Greensboro’s city council hates homeless people. There’s really no other way to understand it.
On Monday evening, Greensboro’s leaders — the ones we elected into office two years ago — unanimously voted to make it illegal to sleep, sit, lie on or camp in public spaces. The move comes in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in June that allows cities to pass ordinances targeting homeless people. And while the amendments to the ordinance don’t directly mention the unhoused community, the conversations leading up to the vote made the target clear.
“Lawlessness.”
“I don’t know why they do that.”
“A grace period.”
These are just some of the things uttered by councilmembers, the city attorneys and public speakers that advocated for the changes on Monday. And they speak to a profound lack of empathy and unwillingness to understand the lived experience of those who are unhoused.
One speaker, Chris Waldeck, who sits on Downtown Greensboro Inc.’s board, called the issue of homeless people existing downtown “lawlessness.”
Councilmember Sharon Hightower said she didn’t understand why people defecated or urinated on sidewalks.
The city attorneys noted that homeless people would be given a “grace period” to understand the new rules, which if violated, would result in a Class 3 misdemeanor. That could lead to a fine of $50.
That’s right. If a poor person, who doesn’t have a house, sleeps on the sidewalk and they are caught, they will be fined $50. Make it make sense.
And our mayor, who proposed the changes to the ordinance, touted how well the city’s anti-panhandling signs have been at curbing the efforts by those simply trying to get a few dollars to find something to eat. She and other city councilmembers are excited that the police department has made it impossible to ask people for money on certain roadways. They are excited about it.
They must hate poor people. They must hate unhoused people. There is no other way to understand it.
What the changes in the ordinance mean is that more and more unhoused people will be forced to find increasingly more hazardous places to sleep — places further from resources like public bathrooms, restaurants and convenience stores.
In recent months, the Interactive Resource Center, the city’s sole day center for the unhoused, had to scale back its hours because of resistance from the city and local business leaders.
Let’s be clear: These new rules will be devastating to the unhoused community. People will die. And that blood will be on the hands of our city councilmembers.
As activist Ana de Leon explained in a Facebook post, municipalities get funding from the federal government based on the annual Point-in-Time count in which volunteers and staff go out and physically count unhoused people they see. Data has shown that the counts are historically inaccurate and underrepresent the extent of homelessness in communities.
So the city’s plan?
To install two Porta-Potties in the meantime and hope the rest of the homeless people just go away. There was discussion of long-term, standalone bathrooms being installed throughout the city but no timeline.
By that time, for many, it will have been too late.
There are so many viable solutions to helping curb homelessness.
Why hasn’t the city invested in these bathrooms for years? Why haven’t they allocated more funding for the IRC to help them expand their programs? Why isn’t there more than one day center for the unhoused? Why aren’t there regular case workers at the local library downtown? Why aren’t the downtown public bathrooms open 24/7? If they get vandalized, why not clean them again?
It’s almost like our city leaders don’t care to help those with the most need.
But how could they care when they likely haven’t asked a single homeless person what would make the city better for them? If Councilmember Hightower is wondering why people use the bathroom outside, why not ask?
The simple answer: Many of our city’s leaders don’t see homeless people as people.
But that’s okay, because when the temperature drops below freezing they can go home to their warm houses that value about $3.3 million collectively (care to guess whose house is the most expensive?).
I just don’t know how they sleep once they’re there.
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