I have Thoughts about the camping ban and its imminent end.

Adapted from this tweetstorm

Turning a blind eye to squatting is a shitty “solution” to the problem of WE CANT AFFORD TO LIVE HERE

Compounded by the disorganized non-response of City Hall. (Large camps like) R2D2, Dignity etc. work because they were PLANNED w/input from houseless residence & associated oraganizations.

No good result would just spontaneously arise from a policy of “we’ll just let people sleep in parks,” and no good result would just spontaneously arise from unilaterally reversing that policy.

HAVING SAID ALL THIS:

Just shoving people out of what are now their actual homes with nowhere to go is a legit humanitarian crisis.

This next point…is subtle. Park camping reinforces a perception of public spaces as being for poor people/desperate people & treated as second-rate spaces. I see this in reverse whenever we visit Nebraska. Such nice parks! & museums! & pools! and SCHOOLS. Public resources revered as GOOD.

Contrast West coast where everyone with money is angling to minimize their exposure to public resources. Private schools, pools, streets (of course private spaces exist in places w/strong public spaces! But public spaces aren’t seen as “lesser," just “default”)

I feel like I’m veering dangerously close to “all lives matter” but if public spaces were revered by people who could choose alternatives, then we might not have to fight so damn hard for resources to make public schools/libraries/parks/housing etc. nice.

I mean a broad sense of “of course I support my public _, because I use it too.” This is very different from “I support public services because think of the Poors”

Underlying all of this is a weird (to me) FYIGM ethos. Seems many property owners would prefer homeless camps to Sec. 8 housing, or greater density & market-rate housing. The camps don’t seem to hurt our property values after all. But an apartment building WOULD affect my property values. Camps can always be “swept up” but apartments are there forever.

I want to see us adopt an ethos of pride & common use in public spaces. I see ban AND reversal as evidence of anti-public attitudes, because if we loved our public spaces our FIRST reaction would be “how can we make living here affordable, my property values be damned”