Washington, DC’s municipal government—like pretty much any government in the country—is run by outside forces. Since 1999 the business community has put gentrification on the fast track. They convey their will to the DC Council and mayor by means of the city’s Business Improvement Districts (BID’s). The dispossessed of our nation’s capital don’t have any such mechanism at their disposal.
Now the mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, has begun an initiative to address homelessness in his city. He can be seen on YouTube conversing with policy consultant Robert Marbut, dressing up his draconian policies toward the homeless and euphemizing his creation of a “homeless concentration camp” and punishment of the poor for their plight.
Robert Marbut founded San Antonio’s Haven for Hope, a 37-acre homeless campus where new intakes sleep on the ground in the courtyard until they “earn” a bed indoors, and they eat bag lunches each evening until they “earn” hot meals. He attempted to get the city to create laws that would not allow homeless people to be fed in the parks or to sleep outdoors.
Marbut has moved on to become an inter-city consultant on homeless services. When he signed on with St. Pete, an article explicitly made his case for the homeless being the scourge of the city with their unacceptable behavior and uncouth ways. Mr. Marbut argues that various things done to help the homeless “enable” them to remain homeless, lazy and shiftless. His website for Marbut Consulting lays out seven “principles” that he supports that blame the dispossessed for having been robbed by the powers that be.
St. Pete and San Antonio are in southern states with warm climates on opposite sides of the Gulf of Mexico and have been governed by the Bush brothers. What better places to begin an all-out attack on the homeless dispossessed! It is of concern that the new HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Director Julian Castro hails from Marbut’s home town of San Antonio, Texas, where there is an emerging culture of creating draconian policies toward the poor and teaching other city governments to do the same. Now someone who served as mayor in a city with such a culture is heading the federal department that is charged with housing the homeless.
Let’s not “wait and see.” Let’s be clear that persecution of the homeless is the only answer we will get from a system organized around private profit instead of public benefit. Let’s remain politically involved and continue to bring forth the demands of our class—not just during election campaigns. Let’s bear in mind who our politicians are truly working for and with. Let’s be aware of the non-governmental pillars of capitalism, such as Marbut Consulting, and confront them head-on. Let’s ensure that all of our efforts are based on a vision of a cooperative society where social resources are distributed according to human needs.
I like the end product of my writing plus your editing. 12/31/14 was declared by the DC Council to be Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day. I’ll use that to rally people around proactively delivering our demands to the incoming mayoral admin.
I remember December 31, 2014 as a very Special Day, Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day, and Pierre was very impressed when I told him about it.
Your article on The Peoples’ Tribune is a must-read!
I also listened to your interview on the Kojo Nmandi Show, on NPR, today (Feb. 23/2014).
As usual you were eloquent, with enough passion in your views to not turn off anyone. You made a lot of sense. Employ able-bodied homeless folks to earn what they need for housing and other necessities.
Shelter is torture so smaller shelters is still torture.
Your figures on what it takes for a single/family in D.C. to get decent housing were mind-boggling — $60,000 for a single person, $90,000 for a family? Rent control not working at all, au contraire!
Move outside of D.C. for cheaper rent? Not likely. Transportation costs, have, by design, become unaffordable, unless you are a senior citizen with a long-ago paid -for abode.
Financial literacy is an issue that is not addressed by D.C. public schools, and it’s a crying shame. (Talk to M. Bowser about that)!
I hope, Eric, that you will be hired as a Navigator for the Mayor’s initiative on Homelessness, something that she can boast about if it is a success, and I hope that, with you, it will be!
Congratulations on being such an eloquent advocate. At some point I want to hear from you that you have one of those apartments the program calls for!
Warm hugs,
Danielle