Homeless Courts: Nothing but the Truth

There's nothing like a bad idea to ease our conscience...

As an advocate, I do not approve of homeless courts. Anything which creates divisions, classes, or separations in a civilization is to its own detriment. All courts should be "problem" solving courts. All institutions should be "problem" solving institutions. Otherwise, those institutions serve no good purpose, and should be abolished. Homelessness is a part OF the community. Homeless courts recasts homelessness as apart FROM the community. Like Drug Courts, Family Courts, and the myriad other "single issue" Courts that have evolved over the years, Homeless Courts are divisive and counter productive. The Homeless Court removes from the public eye an entire segment of the community which suffers injustices before the law. This compartmentalization of jurisprudence normalizes the violence we do to one another behind the veil of law. How can we as a nation guarantee equality before the law when we have created a new court for every subgroup of our community?  

This legal separation feeds our mental schism which dictates, “Homelessness is someone else's problem. It’s those people's problem, not ours.” It is this very schism which has not only allowed homelessness to grow to epidemic proportions, but also fed the very flames of this wholey curable and certainly preventable personal, social, societal disease. 

I ask you, did homeless people do this?

No, it was not homeless people who bid housing prices up to astronomical levels. We did this. We are responsible for the growth in housing costs by many multiples of inflation. But, we do not want to face this TRUTH. We wish to avoid our problem by conveniently blaming the victims. Even more conveniently by segregating them, for their own good of course, into their own Homeless Courts we might never have to face the victims of our crimes against them. Most conveniently, we may continue our reckless race off the cliff of affordability unperturbed by the haunting eyes of those who could not keep pace with our pack of suicidal lemures. A Homeless Court is just another crutch allowing us to buy, buy, buy this illusion, this hallucination, this finance, insurance, and real estate induced frenzy. 

We have yet to comprehend another TRUTH: When you create enough people with nothing to lose, you will lose much. While housing costs are headed towards the stratosphere, we as a civilization are careening towards this rock hard TRUTH.

In this election season, while candidates are handing out free everything from college loan forgiveness to reparations for injustices not suffered, try to remember that while freedom IS, in fact, free deficit spending and the mindless pursuit of ever appreciating property values ain't. 

Our children will pay the costs of our recklessness, and some day we will be called into account before the much HIGHER COURT of the GREAT LAWGIVER.