Newsom wants legal authority to roust people from the only places they have to lay their heads. Since there are far fewer shelter spaces than homeless people and available spaces often have prohibitive conditions, congregate shelters and real help are often mutually exclusive. In Stanislaus County and many other locations throughout the state, shelters are routinely full and sometimes have waiting lists. Even when shelter beds are available, restrictive prohibitions, communicative illnesses and the lack of privacy discourage people from wanting in.
Those who do go in often have to stay in the shelter for months or even years as housing shortages prevent moving on. In fact, current policies toward homelessness rise to levels of cruelty most any good citizen would find detestable.
Most people have little to no exposure to the human beings who make up the homeless population. As a result of the constant stream of misinformation about who they are and what they need, homeless people are routinely dismissed as less than human.
It takes extensive experience among the homeless to begin to realize what has happened to them. Yes, some β a statistical few β are bottom-feeding criminals with little conscience and less ambition. A great many more are mentally ill or disabled. Still others have become living statistics to the hard facts of housing shortages, rising rents and static wages. Others are birds who have fallen from the nest.
One such fallen bird was the late Alan Davis. Davis haunted the streets of Modesto for over two years. He showed up outside a local hospital in or Those who got to know him learned that at some time early on, Alan had been diagnosed as schizophrenic.
