“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
– Maya Angelou
It started with a vote: do people want to help the ‘homeless’? Having been homeless (at one point) for almost a year, I voted yes. So did the majority of Los Angeles. The legislature set aside funds. They set procedures in place as to how best to use the funds.
The community I live in then decided to flat ignore that and refuse the help. The problem of folks without a home hadn’t gone away. No… the community was just hoping that the homeless would magically ‘move on.’
Finally, they were forced to accept the help.
This didn’t make community members happy.
That’s how I found myself in a meeting with a bunch of other level-headed folks (who think housing people is good) facing off against a crowd twice our size that were convinced some Grand Conspiracy(tm) was in the offing.