Editorials

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 

—Anatole France 

At least one of our eagle-eyed readers has already spotted the similarity of the commentary published on Tuesday, from a writer who said he had the support of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and the Telegraph Business Improvement District, to this famous epigram. 

But the irony in the quote appears to be lost on the commentary author, whose paen in praise of Mayor Bates’ proposed “Public Commons for Everyone” initiative says that its point is “to address problematic behavior while turning a truly blind eye to residential status.” Evidently the housed as well as the homeless should be forbidden to sleep in their cars or on the street, to yell in the streets, to urinate in the bushes and to frighten the timid. How fair is that!  

More intelligent and enlightened cities, notably San Francisco and New York, are now dealing with the problems of people who live on the street with a Housing First approach. Here’s how it’s explained by the National Coalition to End Homelessness: “What differentiates a Housing First approach from traditional emergency shelter or housing transitional models is the immediate and primary focus on helping homeless people quickly access and then sustain housing—put simply, housing comes first, then services.” 

Turning a blind eye to residential status, as recommended by the mayor and his supporters on the City Council, simply hasn’t worked. Services, no matter well-meaning they might be, aren’t much use to people who are engaged in a daily struggle to find somewhere to sleep at night.  

The commentator claims that Bates et al. have the support of the “silent majority.” Perhaps he is not aware that this term was first used by Richard Nixon in 1969 to make the claim that most Americans supported the ongoing war in Vietnam. Some think Nixon was factually wrong in making that claim, even then, but many more, even many Berkeleyans today, think that even if most Americans did support the Vietnam war at that time, they were morally wrong to do so. The councilmembers who support cracking down on street behavior are all good Democrats, and linking them with Nixon’s famous “silent majority” probably makes them a tad uncomfortable, as it should. Their obligation is to do the right thing, not to carry out the will of some phantom majority. 

Then there’s the question of what the right thing to do might be. The Chamber’s commentator has no doubts on the matter: “The community is effectively saying, ‘We don’t want you to live in this sort of degraded manner, and we don’t want a degraded city. We have pride in our city. We respect you as an individual so much that we won’t tolerate overt self-destruction.’” This doesn’t seem to match the writer’s claim that only behavior, not status, is addressed.  

What exactly is “living in a degraded manner”? Is it being mentally ill? Is it being an alcoholic or a cocaine addict? If the “helpless, addicted, and mentally ill,” as the writer describes them, are lucky enough have homes, are they then not “living in a degraded manner”?  

The writer for some reason doubts that bad behavior on the streets is illegal: “Other critics suggest that adequate laws already exist. Other than in the most obvious extreme cases such as murder, assault, robbery, rape, and so forth, the critics can’t prove such.” Of course they can! This is such obvious nonsense that we’ll just leave it to others more versed in the criminal code to provide the cites, but almost everything the Chamber and its allies complain about is already illegal, except perhaps “yelling,” which is probably protected by the First Amendment in most instances. 

Then there’s the question of God’s Will, appropriate for this week when two of the desert religions celebrate major holy days. Here’s the view from the Chamber: 

“One council critic of this initiative suggested that if it passed, he would mobilize people of conscience and the faith community to overturn it by referendum. How absurd!! Is it not a matter of conscience and an affirmation of the worth of the human being as fashioned by a Higher Power to insist on wholeness and health, and not degradation and depravity? Is it not immoral to insist on maintaining that the most helpless, addicted, and mentally ill must remain in their misery and not be helped?” And there’s more: “Together with the silent majority, we ask the council to act with conscience and common sense, move forward, pass this bill when it is finally written, stand in solidarity with the afflicted and suffering, and move this city toward wholeness and health. Passing this will be a positive act of conscience and honor to the Creator and our fellow man and woman.” 

It’s been quite a few years since I studied the Christian Bible, but I seem to remember that Jesus hung out with prostitutes, thieves and crazy people. I don’t remember that he insisted on wholeness and health, or that he banished even the degraded and depraved from his presence. I do remember that he drove the money-changers out of the temple, and that he was quoted by Matthew as saying that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  

Later generations of Christians bickered about the importance of the appearance of righteousness, but many would not agree with the characterization of a Higher Power who only loves the clean and sober. Some might identify the brand of evangelical Christianity favored by George Bush as the source of these ideas, but I’m not an expert on that theology. I haven’t studied the holy books of other religions much either, but I’ve gotten the general impression that many of them have more respect and compassion for the afflicted than for the comfortable.  

And many in Berkeley don’t form their consciences by appeals to any creator of any kind anyhow. It’s certainly not the responsibility of the elected city council to form its policies on the basis of the narrow judgmental moral view espoused by the commentary writer in the name of his particular religious beliefs.  

He further bolsters his argument with the shop-worn and unproven claim that new restrictions are necessary because they will be good for business: 

“Some critics argue that this is somehow flawed because it is supported by the business community because it applies to commercial areas. Some of these critics go a step further and claim that it is for increased profits. So what?! Increased profits mean principally two things for Berkeley—more jobs and more revenue for the city. Are floundering businesses somehow better for the city than successful ones? Many have noted the obvious—shoppers vote with their dollars, and the dollars are going out of Berkeley. Shoppers, including thousands of Berkeley residents, unquestionably want better shopping districts in Berkeley.”  

So what, indeed. The problems of Berkeley shopping districts, as we’ve discussed in this space many times before, are not primarily caused by the bad behavior of a few people on the street. One more time: there are plenty of beggars on Fourth Street and at the farmer’s markets, and plenty of customers there too. But it’s so much easier to blame beggars than to deal creatively with the merchandising challenges posed by the Internet and by malls with parking in front of the doors of the shops. It’s so much harder to come up with a lively advertising campaign than it is to write a check to a political campaign fund.  

The councilmembers who are the main backers of the PCEI are, not coincidentally, also the main beneficiaries of the Chamber of Commerce’s largesse in the November election, and now the Chamber seems to be calling in its chits. We appreciate the candor of Tuesday’s commentator and his patrons in acknowledging their role in producing this deeply flawed proposal. Now it’s up to the not-so-silent citizens to speak truth to power and tell the council to reject it.