San Jose, CA. Interfaith religious leaders and unhoused individuals organized San Jose’s eleventh annual Unhoused Memorial Service on the City Hall Plaza on December 20. Over 200 model tombstones, one for each of those who died unhoused in Santa Clara County this year, were created and assembled by Shaunn Cartwright, John and Amada Betts, and many other volunteers. The service consisted of prayers and statements from Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Catholic, Christian, and Indigenous communities, as well as statements by several unhoused and formerly unhoused leaders, including Raymond Goins, James Campbell, and Debra Townley.
Some of the leaders of this memorial expressed solidarity with other actions taken this week, by unhoused-led groups in Oakland, San Francisco, Fresno, and Los Angeles. In addition to the model tombstones, organizers erected four tents with the words “Where do we go?” painted on them, a protest against encampment sweeps carried out without regard to providing alternative housing for people.
Homelessness in San Jose and Silicon Valley is an international disgrace, and totally unnecessary. This is the richest place on earth. They say we have the smartest people in the world here, but the truth is that Silicon Valley is too stupid to keep its people from freezing to death in the winter.
In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement used to point out that America didn’t have a “Negro problem”. What it had was a problem with white racism. In the same way, what we have today is not a problem with homelessness, but a problem with billionaires. If our billionaires paid their fair share of taxes, we wouldn’t even have any homelessness in America. But instead of housing their people here in their back yard, our Silicon Valley billionaires are traveling to Mar a Lago to lobby for their Bitcoin investments.
Instead of building housing, they are sponsoring a campaign that says the solution to homelessness is punishment. Our Mayor just went all over the state, not to campaign for more affordable housing, but to put more people in prison.
They are trying to return to the nineteenth century solution advocated by Ebenezer Scrooge, when he said the solution to poverty was to let people die and reduce the surplus population. There’s even a company now with billboards in San Francisco saying, “Stop Hiring Humans”. It is time to remember that human beings are not the problem, human beings are the solution, and we need to begin to base our policies on meeting human needs instead of private profit.
CHAM Deliverance Ministry used to organize a family shelter at First Christian Church around the corner from City Hall. It had a biblical saying posted in the sanctuary: how we treat the least of our brothers and sisters is how we are treating the Lord God Almighty.
The real solution to homelessness is housing, and demanding that the government finance and create the social housing we need to take care of our people. We need to stop sweeping encampments when there is no place for people to go, stop evictions and foreclosures, and make the right to housing a reality.
Letter from a Friend
by Debra Townley
I won’t ask you to listen to me.
To hear my story.
To try to understand what led me here and kept me against my will.
I won’t ask you to overlook my shortcomings.
I won’t ask for forgiveness.
For support with food or clothing or water to drink and bathe.
I won’t ask for a place to sit.
A warm place to come in from the painful cold or a rescue from the blazing sun.
I won’t ask for your money.
I won’t ask for your time.
I won’t ask for acceptance.
Or that you tolerate my wailing in the night.
I won’t ask for a chance.
A new beginning.
A life worth living.
I cannot ask because it is too late for me.
Please.
Hear them.
Love them.
Welcome them back into community.
It is not too late for them.
Sandy Perry is a longtime housing advocate from San Jose, CA.
