GAPING GAP: Food, shelter, but no sanitation? Policy oversight harms homeless and housed

What goes in must come out


What would you do?  What would you do?  What would YOU do?

Anyone who ventures into the snark-infested waters of a social media homelessness debate has either asked this question or read it so often they want to scream or puke. What would you do? About homelessness? Being a Little, I have little real power to do much beyond my vote. So rather than dream or fret about what I would do, I'll answer a different question.

What did I do?

LEADER LETTER

Hoping to lessen the impact of homelessness on the unhoused, the housed, and the environment, I emailed a letter last year to  leaders from the city and county to the statehouse. Columbia City Council members and senior staff. Boone County Commissioners and health department honchos. Missouri State Reps and Senators. 

Four responded.

My ask in this letter: close a gaping gap in Columbia's unhoused services. Taxpayers and donors already provide hot meals, shelter on the coldest days, cooling on the hottest, a traveling nurse corps, showers, Internet, critical and sundry goods, from blankets and tents to snacks and boots.

So why don't we provide sanitation? That's not a basic human need? 

Food, shelter, water, medical care, stuff. But no sewer or toilets. No place to drop trou but that creek over yonder. No trash pickup, while we the housed argued for years about roll carts versus trash bags. And before that, recycling in blue bags versus "designated" containers. And before that, a deposit ordinance that forced grocery stores to handle empty soda bottles that got so stinky and nasty our city council finally recognized the health hazard and repealed the law.

Our leaders and the agencies they control hand out millions in taxpayer-funded grants for homeless services that include everything BUT sanitation. And the crazy irony is all that stuff -- from food to goodies to the gauze bandage that slipped off in the creek -- all that stuff we're providing ends up you-know-where and you-know-how. What goes in or on or around must either come out or get thrown out, nowhere moreso than in a camp in the woods. 


POP-UP-RAZZI

A picture is worth a thousand words and as The Real Columbia Missouri proves almost daily, photos of garbage piles homeless trespassers leave on other people's properties are worth a million words. If an AI bot wanted to illustrate "insane public health threat", a week's worth of Real Columbia Missouri pix would cause it to blow an Nvidia chip.

As though it were some kind of moral excuse for trashing other peoples' property, social media snarks love to point out that billionaire Stan Kroenke or some other wealthy, "greedy" capitalist pig owns the trashed parcels in the pix. But what about when squatters trash low-income housing? The pix I sent (e.g. below) with my leader letter may not be worth a million words, but they showed a different view no hypocritical moralizer could justify.

Squatters' popup landfill, CoMo

SANITATION A̶N̶D̶  IS SECURITY

"The trash mess you see has, for almost two months, been in the back yard of a Columbia home, normally occupied by US Veterans attempting sobriety," I explained to our leaders about my pix. "For months, squatters have occupied this home ... "

"The backyard has become a 'popup landfill,' a place homeless persons dump their garbage ... It has become a toilet, too, with defecated human waste topped by toilet paper ...

"This residential mini-landfill is open air to every house in the vicinity, an environmental hazard reported to city officials, and cleaned up by volunteers [me, my wife, & the homeowner] after a fire burned part of it on a windy day. 

"The mess, though, returned with a vengeance ... You can see how quickly from the first pic to the second two pix over one month's time. It spread by weather, animals -- the area has a raccoon, mouse, and opossum population -- and incursions of homeless persons from a nearby "drop-in center" with which our city government contracts (roughly $200,000 this year) to provide services to unhoused persons. 

"The estimated cost to clean up this second mess is $600 to $800. The home's long-time owner is pushing 80 (eighty) ... 

"The policy gap is straightforward. IF, for the homeless, we insist on providing for every other basic human need, our tax dollars and grant monies must also provide for sanitation, whenever and wherever it is needed.


[While some may fret about further "enabling," I know a lot of people who'd love to be enabled to walk on the MKT without stepping on used needles or take their kiddos for a play date without having to cosplay a city park cleanup crew minus the cos (like thick gloves).]

"Non-profits ... have been unwilling to adopt remedies like sanitation and security ... accountability must be built into their taxpayer-funded contracts. Their paid staff should assure, to the very best of their abilities, that their mission does no harm to surrounding residents...

"I appreciate your time and attention to what may be the most pressing issue facing Columbia, if not our nation: the rising tide of unhoused persons who, either voluntarily or under duress of many kinds, have checked out of an overly-complex society whose hopeful horizons have shrunk for too many."


Top photo credit Real Columbia Missouri. Bottom photo from KMIZ news video.


-- Michael Martin for the Columbia Heart Beat