An earlier post on High Plains Blogger prompted a good buddy of mine to send me a link to a story published a year ago on how another city decided to deal with homelessness.
The city is Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, population 61,000.
The mayor of Medicine Hat, a self-proclaimed “fiscal conservative,” Ted Clugston, decided the city should provide homes for every homeless person within 10 days of their learning they were without a home.
The blog I posted earlier commented on the Amarillo City Council’s decision to table an ordinance that regulates where homeless people can sleep.
https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/03/whether-and-how-to-protect-homeless-folks/
Is it possible for Amarillo — with its population of nearly 200,000 residents — to embark on an ambitious plan to end homelessness?
It seems impossible for a couple of reasons.
One is that Amarillo is home to a major interstate highway interchange. I-27 ends at I-40. It’s the east-west highway — I-40 — that brings a lot of transient traffic through the city. Are these folks “homeless” Amarillo residents? Well, no. They are passing through.
How many of them are there? I haven’t a clue, but there would seem to be a fairly greater number of them than the folks who live in Medicine Hat.
The Canadian city also sits astride a major highway, Canada’s Highway 1. So perhaps that city gets a fair amount of pass-through transient traffic as well.
I think the second reason a homeless eradication program seems unrealistic for Amarillo is that, to be candid, I don’t sense the political will here to provide housing for every homeless person.
According to the Huffington Post: “If you can get somebody off the street, it saves the emergency room visits, it saves the police, it saves the justice system — and so when you add up all those extra costs … you can buy a lot of housing for that amount of money,” Clugston told the (CBC) network.
He initially resisted the idea of finding housing for those who need it. Then he changed his mind.
Would we really commit to such an ambitious and proactive project? Do we have the civic and political leadership to lead such an effort?
My gut tells me “no.” I could be persuaded otherwise.
Your thoughts?