bcpart5

 

The Tribe of Crow

Reluctant pioneers

By conservative estimates, at any one time there are about half a million people in the United States who have been thrust beyond civilization into a social and economic limbo that nowadays is identified as homelessness. Homelessness is slightly more than a euphemism for poverty, since it draws attention to the special form poverty takes in hypermodern cities, which might be defined as cities in which space is so valuable that none of it can be spared for the poor. With the complete disappearance of low-cost housing, there's just no room “indoors” for the poor in such cities.

Several distinct streams come together in the homeless flood. One consists of the mentally ill, turned out into the streets when deinstitutionalization became the rage in the 1970s. Another consists of semior unskilled workers whose jobs have been exported to countries where labor is cheaper or made superfluous by downsizing or automation. Another consists of those who in the fifties and sixties would have been called the “disadvantaged”—abandoned women and children, victims of racial or ethnic prejudice, undereducated, unskilled, and chronically unemployed. All these are perceived as victims or as the “deserving” poor. Others in the homeless flood are runaways, drug addicts, bums, winos, transients, and vagabonds, who, because they apparently “choose” to be homeless, are the “undeserving” poor.

    

Making the homeless disappear

Public officials (reflecting the unspoken desires of their constituents) naturally want the homeless to disappear. This isn't an unkind impulse. The assumption is that the homeless really want to disappear (at least the “deserving poor” among them)— by getting jobs, finding homes, and resuming a “normal” life. The role of officialdom is therefore to assist, prompt, and encourage the homeless to get about the business of resuming that normal life. Above all, nothing must be done that would encourage the homeless to remain homeless. In short, homelessness must be made as unremittingly difficult, degrading, and painful as possible, and you may be sure that our public guardians know well how to accomplish this.

Naturally the public wants homeless shelters, but these are hardly expected to be hospitable; no one should want to “stay” in one. If the homeless began to “stay” in shelters, this would defeat the purpose, which is to entice them out of homelessness. Avoiding officially sanctioned shelters at all costs, the homeless take refuge almost anywhere else—in alleys, parks, tunnels, and abandoned buildings, under bridges, and so on. The police have to roust them from these areas regularly, because if the homeless become comfortable anywhere, what motive have they to stop being homeless? Making and keeping the homeless as miserable as possible is cherished as a sort of tough love—the very best and kindest thing we can do for them.

The only trouble is, for some strange reason, it doesn't work worth a damn.

If it didn't work last year …

The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure: If it didn't work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE).

Every year we pass more laws, hire more police, build more prisons, and sentence more offenders for longer periods—all without moving one inch closer to “ending” crime. It didn't work last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we'll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work this year either.

Every year we spend more money on our schools, hoping to “fix” whatever's wrong with them, and every year the schools remain stubbornly unfixed. Spending money didn't work last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we'll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work this year either.

Every year we try to make the homeless go away, and every year the homeless remain with us. We couldn't shoehorn them back into “the mainstream” last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you can be sure we'll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work this year either.

A new rule for new minds

To figure out a better response to failure than this, you don't (as they say) have to be a rocket scientist. I'd formulate it this way: If it didn't work last year or the year before that or the year before that—or any year in recorded history—then TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

We deeply believe in taking a military approach to problems. We proclaim a “war” on poverty. When that fails, we proclaim a “war” on drugs. We “fight” crime. We “combat” homelessness. We “battle” hunger. We vow to “defeat” AIDS.

Engineers can't afford to fail as consistently as politicians and bureaucrats, so they prefer accedence to resistance (as I do). For example, they know that no structure can be made rigid enough to resist an earthquake. So, rather than defy the earthquake's power by building rigid structures, they accede to it by building flexible ones. To accede is not merely to give in but rather to give in while drawing near; one may accede not only to an argument but to a throne. Thus the earthquakeproof building survives not by defeating the earthquake's power but by acknowledging it—by drawing it in and dealing with it.

As soon as someone is brave enough to deal with homelessness this way, by acknowledging it and drawing it in instead of fighting it, remarkable things will begin to happen in that place—and not just for the homeless.

Listening to the homeless

One element of acceding to homelessness is accepting the fact that the poor will consistently choose the least worst alternative available to them. If you find them living under a bridge instead of in a nice, clean municipal shelter just a block away, you can be absolutely sure they haven't made a mistake—from their point of view. The shelter's admittance procedures may be intolerably invasive, arbitrary, or humiliating, or its rules may be Draconian. Whatever, the discomforts of sheltering under the bridge are more endurable. Naturally what's least worst to one individual isn't necessarily the least worst to another. Street people in New York City will tell you there's so much food around it's almost impossible to starve. Even so, there are some who would rather shun that world of abundance and stay deep underground, where fresh game is plentiful (once you get used to the idea of hunting, killing, and cooking “track rabbits”—rats).

Another element of acceding to homelessness is accepting the fact that the homeless understand their situation, not necessarily the way a social scientist, economist, or urban planner would but from a practical and personal point of view. They may not be able to discourse on the process of deindustrialization, but they know that people who smugly order them to “get a job” are living in never-never land and imagining a world of work that hasn't existed in decades.

Is homelessness an earthquake?

Acastaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, “Get a boat!”

Social Scientist Peter Marcuse has written: “Homelessness inspires not only the intellectual realization that the machinery of the system has failed somehow to produce basic shelter everyone needs, but even more the social realization that the system has come up against some limits it cannot exceed, has created a world it can no longer control.” (Emphasis added.)

I like this quote because its reference to “the machinery of the system” fits my engineering analogy so neatly. This machinery has created a world inhabited by people it can no longer control. To translate this into my own metaphorical system, Marcuse is saying the homeless have been pushed into a social and economic no man's land that is beyond civilization. And when that machinery exerts itself to force the homeless back where they belong, it fails—repeatedly and consistently.

Technology guru Jacques Attali has announced the end of the era of the working class. “Machines are the new proletariat,” he says. “The working class is being given its walking papers.” But we all know there's no room for nonworkers within the structure known as civilization. So where on earth are their walking papers supposed to take them—except beyond that structure?

What would acceding look like?

We know what “combating” homelessness looks like. We attack on two fronts. On one front, for example, we open shelters for the homeless but (since we don't want them to stay in the shelters) we make them as unwelcoming as possible. On the other front, we pass anticamping legislation that criminalizes those who won't stay in the shelters. This legislation allows (or compels) the police to harass the homeless, who are “out of place,” who turn up where we don't want them to be. Until the homeless straighten out, get jobs, and somehow magically lift themselves into the mainstream of middle-class America, the game is going to be “Heads we win, tails you lose.”

Acceding to homelessness would look like helping the homeless succeed WHILE being homeless. What an idea! I can almost hear the howls of outrage from both liberals and conservatives that must greet such a concept. Help people succeed at being homeless? We want them to fail at being homeless! (So they'll return to the mainstream.)

Step one in acceding to homelessness would be to decriminalize and deregulate the homeless. We can happily deregulate trillion-dollar industries capable of doing immense harm, but deregulating the relatively helpless poor—what a thought! The officers of deregulated savings and loan institutions may have bilked us out of billions, but at least they didn't hang around street corners in shabby clothes!

Letting them house themselves

Regulating and criminalizing homelessness is equivalent to defying earthquakes with rigid structures. Deregulating and decriminalizing homelessness is equivalent to acknowledging that “the machinery of the system has … created a world it can no longer control.” We should abandon control of homelessness, therefore, because it's beyond control, just like the earthquake. Since we can't defeat it, we should learn to make the best of it.

There are thousands of miles of unused, habitable tunnels under Manhattan that are interdicted to the homeless for only one reason: that the homeless might try to live in them. The homeless do try to live in them, so it's conceived to be the duty of officialdom to drive them out. Officials explain that no one “should” live in the tunnels. They weren't designed as living spaces. They're unsafe. They're unhealthy. They're unsanitary. Despite all this, some of the homeless would rather live in the tunnels than in doorways or under bridges.

Instead of sending in the police to drive the homeless out of the tunnels, officials should send in city engineers to ask what services the city could provide to improve conditions. What they would hear is, “We need help with sanitation, with water, with electricity.”

Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.

Letting them feed themselves

Just as we want to deny the homeless access to shelter in tunnels, abandoned buildings, shack cities under bridges, and so on, we also want to deny them access to the plenitude of perfectly edible food that is discarded daily in our cities. Some restaurants have adopted the practice of dousing discarded food with ammonia to render it inedible. Others have installed locks on their dumpsters. Imagine instead helping the homeless organize systems to distribute this food, much of which now just ends up rotting in landfills.

Or, even better, imagine the outrage such a proposal would awaken in the good burghers of our cities. How dreadful (even immoral!) it would seem to them to allow a class of “loafers” to make a living out of what we no longer need or want. More than merely “allowing” such a way of life, we would actually be encouraging it—facilitating it!—when instead we should be “combating” it, stamping it out!

Letting them make a living

In our culture, for some odd reason, we teach kids to despise scavengers. Prey and predators are heroic, but scavengers are contemptible. The truth is, our world would be unlivable without scavengers. We'd be buried in corpses. Scavengers make their living by ridding the world of its biological refuse. Far from cursing them, we should bless them. Right now most road kills are made to disappear by birds like crows and vultures. If these birds ever become extinct, we ourselves will have to take over their duty. What these scavengers presently do for us at no cost, we'll have to pay for out of our pockets.

The only “honest” living available to the homeless in general is scavenging—and in general they're quite content to make that living. It's work they can do without having an address, submitting to supervision, punching a clock, or maintaining a wardrobe of socially approved clothing—and it's flex-time all the way.

David Wagner describes how teams of drunks work together to strip sellable copper from abandoned buildings in the northern city of his study. Naturally this is illegal, even though the copper would otherwise just be lost. Instead of obstructing this sort of activity as much as possible, why not facilitate it? Enormous amounts of materials could be reclaimed and recycled in this way, not only conserving resources but reducing the amount of material that goes into landfills to degenerate into toxic waste.

Let my people go!

The homeless are “beyond civilization” because they're beyond the reach of civilization's hierarchy, which has been unable to develop a structural extension to enclose them. The most it can manage is to oppress, harry, and obstruct them. To accede to homelessness would be to “let them go,” much as the biblical pharaoh let the Israelites go.

Am I saying the homeless actually want to be homeless? Not exactly. Some are “short-termers” who have landed on the streets after a spell of bad luck and who want only to get back on the road to middle-class success. None of my proposals would hinder this. The rest are on the streets not necessarily because they love being homeless but because the alternatives are worse than being homeless—institutionalization, unending family abuse, involvement in foster-care systems that are blind or indifferent to their needs, and laboring in a job market that offers no real hope of upward mobility.

The fact remains, however, that many who initially become homeless against their will later gain a different perspective on it.

“I like the way my life is now.”

This is what a tunnel-dweller told reporter Jennifer Toth. He goes on: “I'm independent and do what I want. It's not that I'm lazy or don't want to work. I walk all the way around the city most days to collect cans. This is the life I want.” Another tunnel-dweller described being tracked down by a brother, who wanted to help him back to normal life. “He offered me $10,000. He just didn't understand. This is where I want to be for now. Maybe not forever, but for now.”

One of David Wagner's subjects, escaping the constant battering of home, found that street life “was cool. I slept where I wanted. I hung out with people, I drank. I was free as a bird.” According to another, who fled an abusive home at age twelve, “it was fine. I traveled, went all the way down the coast, down South. It was great, and I was never turning back, no matter what happened.”

Even when the street is just the least worst alternative, people often feel they have more support there than they had at home. One runaway, describing his street friends to Katherine Coleman Lundy, said, “If they need food, need a few dollars, I'll give 'em a few dollars…. Whenever I need something, if I need it, they got it, they'll give it to me.” A runaway told Jennifer Toth, “We've got real support from each other, not for just an hour from some social worker, but from people who really care and understand.”

What would come of it?

If we let the homeless find their own places of refuge and helped them habilitate those places (instead of rousting them wherever they settle), if we channeled to them the vast amounts of food that are discarded routinely every day (instead of forcing them to grovel for food at shelters), if we actively assisted them to support themselves on their own terms (instead of ours), just think—homelessness would largely cease to exist as “a problem.” It would become something we're always working at in the cities, like street maintenance. The streets in our cities are never going to be “fixed.” They're going to be falling apart forever—and we're going to be fixing them forever. We don't think of street maintenance as “a problem,” because it's something we've acceded to.

If we were to accede to homelessness, then we and the homeless would (for a change) be working together instead of at loggerheads. Keeping people sheltered, fed, and protected would become a common concern and a common task.

Acceding to homelessness doesn't mean that panhandlers, bag ladies, and street drunks are going to disappear—any more than maintaining the streets means that potholes, closed lanes, and traffic jams are going to disappear. Acceding to homelessness (like acceding to earthquakes) means dealing with reality, it doesn't mean doing away with it.

I'm not ENTIRELY alone!

Near the end of his landmark study of homelessness, Checkerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless Community, David Wagner writes:

What if homeless people … were offered the opportunity of collective mobility and collective resources rather than individual scrutiny, surveillance, and treatment? What if the dense social networks and cohesive subcultures that constitute the homeless community were utilized by advocates, social workers, and others? What if housing could be provided near the geographic areas in which street groups congregate, decent housing that does not require leaving the group but that could be shared by street friends … What if social benefits were distributed not individually but collectively so that income maintenance or resources for food, shelter, and other goods were given to an entire group of people, not to individuals. That is, one would not need to wait for hours, provide all aspects of one's personal life, and come into a welfare office continually to be recertified, but would obtain a collective grant as part of a cohort of homeless people (or other group of poor people).

All these suggestions (which even Wagner concedes are radical) represent accedence to the realities of homelessness. They're designed to help the homeless live decently while homeless—and to live the way they want to live (as opposed to the way government caretakers think they should live).

Objections

The idea of acceding to homelessness will raise objections on all sides. Liberals will perceive it as “giving up” on the homeless, but this would be like saying that acceding to street decay means giving up on the streets. Acceding to homelessness means listening to the poor, who believe they can take care of themselves—with the help they want instead of the help the respectably housed think they “should” have.

At the other end of the political spectrum, conservatives will perceive acceding to homelessness as coddling freeloaders, who should be disciplined and punished until they “get a job.” Eventually they may see that it's like helping a poor fisherman get together some fishing tackle instead of giving him fish to eat.

Officialdom's objections will be the loudest, however, because its stake in homelessness goes beyond mere principles. Many people make their living “fighting” homelessness, and they'll see its disappearance as threatening their livelihood (though naturally they won't be silly enough to put it this way).

In 1998 Los Angeles, stealing a shopping cart would earn you a thousand-dollar fine and a hundred days behind bars. When an anonymous donor arranged to distribute a hundred “legal” shopping carts to the homeless, officials pulled a long face and denounced it as “well-intentioned but misguided.”

The most telling objection of all

Acceding to homelessness—actually allowing the poor to make a living on the streets—would open the prison gates of our culture. The disenfranchised and disaffected would pour out. It would be the first great movement of people to that social and economic no man's land I call “beyond civilization.”

The Tribe of Crow, no longer suppressed, would grow—perhaps explosively.

We wouldn't want that to happen, would we? Heavens to Betsy, no.

It would be chaotic. It might even be exciting.

Carlos, a runaway living under a loose grate in Manhattan's Riverside Park, told Jennifer Toth: “I'd change the world so there would be a place for us. A good place where we would have real freedom and not live in a hole.”

Some dangerous ideas here … a place for the homeless … a good place … real freedom … not in a hole …

Put more guards on the walls. Reinforce the gates.