'Not Here' Won't Lead to Better Choices
We want the unhoused to make different choices; to do that, they require different options to choose from.
By Meghann Cotter
GUEST OPINION
Springtime always feels the same for me
The cold weather shelter closes.
Daffodils break free from their long winter’s nap.
Warming temperatures bring out the shorts and T-shirts. With them comes a rise in police reports on homelessness, photo dumps of unwanted places that unhoused neighbors are sleeping and requests for some kind of mass camp-clearing activity.
Unlike previous years, where the area’s discussion on homelessness has centered on the City of Fredericksburg, growing concerns are now coming from Spotsylvania and Stafford counties.
While I am grateful that the region finally has a need for shared dialogue about homelessness, my plea is simple.
The answer cannot be, “not here.”
While complaining, camp sweeping, “otherizing” or criminalizing the unhoused members of our community might move people from the place they are disturbing in the moment, the result is nothing more than relocation to another unfavorable spot.
When solutions stop at “not here,” we yield unnecessary costs to taxpayers, create new challenges for service providers and increase despair among those affected by homelessness. Meanwhile, unhoused neighbors become the subject of growing resentment from the community when exhaustive efforts to move them along fail to make them go away.
Points for creativity to those who try to explain unsheltered homelessness by claiming that the population prefers to live outdoors. Credit to sanctioned campsite advocates—at least they have the forethought to dream up an alternative. And if I thought there was merit in the notion that unhoused members of our region weren’t from here, I might also think there was an argument for apathy.
Alas, these are the claims that soothe our souls.
If homelessness were a choice, if those experiencing it were outsiders, or if keeping people out of sight allowed our lives to continue without being affected by their struggles, we absolve ourselves from responsibility to participate.
Relationships with unhoused neighbors, however, call us to greater responsibility.
Most unhoused people do not want to live outside; but many have lost hope that their circumstances can change.
Eighty percent of neighbors on our region’s streets have a last fixed address in one of the five jurisdictions that make up Planning District 16. For the 20% that don’t, their reason for coming to the area is resoundingly friends, family, work opportunities, or returning to the place they consider home.
Unsheltered neighbors are also highly vulnerable—78% have at least one disability. For many, it is three or more. The audacity to suggest that people who can’t problem solve should remain in sanctioned outdoor living until they do problem solve is simply inhumane.
At this point, I have seen enough springs to know that “not here” only pushes unhoused neighbors into less desirable and more visible places. We cannot explain away our own discomfort by blaming the people, the economics or the service providers.
“Not here” takes us nowhere other than face to face with our own reflection. Our need to remove the unhoused neighbor from our everyday lives says a lot more about ourselves than it ever said about those experiencing it.
Homelessness in the region is not increasing. But the resources available and needs of the unhoused have changed. Post-pandemic, the Fredericksburg region no longer has a year-round shelter for literally homeless individuals.
The rapid growth among homeless 18-24 year-olds and persons over 60 is requiring service providers to venture into new areas of expertise.
The prevalence of mental health and trauma among those on the street is unprecedented.
“Not here” gets unhoused neighbors nowhere closer to making different choices, unless there are different options to choose from.
In the interest of coming up with better answers this spring, I’m wondering if we can ask different questions. Could we embrace the “not here” narrative for a much more powerful purpose?
Not here, will law enforcement and service providers work against one another.
Not here, do we fear the human whose circumstances have left them in a misunderstood place of struggle.
Not here, do businesses and advocates have competing agendas.
Not here, do we have to be a community where people sleep outside.
Spring (not winter) is coming.
A truly collaborative solution to homelessness acknowledges that all of our flourishing is fundamentally connected to the flourishing of the very least among us.
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Well written. As an agency that provides emergency shelter and services, it's increasingly frustrating that there is a need to for interim housing aka shelter however no funding for it. We continue to see unsheltered increasing because the system cannot accept that it could be a viable option while housing is built. Instead let's keep people on the street with the hope that we can get someone directly into housing. Housing is best, but what about tonight and next week. What does a community want to be known for: a CE system or humanity?