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Thanks to my colleague Dan Mackenzie for the following commentary:
Homelessness is not something that is simply "tolerated," it is actively enforced.
People do not simply "experience homelessness," they are forcibly deprived of housing.
1/ https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/pearson-its-beneath-a-caring-community-to-tolerate-homelessness
Homelessness is not something that is simply "tolerated," it is actively enforced.
People do not simply "experience homelessness," they are forcibly deprived of housing.
1/ https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/pearson-its-beneath-a-caring-community-to-tolerate-homelessness
Homelessness, in other words, is not something that occurs due to bad luck or making poor life choices--it is something that we force onto people when we ensure that social assistance rates remain below the poverty lines.....
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....when we allow rental rates to drive large numbers of people out of the market, when we allow so-called "real estate developers" to buy property after property and then leave them standing empty while people freeze on the streets outside of them.
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There are empty buildings, apartments & other spaces that could be used 4 housing in London. But people are not allowed to live in those spaces & if they do go there (say to squat an abandoned house or get warm in an empty building in the core) then people are criminalized
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The language of "tolerance" implies passivity. It suggests that homelessness is a part of "the way things are" but this is misleading. Homelessness is something actively produced--by real estate developers, by business associations, by homeowners associations, and so on.
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It is, in other words, a form of active & ongoing oppression, wherein those who hoard wealth and steal communities (transforming community spaces into their own private property) produce a disposable population of people who need to be "managed" and "helped" to "move along."
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So, if we want to do something about this, then we need to be clear about who is profiting from dispossessing members of our community and depriving them of housing, and then we need to begin doing what we can do to stop those people and organizations.
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