Your backyard
This is the third drive to/from work in a row that I’ve heard a news report where communities are “solving” problems by pushing them out to different neighborhoods.
Some things really get my goat [*baaaaa*] and this is one of them. Last week, I heard two unrelated news accounts of Bay Area neighborhoods dealing with both gang activity and sex offenders by forcing them out. An interviewed cop spoke about how they are making things difficult for the gang members, so they are leaving the neighborhood. A neighborhood watch person/random activist was talking about how her community was fining registered sex offenders $1200 per DAY until they moved out of the neighborhood. This morning, I heard a report about how one of the Bay Area cities was “cracking down” on homelessness by upping the fines for, well, being homeless so that they will know that they are not welcome in the city.
I try generally not to be too rude or too pissed off on my blog. BUT THE F*CK?!! It doesn’t solve the problem to send gangsters/sex offenders/homeless to other neighborhoods. It’s not that I necessarily fault people for thinking, “Well, I can’t solve the problem globally, but I can try to make a difference in this one little area,” but the solution is not to make someone ELSE’s neighborhood worse. It is one thing if the person reporting on the gang was saying that if gang-related activities are severely pursued and prosecuted, the gangs won’t be able to recruit and grow and will over time lower their own activities; it is quite another to boast proudly that they are “going elsewhere”.
It is one thing to keep sex offenders registered and keep people aware [sidebar: I recall a discussion on TGF that informed me that even one-time public urinators can be classified as a sex offender; I’m more interested in keeping tabs on rapists and pedophiles and find it appalling that something that trivial can be classified in the same manner] but it is another to enforce a fine for someone who is a free member of society who in fact is complying with the law by registering. A police officer on that report specifically pointed out that she was worried that this would result in more freed sex offenders “going dark” rather than result in helping keep neighborhoods safe. And of course, it pushes those sex offenders to neighborhoods who don’t have such policies, rather than address the problem of how to safely integrate potentially repeat offenders back into society when the penal system frees them.
And the homeless! Arg! Apparently, the plan is to give them bigger fines and “crack down” on the homeless, not necessarily on criminal behavior certain ones of them may engage in, but in their very existence. Excuse me, Homeless Joe & Jane, I know you have no money and home, can you go be homeless elsewhere? No, you don’t have anywhere to go and no money to get there? Here is a giant fine! Pay that or go to jail!
It’s so obvious that this doesn’t help solve the problem of homelessness. People have been arguing about various different methods to solve the homeless issue, and many of them have merit (teach to work, treat substance abuse problems, treat mental disorders, etc.) but fining people that don’t have money? WTF??!!
I *don’t* want problems in my backyard. But if I have trash in my backyard, I can’t just shovel them over the fence and be done with it. And I can’t do this with societal/criminal problems either. Grow the hell up, people, and take some real responsibility. Don’t pat yourselves on the back for shovelling the trash out of your backyard.
When I first moved in with my dad and stepmom, we lived in a part of SoCal that was notorious for Mexican gangs. In an effort to get away from that, my dad moved us 1.5 hours away to the desert. About two years later, they started shipping the juvenile gang members up to our community so by the time I was in high school, we had just as bad of a gang problem as we had tried to get away from. Pushing out the problem doesn’t solve it, it just creates more problems for other people. I guess you (general) don’t much care though as long as its no longer your own? A good example of this is right here in our hood. There’s a notorious bar that is often at the root of violence (muggings, stabbings, shootings) in the area. Residents are fighting for the bar to lose its license and close up shop. I imagine if that happens, the bar will just reopen somewhere else and cause the same problems for another set of homeowners. As long as it’s not in my hood though, I have to say I’m okay with that. I’m such a hypocrite sometimes.
That particular example is interesting because in a case of a legitimate business, if they are shut down, the chances of those specific business owners restarting the business in another area decreases, or so I can only speculate, since I have no actual data. But it seems unlikely to me that it would simply go to another neighborhood.
On a completely related note, at the zoning level, it does in fact have the effect we are talking about. If an area is zoned only to have at most 1 liquor store per X sq miles or 1 bar per x sq miles, then the businesses start up where they are allowed to open.
In Philly, at least when I lived there, one of the biggest sources of tension was the perception that Asian American business owners were targetting black neighborhoods for opening up liquor stores, which harms in the area in two ways: you have the problem with clientele and you have the problem with revenues flowing out of the neighborhood. Black residents and AsianAm store owners were constantly at odds with each other over this, but I see this as a zoning issue. The city has allowed the lower-income, predominantly black neighborhoods to be zoned to have more “undesireable” businesses per sq mile. The business owners, whatever their race, makes the best choice they can based on how much rent they can afford for their business. There is definitely personal responsibility at play, but there is also a systemic governing issue that should be addressed.
Isn’t that what Australia is for?