In a perfect world governments wouldn’t be providing anyone with shelter, except the military. However, if governments go into the shelter business, shouldn’t US citizens rather than illegal immigrants have first claim? From Steve Lamb at cfpup.org:
After an absence of nearly 40 years, I visited Skid Row in Los Angeles. In my Pentecostal youth, I volunteered to provide services to the folks who lived there. They were predominantly WWII and Korean War male veterans, mostly white, single and alcoholics.
The world has changed. In 1970, L.A. County had a population of 7 million; today it’s about 10.3 million. When I helped on Skid Row, there were about 1,500 people living there, and the population of down & out was largely limited to that area.
Today there are 60,000 homeless throughout L.A. County, with 5,000 on Skid Row, maybe higher. The situation in Skid Row became so dire that the conditions didn’t even meet United Nations standards for long-term refugee camps of one toilet for every 20 people. And compared to other cities, Los Angeles ranks near the bottom of sheltering homeless.
About 35 percent of the homeless in L.A. County are Black American descendants of slaves. The Guardiandescribed the large homeless population in Skid Row as “a patchwork of tents, tarps, boxes and carts, with black and brown faces peeking out from pockets of shade that provide a modicum of respite from the blazing summer heat.”
Skid Row is different too now in that there are families. My heart broke seeing a tall slender Black man walking behind his daughter as she rode her pink bicycle, protecting her from harm.
I sat in an air-conditioned vehicle looking at fellow Americans reduced to living in an incomprehensible and unsanitary situation of danger, insecurity and privation. Yes, there appeared to be substance abusers and those with mental health challenges. But there also were families attempting to remain sane and somehow give their children some sense of normalcy. I wondered how more than 30 years of bad immigration policies and other poor government policies had contributed to the huge numbers of people reduced to living outside – and how much more poor governance lies ahead.
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