|
Our Trail of Tears — The Plot to Remove America's Homeless
By KEITH MCHENRY, Food Not Bombs co-founder
Her eyes said do you have a tent. She stood silently shivering in a soiled white hoody a few feet away as to not interrupt my conversation. That all common look of hope tugged, “Just a second,” I interrupted stepping her way. “Do you need a tent?” I could feel the relief.
It wasn’t long before another person desperate to prepare for the promised storms approached me for a tent and tarp. A family of four requested two sets.
I had bought every on-sale tent the day before but the need continued. I returned hoping on an off chance a new shipment had arrived. It had, so it was back to the rain soaked.
When returning from Costco I noticed those fluorescent bright orange eviction notices stuck to every tent along Coral Street. The Jan. 18, “ORDER TO VACATE” timed to drive as many as a hundred people into the rain to maximize the cruelty of the city of Santa Cruz.
It’s not clear if Housing Matters director Phil Kramer knew that this inhumane attack would be happening outside his shelter or not.
It isn’t long before people are calling to say they are seeing those drenched refugees of the police action standing in doorways and under the redwoods at San Lorenzo Park. Where are our unhoused neighbors expected to exist?
It is my understanding that the San Lorenzo Redwood hunchers were driven away by a call from a housed person maybe offended by the view of those less fortunate outside their warm dry apartment.
Of course that municipal law restricting motorists to 15 minutes in our cities two and three story garages is aggressively enforced against those who have no other place to escape the rains.
You might be ignored until 3 in the morning when the rain is at its heaviest before a gang of Santa Cruz Police forces you and your friends into the cold drenching showers. You rush to pack your belongings but it won't be long before most of what you own will be sopping wet.
Cruelty as official policy.
Those policies are about to get much more brutal.
The confluence of increased numbers becoming homeless and the potential bloodlust of a nation participating in a World War could have dire impact on homeless Americans.
How different is it really when no one reacts against the claim that “We are fighting human animals”; publicly expressed on TV by Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Oct. 9, 2023, and the hours of such hate against the homeless spewed over every Nextdoor.com in America?
Biden's government admits to an increase in homelessness. Housing and Urban Development reported that there was an 11% increase in the number of people who had become homeless in 2023 over the number of unhoused people counted in 2022.
The first in a number of cruel policy changes was the United States Supreme Court agreeing to hear a challenge to the Johnson v. Grants Pass case which was based on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Court ruling in Martin v Boise that homeless persons cannot be punished for sleeping outside on public property in the absence of adequate alternatives.
Cities are already failing to abide by that ruling.
Even so, cities organized a campaign to have the ruling overturned. A Sept. 29, 2023 article in The Spokesman-Review cheers “Spokane joins effort to overturn landmark homeless rights case Martin v. Boise”
Jeanne Kuang in the Jan. 22, 2024 CalMatters writes, “The situation has led city officials — and Gov. Gavin Newsom — to complain that the Boise ruling has tied their hands from addressing the state’s sprawling encampments, arguing they need to sweep camps both for health and safety reasons and for the well-being of encampment residents. It’s led liberal state and local officials, including Newsom, to join conservatives in asking the court for more power to penalize the homeless for sleeping outside. The high court has a 6-3 conservative majority.”
Another cruel policy are a host of proposed laws designed to be implemented while the Supreme Court is expected to rule against the meager humanity of Martin v. Boise.
Cicero Institute is ready to help repress the homeless and states are buying their proposals and introducing them to their state legislators.
Their website starts: A New Way on Homelessness
The United States has a growing homelessness problem — and bad policies at the local, state, and federal level exacerbate that problem.
For nearly two decades, failed, ideologically driven policies promulgated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, and embraced by local bureaucrats and activists have resulted in more and more spending on homeless services — for worse and worse results. That must change.
The Cicero Institute offers the strongest reform package to state leaders who want to fix bad incentives, hold service agencies accountable for results, and get the homeless the help they need instead of doubling down on failure.”
Here is the plan that states are adopting with the help of The Cicero Institute;
1. States should ban unauthorized street camping. Street camps are dangerous to the public and the vulnerable homeless alike. They are often hotbeds of violence, especially against women and children — especially those who are homeless themselves.
The public widely supports enforcing ordinances against dangerous street camps and moving individuals into emergency shelters.
2. States should direct funds away from expensive and ineffective “Housing First” programs toward short-term shelter and sanctioned, policed encampments.
Since the mid-2000s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the vast majority of homeless services agencies and NGOs, have endorsed the “Housing First” model of providing free housing to the homeless.
It requires between eight and twenty units of “Permanent Supportive Housing” to get one chronically homeless person off the street. This is untenable as a solution. Instead, states should pursue minimally viable shelter options and sanctioned encampments with services.
Permanent supportive housing doesn’t address homelessness; it creates demand for more homelessness and supports cronyism.
3. States and cities should pay non-profits for performance, not just services.
Performance-based contracts should be the standard in public contracting, and especially for homeless services. Instead of paying non-profits based on the amount of services provided, some or all of the contract should be contingent on the performance of the provider.
Today, even when contractors are clearly failing on metrics they continue to get public funding. The public expects results; accordingly, the public should pay for results.
4. States should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves — and keep them out of prison.
Many street homeless suffer from chronic and untreated mental illness. For those that are a public nuisance or a danger to themselves or others, there must be a third option besides prison and abandonment.
By providing options like assisted outpatient treatment, which is a less restrictive alternative to inpatient treatment, states can let judges get people the help they need — and respect their due process rights.
Joe Lonsdale is the Chairman of the Board of The Cicero Institute. He co-founded Palantir along with several others including PayPal's Peter Thiel. He also co-founded Addepar, OpenGov and is a partner at 8VC, his venture capital firm.
Palantir is an AI military contractor known for three projects; Palantir Gotham, Palantir Apollo, and Palantir Foundry. Palantir Gotham is used by counter-terrorism analysts in offices of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC), and the United States Department of Defense.
Palantir cofounder, Peter Thiel, got his start with the CIA's law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, suggesting that The Cicero Institute is part of a larger national security strategy where there has been a decision to criminalize the homeless instead of providing access to housing, education, a living wage, dignity and independence.
Cynthia Griffith wrote in her website Invisible People, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies, as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin."
Here, Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669, which present template legislation to further criminalize Wisconsin’s homeless population, have been very quietly introduced, according to outside sources who “attended their private meetings.”
Dozens of states are busy crafting changes to their laws to facilitate even more extreme measure in their campaigns to remove the homeless.
And it gets even worse. “Kentucky GOP’s New Bill Decriminalizes Use of Deadly Force Against the Unhoused” writes Zane McNeill for the Jan. 17, 2024 edition of Truthout.
“Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing."
There is a lot of talk about "affordable housing" and hype about breaking ground on this or that promise and always never enough even if it becomes some version of reality. The "Means Testing" required to qualify would never be forced on the billions that is being rushed to kill families in Gaza and Biden's many wars.
Rather than spend the $40 billion HUD claims would "end homelessness" the government is busy spending billions to bomb families in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria while killing off a generation in Ukraine.
An Oct. 20, 2023 AP story shows that Biden could have announced a national program to end homelessness but has chosen not to. Why spend money on America's "human animals" when it can be used to kill savages in wars manufactured by America's DC monsters. Even our mayor of Santa Cruz, Fred Keeley, voted against the ceasefire that says 10,000 dead children isn't enough.
“Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters Friday that Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Hamas” attack on Israel represent a “global inflection point.”
“This budget request is critical to advancing America’s national security and ensuring the safety of the American people,” Sullivan said.
The biggest line item in the supplemental funding request is $61.4 billion to support Ukraine. Some of that money will go to replenishing Pentagon stockpiles of weapons that have already been provided.
Israel would receive $14.3 billion in assistance under the proposal. The majority of that money would help with air and missile defense systems, according to the White House."
Biden's several wars have every possibility of becoming a global affair. Even more body parts to be crushed under concrete and tears of those who survive. Gas prices crippling family budgets into homelessness. Americans returning home in flag draped caskets lining the tarmacs of Travis and Dover Air Force Bases. Maybe another million will die in the fury of America's last war. The war to defend Biden's right to feed the genocide while millions of others starve.
Instead of demanding federal funding to help the homeless, cities will take advantage of the new laws provided by the CIA linked Cicero Institute and bully those with no place to be into their rainbow colored interment camps outside the city limits.
We don't have long to stop this diabolical plan.
If you are in California join the rally and civil disobedience on the west side of the State Capitol Building on Monday, Feb. 19 at noon to 2 at 10th Street between N and L Streets in Sacramento.
| 
