tech reporter Nick Statt wrote in late 2016:

In October, Airbnb sued the state of New York after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that imposes steep fines on hosts that list empty residences in multi-unit buildings for less than 30 days. The state says these short-term rentals open the door for landlords to operate illegal hotels…

Five months later, Reason.com commented on the result:

New York passed one of the nation’s most onerous anti-homesharing laws last year, but residents don’t seem to be taking it all that seriously. There were more than 55,000 Airbnb rentals in the Big Apple on the final night of 2016… despite the state law that prohibits the advertising of short-term rentals and the threat of $7,500 fines.

A two-week-old news story bearing the title “NYC’s hotels need homeless people to stay in business” relates how competition from Airbnb is making hotels go broke, and consequently…

[…] the city now pays to put up a mind-boggling 11,000 homeless people in hotels — nearly one in six of the roughly 61,000 previously in shelters — costing taxpayers an average $222 a night compared with $150 a night in shelters.

 

Part of the reason why hotels go belly-up is oversupply. But for some perverse reason, developers insist on building more and more of them — despite the clear evidence that the desperate need is for long-term housing. Christine Lagorio-Chafkin explains how…

[…] what bills itself as a company that lets homeowners rent out spare bedrooms has now spawned, globally, thousands of what can — rightly, I believe — be called private hotels. The problem with running private hotels is that cities have various ways they tax and regulate the hotel industry, and Airbnb is largely skirting them…

 

She quotes urban design expert Gabriel Metcalf:

From a policy perspective, the real issue is whether there are a lot of units that have been removed from the housing market because of short-term rentals…

Sure, other factors affect the supply of hotel rooms and rental housing in the overall market. Restrictive zoning has been an inhibiting force for decades. In the few cities that have some kind of rent control ordinances, that is where blame for the housing shortage is likely to be directed. But the unavoidable truth is that, because of Airbnb’s wild success, landlords take their properties out of the long-term rental sector.

The insanity of it

There is a pattern of ugly circularity to all this. With more Airbnb spaces, fewer families and individuals can find housing, and people barely escaping homelessness stay in motels, which encourages the conversion of more housing to short-term rentals. Travelers inhabit premises originally meant for permanent residents, including families. They relax in spacious, well-maintained quarters, and are granted privacy, respect and dignity.

Meanwhile, people who actually live in the city are holed up in what were meant to be temporary accommodations for travelers. Local residents make do with cramped, neglected conditions, with their whole lives on public display, vulnerable to persecution by both criminals and law enforcers.

Let’s take this post and the previous three, and boil them down to an “elevator pitch.” If you had 15 seconds to tell somebody the homelessness problem in a nutshell, this is one effective way to frame it: We have a nation full of families living in places meant for travelers, while travelers are in places meant for families. Whatever the solution is, we need to find it fast.

Reactions?

Source: “Most Airbnb listings are entire houses,” 48hills.org, 11/02/15
Source: “Airbnb is transforming itself from a rental company into a travel agency,” TheVerge.com, 11/17/16
Source: “Is Airbnb Public Enemy No. 1?,” Reason.com, 04/08/17
Source: “NYC’s hotels need homeless people to stay in business,” NYPost.com, 02/03/18
Source: “Stop Calling Airbnb the ‘Sharing Economy’,” Inc.com, 06/17/14
Photo credit: Nrico on Visualhunt/CC BY

A trend is developing that cannot be headed in a good direction. House the Homeless looked last time at parts of America where increasing numbers of people live in a weird limbo between homeless and housed. With varying degrees of official help, they live in motels.

The rules and customs are different according to locality, but everywhere there is a version of the “nuisance motel.” Often, this means nothing more sinister than that people who live there tend to litter, and sometimes need to work on their cars.

New Jersey has its own set of laws, and a motel can be divided between short-term and extended-stay lodgings, which complicates things more. Code violations abound, because the owners are not concerned about pleasing customers to earn good Yelp ratings.

When a housed person who is merely traveling leaves a bad online review “homeless shelter motel” might be the chosen insult. Generally, tenants just put up with bed bugs, roaches, broken windows, and non-functioning locks — because they have nowhere else to go.

Double standard in hospitality industry

Even if there is government financial support to convert motels into housing for those who have no permanent addresses, approval is often hard to get. Local residents say that housing the homeless will attract drugs and violence. Now, consider the system in place in a pricey establishment where the rooms are paid for with performance bonuses, trust funds, and corporate expense accounts. In fancy hotels, drug transactions routinely happen that put the paltry nickel-and-dime motel deals to shame.

If there is trouble, the upscale hospitality business handles the matter discreetly. Favors are called in, and awkward circumstances are swept under the carpet. Witnesses are paid off or intimidated. Except in very extreme cases, authorities are not notified. Apparently, it is not actually the illegality that society worries about but the economic standing of the people who do the deeds.

Shrinking need for motels

In Central Florida, things changed a lot after the 2008 economic crash. The former massive number of Disney World travelers shrunk, and so did the need for roadside motels. 

Typical of news articles covering this story was one by Saki Knafo, which centered on a family that had lost their New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, and then had been flooded out again in Nashville. The husband had put in applications at 167 restaurants and only heard back from one of them. The parents and young daughter were able to rent a motel room for $149 per week, and even then found it necessary to sublet the room’s second bed to a Vietnam veteran. There are thousands of similar stories in Florida.

California is different. Herds of travelers still turn up in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Expedia.com says “Motels are in high demand in Los Angeles.” When some motels are repurposed to shelter local unhoused people, it cuts down on the number of places where out-of-towners can stay. For those who can afford them, expensive lodgings are always available. People on a strict budget might try sleeping in their car in a parking lot or, more likely, just stay home.

Enter the villain

Another option is signing up with Airbnb, and here is where the circularity kicks in. House the Homeless has written about this business model before. In cities that still get plenty of commercial travelers and tourist action, its existence has totally changed the rental landscape. Too often, regulations that try to mitigate the damage are weak or unenforceable.

Early in 2014, Katy Steinmetz described how San Francisco landlords were evicting long-term tenants in order to take apartments off the market, not even willing to forego the extra profit that would be lost by waiting until their leases expired. To describe what Airbnb greed was doing to the local stock of housing, critics used the word “cannibalize.” People who could afford to invest would rent apartments they had no intention of living in, but that they could, in turn, rent out by the night or weekend to travelers.

Property owners resented their tenants making fortunes from short-term referrals and started writing “no subletting” into leases if they hadn’t already. Ambitious middle-man mini-landlords were kicked out, so the actual owners could go into the Airbnb racket.

Rents continued to rise. Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness told the press, “Eviction is the driving force of homelessness.” And Maria Zamudio of Causa Justa said, “There are over 3,000 homeless children in San Francisco. Airbnb’s practice of turning homes into hotels is exacerbating those conditions.” Outside the corporation’s San Francisco headquarters, activists demonstrated vigorously.

(To be continued…)

Reactions?

Source: “15 arrested for drugs in Toms River hotel raid,” APP.com, 10/05/17
Source: “Homeless Children Living On The Highway To Disney World,” HuffingtonPost,com, 04/22/12
Source: “San Francisco Cracks Down on Airbnb ‘Abuses’,” TIME.com, 04/15/14
Source: “Housing and Homeless Activists Storm and Occupy Airbnb HQ,” SFWeekly.com, 11/02/15
Photo credit: Chris Waits (waitscm) on Visualhunt/CC BY

Last week, House the Homeless (HtH) brought up a vexed question: When the nation’s infrastructure is renovated, what will happen to the estimated 100,000 Americans who live beneath bridges and overpasses?

The topic is of major importance right now in Austin, where construction is underway and people are being evicted from whatever fragile, makeshift shelters they had. An estimated 200 people will be directly affected, or already have been.

Somehow, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) formed the mistaken impression that removing people from the planned construction sites would be the work of a moment. As HtH President Richard R. Troxell puts it, he and other advocates came to realize that TxDOT believed that “they could simply contact us and we would come get these people and house them.”

For housing to be supplied, it merely needs to be asked for — what a fanciful notion! If only it were so. This unwelcome introduction to reality slowed things down a bit.

Visiting etiquette

Meanwhile, TxDOT understood that its representatives were being sent out to do what might be interpreted as barging in and invading the homes of people who live under bridges. To bring a gift would be polite, and they thought up a helpful one — a reflective bag that can be carried by hand, worn like a backpack, or attached to the person’s outer layer of clothing and baggage. They are given out by representatives of the state and the contractors, when telling people to move on.

The “Be Safe, Be Seen” bags are not empty: They were processed through volunteers from House the Homeless and Austin’s First Baptist Church, who included extras, as described by Richard:

In each bag, we placed a stamped survey asking each person if they knew how to enter the process to apply for housing so that when we get housing they will know how to access the system. Next, we put in a half page with the name of the First Baptist Church, its address, phone number and mission statement.

Then, we included two ways to contact me to apply for disability benefits. This can help the disabled (52 % by a previous HtH Survey) leverage housing. We also included a House the Homeless Plastic Resource Guide (it folds down into a pocket) so people can locate all homeless services in Austin.

Also included were copies of Richard’s recent op-ed column from the Austin American Statesman, with his recommendations on how to address the causes of homelessness generally. The volunteers also stuffed the bags with tangible and potentially life-saving items: rain poncho, thermal underwear, knit hat, socks, gloves, scarf, hand sanitizer, safety whistle, and pen.

Along with House the Homeless, First Baptist Church, and TxDOT, others who helped out with this “winterizing” project are: Eddie and Ritamay Mire, Jeff and Alyssa Korn, and Bruce Agnes —
Community First. Austin’s KVUE made a very nice television news story. All this was in addition to the nearly 500 people “winterized” at the Thermal Underwear Party, and please check out the beautiful photo album of this year’s event.

What next? Richard says:

House the Homeless is advocating that, in order for contractors to be able to meet the timeline of their contractual obligations, they tap into their contingency funds for each individual renovation project and create emergency transitional housing for our bridge dwellers while local communities get time to create appropriate housing.

As the nation moves toward this revamping of our infrastructure, the potential for a humanitarian crisis looms over the nation when as many as 100,000 people become subject to dislocation of their lives for a second time. If only there was someone with a national vision that could call upon all state Departments of Transportation to use those “Contingency Funds” all the contractors could meet their contractual deadlines and all these folks could be treated with dignity, fairness, and some transitional housing.

That’s a tall order, and meanwhile, there is a darker side to the upcoming relocation of humans. Formerly, city police have not been responsible to enforce anti-trespassing laws on TxDOT property. With permission from the City Council, that will probably change.

Meanwhile, advocates for the people experiencing homelessness are still objecting to three city ordinances concerning Class C misdemeanor offenses. Such an ordinary action as sitting in the wrong place can create a criminal history for a person who never had one before, and act as a barrier to that person to escaping homelessness, when they apply for housing or employment.

Reactions?

Source: “Commentary: How Austin could atone for policies that harm the homeless,” MyStatesman.com, 12/05/17
Source: “TxDOT, House the Homeless team up to provide warm items to those in need,” KVUE.com, 01/12/18
Image: House the Homeless

Especially in the wake of recent climate disasters, the nation’s highways, bridges, and overpasses are in sorry shape. It follows that the renovation of the antiquated infrastructure must be a good thing, right?

Of course it is — for all but about 100,000 Americans. That is the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness who will be displaced and traumatized if every needed project in those categories actually gets done. Nationally, on average, it appears that each bridge or overpass provides a “roof” for between three and five individuals who make their homes beneath it.

In Austin, Texas, for instance, the renovation of the IH35 (Interstate Highway 35) corridor alone comprises more than 50 major projects. To accomplish this massive, multi-million dollar undertaking, an estimated 200 people will be forced to evacuate their humble dwellings, with nowhere to go. (If better accommodations were available, wouldn’t they already be there?)

These Americans are likely to be physically disabled, mentally unstable, and yes, even addicted. They may have zero money.

Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless says:

I know that it takes 12-18 months to get disabled folks a disability check ($735 per month, which houses no one but can be coupled with subsidy dollars to house people when and if there is housing stock).

The folks we are talking about may not even have the all-important “papers” that are required before a person is even recognized as existing. The details are daunting, and as local Director of Legal Aid for the Homeless, Richard is very conscious of all the roadblocks, and especially of a sore point that very much affects the homeless advocacy community.

He says:

Our housing stock has been depleted with 15,000 Katrina survivors, the veteran’s push (which only housed the mentally stable vets) and another 5,000 Harvey survivors. Note that these people all line-butted in front of other homeless people who have been waiting for housing and wage relief for years.

Imagine the city as a gigantic air mattress. When a person sits on it, air is squashed out from under them, and moves to another part of the mattress, which bulges more. If another person sits on the other side, the air inside moves around again. But the mattress still contains the same amount of air.

What we are saying here is, when people experiencing homelessness are dislodged from their locations, they inevitably wind up somewhere else — perhaps the hospital. The average unhoused individual might have enough funds to pay for three to five minutes in a hospital, if that.

Or they might commit a crime for the deliberate purpose of being incarcerated. The bills will mount up, and this pointless, costly game of musical chairs is paid for by the population at large. It takes money from everyone’s pockets — more, in the long run, than actually housing the tiny percentage of Americans who are not in tip-top condition. The forgotten people need a way back into society that is not just another temporary fix.

Austin as exemplar

In this, as in so many ways, Austin is a leader. What happens there is predictive of how things will go in other places — the civilized and caring places, anyway. It will take extensive collaboration between local, state, and federal bureaucracies, but if Austin can figure it out, that will be a great benefit for people experiencing homelessness throughout America.

Richard is working with TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) to create a model project that will set the standard and be emulated by other American cities that embark on much-needed renovations. A financial commitment for “Displacement” needs to be figured into the equation.

He calls for the housing of people to be included in every highway budget under a specific line item, saying:

It should cover all temporary transitional housing costs while surrounding communities can create the needed housing.

In the best-case scenario, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would simply house the displaced people, rather than continue to shuffle them around from pillar to post, as the old expression goes. There were public meetings, attended by representatives of TxDOT who initially labored under the misapprehension that a bunch of folks could be housed with the snap of a finger or the wave of a baton.

Again, if this were so easily done, seems like it would have happened already. If there was another place for the unauthorized dwellers to be, either temporary or long-term, they would probably already be there, and the issue would not even arise now. So to ignore that significant fact is rather disingenuous, to say the least.

Still, TxDOT has been instrumental in bringing together key organizations and elected officials to figure this thing out. This blog will follow along to observe, cheerlead, and encourage the people of Austin to aspire to make this a model project.

Reactions?

Photo credit: born1945 via Visualhunt/CC BY

House the Homeless looked at the worldwide dilemma of people who commit crimes for the specific purpose of being locked up. Jail or prison may be just as dangerous as the streets, but at least there are laws requiring that inmates be fed.

Then, we zeroed in on the U.S.A. But the subject is not finished with. Last week’s post only highlighted some of the less serious crimes done in the name of finding refuge. Purposeful incarceration is sometimes a tactic with higher stakes, or at least with more considered long-range planning.

In Illinois, David Potchen told authorities he would plead guilty to a bank robbery only if he received the maximum sentence of eight years. He had been released from an earlier bank robbery sentence after serving more than 12 years, and was able to find a job.

But then Potchen was laid off, and could find no other work within walking distance of the motel where he lived, and was evicted. After spending one night in the woods, he took a little over a thousand dollars from a bank teller and then sat outside on a chunk of concrete to await the police.

In Oregon, a man asked people to call 911, and used other means of trying to annoy the local police enough to lock him up, including a false report of being hit by a car. Finally he handed a bank teller a note that said, “This is a holdup. Give me a dollar,” and sat on the bank lobby floor awaiting arrest. He told the authorities and the press that he needed medical care.

In Washington, Naina Bajekal reported on a man who gave a bank teller a note demanding one dollar. She writes:

The note explained that Gorton, 64, had no weapons and didn’t want to hurt anyone. After being handed the dollar, he waited outside for police to arrest him…

Six months earlier […] Gorton walked into a bank and handed over a note saying: “This is a robbery.” He asked for $1,400 and waited for police to arrive and arrest him. He told police he would soon be homeless because he hadn’t paid his rent. Until that incident, Gorton had no criminal history.

In Wyoming, a 59-year-old woman passed a demand note to a bank teller and accepted several thousand dollars. Outside, she offered some of the cash to passing strangers, threw some of it in the air, and sat down to wait for the police. “I want to go back to prison,” she told them plainly. She had been there before, and found it preferable to being assaulted on the streets. Liz Miller’s report, which describes the challenges faced by former inmates, is recommended in its entirety.

A Nevada man who wanted to return to prison brandished a steak knife to rob a bank. He had been convicted of at least five previous robbery charges. Despite having stayed free for eight years, he just couldn’t manage life on the outside. At age 78, what else was he going to do? Although his public defender inexplicably asked for a shorter term, the geriatric thief was sentenced to 15 years, which will probably solve his housing problem for the rest of his life.

A Tennessee woman stabbed herself in the shoulders, stomach, and leg, and filed a false domestic violence complaint, alleging assault by an ex-girlfriend. She had hoped to be admitted to a women’s shelter, but went to jail instead.

Also in Tennessee, a man recently released from prison was arrested on charges of vandalism, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Just to insure that he would be re-incarcerated, he also confessed to an invented murder and threatened to “kill everyone and himself.” A sheriff’s department captain said:

It’s really sad to see someone that gets in such shape that he had rather be in jail than anywhere else.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless ex-con tells judge he robbed bank to get caught,” ChicagoTribune.com, 02/25/15
Source: “Homeless Man Robs Bank for One Dollar to Get Free Health Care,” Gawker.com, 08/26/13
Source: “Washington Man Robs Banks to Avoid Being Homeless,” TIME.com, 04/15/15
Source: “Homeless Woman Robs WY Bank, Throws Money in Air, & Waits for Police,” SmObserved.com, 08/01/16
Source: “Homeless guy robs bank so he can return to prison,” NYPost.com, 08/02/17
Source: “False Allegation of DV: Self-Inflicted Stab Wounds Land Suspect In Jail,” SaveServices.org, 05/17/12
Source: “Homeless man admits to murder so he can go to jail,” TimesDaily.com, 10/18/16
Photo by miss_millions on Visualhunt/CC BY

In Wisconsin Death Trip, Michael Lesy retrieves true news about America in the late 1800s. Even then, an arsonist who didn’t get caught might have to turn himself in, because the whole point of the crime was to get in out of the weather and be fed.

House the Homeless recently took a world tour of news stories about people who prefer jail to the streets or shelters. Today, the focus is on the United States.

In Michigan, Michael Morgan was arrested for minor offenses 105 times in 18 years, and managed to stay locked up for about half of those years. Journalist Anthony Bartkewicz wrote:

Morgan admitted to getting arrested on purpose at times so he could have “three meals a day and roof over my head when it’s cold outside,” but he hopes to break the cycle one day.

In Texas, Jonathan Harrison repeatedly called the police emergency line asking for baby aspirin and a place to stay. When an officer arrived to talk with him, Harrison was found to be holding marijuana, which the officer confiscated. So Harrison called 911 again, demanding that his marijuana be returned and threatening to call the media. He did finally manage to get arrested and jailed that night.

An Ohio woman asked pharmacy personnel to call the police to give her a ride to a homeless shelter. The police arrived, but said that giving her a ride was not their job. The local newspaper reported:

The woman then demanded to be taken to jail, but officers said she had committed no crime. She then approached the store pharmacy counter and yelled that she was going to rob the pharmacist. She then refused to leave the store unless she was under arrest…

It worked, as she was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to jail.

In Montana, a 27-year-old man stole a bottle of beer, drank it while waiting outside for the authorities to arrive, and told the sheriff’s people that he wanted to go to jail. The local newspaper reported:

Matauaina, who was born in American Samoa, has been in Butte for several months, and apparently continues to commit petty crimes to get out of the cold, authorities said.

In Illinois, a man broke a drug store window on purpose. His written statement included the information that he was careful to wait until no customers were within range, before throwing bricks through the glass. He also told the police that he had run out of money to rent motel rooms. Journalist Lorraine Swanson wrote, “He wanted to get arrested to so he could go back to jail and get home, according to the charges.”

Bricks are very popular. In Missouri, a man described as “desperate to go back to jail” pursued his goal by using bricks to bash police cars. Officer Michael Herschberger, told a reporter:

A lot of the homeless have problems where they’ve been banned or they’re no longer permitted in shelters that can house them in times that are cold. Some of them take measures of getting arrested so they can have a place to get out of the cold.

Police told the man to just come into the station, next time, and report himself for trespassing on police property.

A Georgia man, recently released from prison, wanted to go back because he was homeless and hungry, and did not intend to spend another night on the streets. The Lance Brown story is rather complicated, and is best understood from the original reportage, but one detail stands out. Brown first tried threatening to kill the president, but was not taken seriously.

Only then did the hurl his brick through the window of the U.S. Post Office and Federal Court Building. After a great deal of inconvenience for everyone, he was sentenced to a month in jail and six months in a halfway house, which is not much of a win.

In Boise, Idaho, the penalty for sleeping outside was $1,000 and/or a six-month jail sentence. And $150 for court costs. Richard Morgan wrote:

Most of those ticketed spend time in jail, which in my opinion has better facilities and room per person than the shelters and you are not kicked out all day, no matter what the weather.

Volusia County, Florida, eventually figured out that a pool of about 50 people experiencing homelessness had cost the taxpayers $12 million over the past few decades, but…

The $12 million only covers basic expenses to get a suspect in the back of a police car and inside a courtroom for the first time. The tally would climb by millions if it was combined with the $65 per day it costs to incarcerate someone in Volusia County and cover their medical bills.

James Purdy, a former prosecutor turned Public Defender, told the press that between five and 10 homeless people every month purposely try to get into jail, and it seems to correlate with when their social security checks run out, and this ruse has been an “open secret” all along.

Reactions?

Source: “Wisconsin Death Trip,” WordPress.com, 06/19/08
Source: “Homeless Michigan man arrested 105 times in two decades: ‘It’s a way of life…,” NYDailyNews.com, 10/15/12
Source: “Homeless Man Arrested After Repeatedly Calling 9-1-1,” KBTX.com, 02/17/14
Source: “Homeless woman causes disturbance so she could spend night in jail,” CantonRep.com, 02/17/14
Source: “Police: Homeless man on crime spree to escape cold,” Mtstandard.com, 02/11/14
Source: “Homeless man damages police car so he can stay in warm jail, police say,” KMBC.com, 02/16/16
Source: “Homeless Man Broke Windows So He Could Go Back to Jail: Cops,” Patch.com, 08/07/15
Source: “Homeless Man Commits Crime Just To Go Back To Prison,” BlackNews.com, 05/02/12
Source: “Stop Treating the Homeless like Criminals for Camping on Public Lands,” Change.org, undated
Source: “Arresting, jailing homeless has cost Volusia taxpayers millions,” News-JournalOnline.com, 11/23/13
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