I am compassionate about people and animals, believing we all have a responsibility to care for each other, especially those who are unable to care for themselves. New Times‘ story “Moved around” (Jan. 18) was one I wanted to read right away. My issue after reading the article was not with the author, but with Wendy Blacker’s comments about our homeless population in Morro Bay.
In fact, I call bullshit on almost everything she said.
She said Morro Bay’s homeless have “lost faith in the system” and that people from the encampments have lost trust in service providers. Further, she notes that the issue most detrimental to the homeless population is a “lack of affordable housing and transitional housing options.”
She notes that, rather than moving homeless people from point A to point B, the city needs to conduct more outreach to encampments and have more options for temporary and permanent housing.
I disagree with so many of the things she said. We all have had struggles and been “this close” to being homeless, including myself.
Addiction is a disease, certainly. Mental health is a crisis, indeed. But something in a person needs to “click” in order to reach out for help. There are so many services available, and to say the homeless have lost faith indicates the true nature of this issue: They have lost faith in a system because it doesn’t give them what they believe they are entitled to.
The “system” (taxpayers, law enforcement, local government) doesn’t provide them with a nice hotel room or apartment and a monthly support check. The system finds their trash-filled, disgusting campsites on the side of the road in our beautiful community and tells them they must clean up after themselves or move. The system points them to various places and resources where the homeless could get counseling, food, advice, haircuts, showers, access to laundry services, and help with their pets, but they think that because others have more, that they deserve more. When they don’t get what they feel entitled to, for free, they cry to advocates like Wendy and they say they have lost faith. And advocates fall for it.
We all struggle with not getting what we want or “deserve,” but some of us do it while we are working 40-plus hours a week, paying our mortgages, property taxes, and insurance, all the while spending our free time cutting the grass and washing our windows and trying our best to be responsible. We vote and hope to have elected officials who respect all that we do, but there’s still inflation, rising housing costs, food costs, insurance costs that we all face, so we all can say we feel the system let us down. But what does “the system” really owe us?
If your city and police turn a blind eye to the encampments you start creating, across from one of our most traveled community streets, and within weeks you have trash piled high, things hanging in dead trees, tarps and stolen shopping carts, you have to wonder: They are allowed to live like that for free and they don’t even have enough respect to keep the area clean? Would I want to rent one of my extra rooms to anyone who takes care of their property like this? No.
They show no respect. They take no initiative to even try to keep their space clean. I guess they are so busy all day working their 40-hour week, like the rest of us, that they just don’t have time to put that garbage in one of the many trash bags strewn across their encampment.
Do I think “the system” owes them a reduced rate or free place to live? No. Renting or owning a home brings with it a responsibility, and they have proven they aren’t up to the task.
Taking responsibility for one’s self, and for one’s circumstances is the problem. They don’t. They want to blame someone else for their problem. Some people fall for it.
If people really want to advocate for “our” homeless population, take your homeless friends by the hand over to that big, ugly mess on Quintana Road and make them clean it up. We taxpayers, property owners, renters, employers, and employees are the system. And we have lost faith in a population that only wants to sit back in their own trash and blame everyone else for the mess they’ve made of their lives.
Teach them to accept personal responsibility for their situation, and for the choices they make to stay in or move out of their situation. Addicted? There are free programs. Mental health issues? There are free programs. Hungry? Transportation? Medical services? There are free programs. Choose to access them.
Take advantage of free laundry service and free showers and free haircuts. Then, go to one of the dozens of businesses in town that have help wanted signs in their windows.
As a property owner in Morro Bay, the property taxes alone are crippling. None of us can afford to give them free or reduced cost housing. So, maybe they should consider living somewhere else, where the cost of housing isn’t so high. And if you argue that they should be able to live where they want to live, we tried that on Quintana Road, and they messed that up. Maybe I’d like to live in Beverly Hills or Monaco, but I don’t. Because I can’t afford it.
Being a citizen is hard work. Being an adult is hard work. Taking care of our personal space and going to work every day and paying taxes and following municipal rules is hard work. But the majority of the people in our community work hard to do all of that. I expect nothing less from any of my neighbors. Homeless or not.
They expect so much from us but aren’t willing to do the basics of what is expected to be part of a community. So the system has lost faith in the homeless population. We deserve much better than what they are doing in our community. Δ
Kathi Mendes Gulley writes to New Times from Morro Bay. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 1-11, 2024.
This piece sums up what I’ve been thinking lately. Thank you.
I wonder if she would consider becoming the next County Supervisor for the Morro Bay area? She is thinking clearly about the homeless issue and how it should be addressed. And how many millions of dollars have been spent over the last decade, just because Kathi’s clear comments were not said by County, City. and State leaders?
What is the quote? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result…
Thank you Kathi. Please send this to the SF Chronical. the LA Times, the Trib, and the Oregonian!
Agreed. The problem with most of the homeless is crippling addiction and/or mental illness, which all the services offered will not fix. It is unfortunate that a “homeless industry” has sprung up which is invested in throwing more and more resources at what is basically an intractable problem.
Kathi..excellent article, written perfectly and we agree! Now for public officials to get control of this problem they created. Vote in people who can make changes not just money thrown around as a bandaids. Thank you for writing this article and hopefully, our supposed leaders, will FIX it! We don’t want to end up like San Francisco and basically most of California. Again, VOTE for people who understand this huge problem and enforce the existing laws and create new efficient policies to handle this major crisis!
Very well said. People need to hear this and realize what tough love means — not just read it and react out of a misplaced sense of idealism. Blaming the system is a copout from doing hard work in pretty much any scenario. The blame game solves nothing. The system is imperfect because humans are imperfect and always will be. But don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Politicians talk out both sides of their mouths and try to guilt hard-working citizens into giving up even more of their money so that it can be siphoned away into crony-capitalist scams that, at best, serve as bandaids instead of curing the mental and social diseases that plague modern society. I’m a progressive-minded independent. But in many ways, I respect the mean conservative who says upfront “no, you’re not getting another dime until you fix your own problems,” more than the smiling, bleeding-heart progressive politician who wastes more and more money while continuing to blame the system that they create and uphold, while spinning a victimhood narrative for drug addiction, untreated mental illness, and in many cases, criminality. I am an addict, thankfully recovered, but I will always be in recovery. I lost a sibling to addiction. I’ve lost uncles to addiction. Anyone who has done a 12 step program or treatment knows how detrimental it is to make excuses for an addict’s behavior. Community support, treatment and social programs are there to help, but no one can fix an addict but the addict.
That said, I don’t know how anyone can say that there are plenty of programs in place here. If it’s true that the unhoused and truly destitute have free services at their disposal, while people like me can afford better services, what about all the people caught in the middle on CenCal? Waiting for even a marriage and family therapist (no doctorate) to become available via CenCal can take many months or even a year-plus. There are serious problems in this county that cannot be ignored, and it’s not just the homeless people.
To assign blame to the individual and ignore the systemic barriers faced by people living without homes and in poverty is naive and self-serving. Criticizing a person who is trying to assist our homeless residents in Morro Bay is counter-productive.
None of us can claim 100% credit for our successes nor for our failures. We each have unique lived experiences based on both opportunities and losses, either of which can bring us to the heights of success or the depths of despair. Let’s be grateful for our opportunities by being more understanding of those who may have lost hope. Social rejection is experienced in our brain centers as physical pain. Our goal should be to reduce the suffering associated with homelessness in our community, not to intensify it. Therein the solution lies, and we are all in it together.
The majority of the problem is the mental issues, most not all of course are dealing with. These people do not have the ability to wade through the red tape issues to take advantage of the offerings from the government. Why can they not do this? Because they have issues
period. These people cannot work and if they did they would be a hazard to themselves and others. To not care for them is inhuman period. We had it covered many years ago when we had places for them now we do not, simple all it takes is money big money while we try Band-Aids
and waste our time. We all share the shame but only government can fix the damage we have done.
Jeremiah O’Brien
Morro bay
@R Prselsus When you wrote “…I respect the mean conservative who says…” I found your use of the word “mean” to be ambiguous. In one sense of the word you could be talking about “occupying a position about midway between extremes”, but in another “characterized by petty selfishness or malice”. Which, if any, of these did you have in mind?
I completely agree with the opinion expressed in this piece. Thank you for posting it, SLO New Times.