The wisdom of and honor in hitting pause

2024 has been characterized by chaos, and it’s only August. The continuation of numerous conflicts worldwide, violently contested elections and gang takeover of governments. A global IT outage that canceled thousands of flights, stranding hundreds of thousands of people, and grinding some businesses to a halt. For the first time since 1968, an incumbent president dropping out of a bid for re-election.

With all this chaos, it is time for us all to pause and take a collective deep breath. And it would be especially beneficial for the City of Des Moines to take an extra long pause on its proposed ordinances that target those without homes.

The ordinances have sailed through two of three required readings with only one Council member voting ‘no’ both times.

Many are hoping there will be an extended pause for Des Moines city leaders to revisit the prohibited camping and removal of encroachment ordinances.

Kourtney Kirkpatrick, Director of Advancement at Anawim Housing, spoke to me about projects addressing root cause issues. For example “we're converting the old Days Inn into 240 units of permanent supportive housing. We need more projects like that. We have a moral obligation to help our neighbors and community members who are struggling, whether it's with mental illness, addiction, brain injury, or fleeing domestic violence. Everyone has a story.”

The council cites the Supreme Court in justifying the ordinance: “In late June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, found that banning sleeping or camping in public locations did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.” Specifically, Justice Neil Gorsuch in the majority opinion stated that the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment only addresses methods of punishment, and that jail sentences for sleeping in public are not cruel and unusual.

However, I would tend to agree with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose dissent started “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option.” The way the ordinance currently stands, this can potentially affect anyone. Maybe you can imagine yourself in a situation where you have fallen asleep in public. Having to drive home after a canceled flight and needing to rest in the car, or being too relaxed on a summer’s day at the park and falling asleep on your picnic blanket. It happens to the best of us.

What others have a harder time imagining is struggling to access basic needs on a daily basis. Finding food, shelter and sleep is difficult. Even if there was sufficient room at shelters, which there is not, there are other significant reasons why people do not feel safe sleeping or staying at shelters.

The Unsheltered Study was a collaborative effort with Homeward, community partners and Drake University researchers led by Dr. Elizabeth Talbert. Two participants likened shelter conditions to jail.“ The bathrooms are disgusting. The showers hardly work. Like they’re jail showers” said Lara, a 30-year-old white woman. Bill, a white man in his 20s, said “There’s fifty guys in a room. It reminded me more of being in jail than any, anywhere else I’ve been in.” A quarter of the 152 people interviewed by the team worried about their safety or personal property.

Whether or not one believes that the denial of sleep is cruel, no one can deny the high cost that a criminal record holds for anyone, and especially those experiencing homelessness. Once someone has a record, it is hard to walk that back. And the salt in the wound is that a record makes it even harder to obtain stable, permanent housing.

Which is what almost all the Unsheltered respondents reported as a goal. Specifically, “a quality apartment or a house, “anything,” that was safe, affordable, and allowed them to bring family and pets with them.”

In a letter to City Council on July 21, the Des Moines Branch of the NAACP argued that “implementing punitive measures such as fines and criminalization of camping in public spaces will not provide the long-term solutions needed to reduce homelessness but will instead create additional hardships for those who are already vulnerable.”

Given the amount of money and other resources that will be consumed enforcing the pending law, cost of incarceration, and the cost of the related directives of the ordinance, some suggest it be spent on more preventive measures. Rep. Megan Srinivas, who is also an infectious disease physician, suggested four other options in a letter she posted to Facebook. Increasing affordable housing options, expanding mental health and substance use disorder treatment services, enhancing job training and employment assistance programs, and supporting transitional housing initiatives are four alternatives she suggested. She also pointed out the high cost to the local health care system that this ordinance would cause.

Council member Josh Mandelbaum pointed out that the money that is spent to fulfill the prerequisite directives, which include housing animals and storing belongings, might be better spent, for example, on rental assistance. While there are some barriers to this, it would be ideal to figure out how to breakdown these barriers and house the animals and belongings with the actual human being who owns them, instead of funding three separate locations.

The sentiment there is investment in testing the directives out and monitoring their success is appreciated. But we need to make sure measuring the right processes in the right way to achieve success. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that we are addressing the right problem. And not creating additional problems in the process.

“I think people have good intentions, but I really wish people would ask questions and go out of their way to support the initiatives that other organizations are working on. We need support,” says Kirkpatrick.

The most appropriate problem to solve would be to reduce homelessness. Let’s take a pause and get the right people together to solve this problem. And find creative ways to dismantle oppressive systems instead of building additional barriers to reinforce them.

Chris Espersen is a Gazette editorial fellow. chris.espersen@thgazette.com