The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
The “Water Cooler” will be up Monday-Friday in the noon hour.
QUESTION: Do you think the rise in homeless camps is being ignored, or do you think the local agencies are doing all they can?
Talk about it.
No and No.
If they help 5 people, the next thing you know there are 8 more new homeless.
It’s an endless cycle for now.
They are being ignored. Thank god that there is a group of ladies (grow concord) who feed the homeless, provide the homeless a place to shower and do laundry, and other basic needs.
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@Paul – While well-intentioned, such efforts unfortunately enable vagrants to subsist in squalid shanties. Life in these encampments is inhumane not only for the homeless, but also for the productive communities they infest.
The Grow Concord team is doing good work. I call it triage. They are helping with immediate needs to sustain the health of these people in the short term. God bless them.
The enablers of homelessness are those in a position to build more shelter beds and detox facilities and do nothing. I am referring to our State Legislators and County Board of Supervisors. That is where the money is. That is where the enabling laws legalizing drug possession and public intoxication come from.
That is the definition of enabling.
Ignored
for the most part………….
The Courts have decriminalized homelessness. The homeless can only be removed if a cities homeless shelter has room and the homeless individual or individuals refuse to go to the shelter. If our state government and local governments are going to allow homeless camps then Governor Newsom needs to activate the National Guard to set up and administer these homeless camps, rather than letting the homeless set up and run their own camps.
@Black Knight – You’re on the right track, but that still doesn’t solve the problem. Vagrants that infest productive communities must be removed and reprogramed to be productive (and those who refuse reprograming banished to the wilderness).
Basically the pandemic brought a recession (or worse) to California. I think it was done intentionally to destroy small businesses. So there has been a lot of unemployment and difficult for some people to fill even the jobs being offered. That is intentional. This movement seems to be global as small businesses in other countries were also driven out. The elite want only “enterprise” (i.e. big business) and not small business. I see reports about this all the time. And my field is even effected as there are unreasonable demands of independent app developers. It is obvious that only enterprise should develop apps. Crazy, because some of us develop niche market apps and enterprise won’t be doing those.
This is not a “conspiracy theory” because it is happening right before your eyes. They are creating homelessness. It is a form of genocide.
AGREED
It seems to me that the local agencies aren’t doing much at all. In my view, there’s a lot they can do, but they just don’t care. I’m beginning to notice more Hispanics living on the streets. Concord, as well as the state, is a sanctuary for illegal invaders, which makes the city of Concord, and the state a huge part of the problem. I always wondered why the illegals picked Concord to settle in. I mean, of all the places in California, why Concord? I’ll bet most of them never even heard of Concord before coming here, and giving away free stuff, like food stamps, and health care is an open invitation.
I can think of plenty of solutions to ease the homeless problem, but some may find my ideas a bit harsh, and uncaring. It’s not that I don’t care, but I believe in order to overcome the homeless situation, the officials in charge need to be stringent and uncompromising when dealing with them. They can start be making Concord an undesirable place to set up camp by enforcing which ever vagrancy laws, and health and safety codes they are violating, and arrest them if necessary. Arresting them will give the police a reason to search them, and if they find any firearms, or drugs, they can be charged accordingly. If the police pester them on a daily basis, they might decide to move out of Concord.
@Dawg – That’s not at all uncaring!
What’s “uncaring” is allowing deranged junkies to menace families, disrupt commerce and travel and sully our communities with squalid shantytowns. Productive, rational people mange to earn a living and secure housing in places they can afford. The social contract entails some measure of self-sufficiency and some degree of resource pooling for the community’s benefit (e.g., schools, transportation infrastructure, parks). In exchange, self-sufficient contributors enjoy significant personal liberty, privacy and the benefit of public resources; subject of course to heeding the community’s rules, INCLUDING sanitation standards (e.g., building codes and laws against littering, peeing and pooping in public, nudity and public intoxication).
Communities endow the government with authority to uphold those rules and standards. Local government fails to perform its fundamental duty when it does not uphold those rules and standards. Indeed, officials that allow addicts, lunatics and vagrants to flout basic community standards are callously “uncaring” and should cede office to more caring candidates.
Arrest/jail gives them everything free anyway. You just won’t hafta look @ em…
Many of the homeless don’t want to be helped – they don’t want to be told what to do… they want the freebies … and Newscum has “invited” homeless from across the country to come here ….and we pay for it! glad I didn’t vote for Newscum, Bonta or Becton but too many just voted for incumbents
Reenact and enforce vagrancy laws in city limits NOW.
Vagrants deserve no more than the brave young soldiers who voluntarily enlist to serve and defend our country.
Offer the able-bodied men and women lacking the wherewithal to secure indoor accommodation an opportunity to relocate to dry / sober labor camps to provide a minimum wage labor pool for public works projects. Offer evening literacy / English / GED / JuCo classes or VA-compliant mental health and substance abuse treatment services on site. Deposit earnings in an interest-bearing CDs (that mature one year after entry) at PenFed or Navy Federal Credit Union. The “vagrants” become “cadets.”
Build the camp infrastructure to US military expeditionary base specifications (i.e., cabin tents, bunk beds, shared washrooms, chow halls, infirmaries, and austere worship facilities) and impose military housekeeping discipline (e.g., make your bunk, sweep the floor, clean and press your uniform and neatly stash your personal effects into one mil-spec type(D-K) duffle, subject to random inspection for contraband (just like an Army private at boot camp)).
Revelry at 0600, group exercise at 0630; chow and morning meds at 0730, work from 0830 till lunch (30 minutes to much MREs or K-Rations and rest), work till dinner and evening meds at 0600; mental health / addiction treatment program or class at 0700; washup at 0900 (followed by optional prayer); finally taps at 0930. The disciplined regimen above provides structure, skills, sanitation and rehabilitation for less than it costs to house and train an fresh infantryman (less because there’s no ammo / combat gear expense). Hire recently discharged enlisted / NCO vets to run the camps at NCO wages to provide civilian management experience and inculcate the cadets into a culture of military-grade discipline and teamwork.
After a year, those who follow the program will have saved enough money to secure an apartment and enter the labor market with fresh job training, relevant experience and the mental stability and self-discipline to use it.
Those who refuse to accept residential employment at a work camp will get a one-way transfer to the Alaskan backcountry where they can live off the land and behave as they please, without society’s constraints. Indeed, a century ago, anti-social lunatics and hobos hellbent on sleeping rough took to the woods and became “mountain man” squatters, far removed from productive society. Fine with me.
Meanwhile, productive families in low income communities can reclaim their neighborhood parks, trails, creekbanks, playgrounds and open space from the junkies’ squalid shantytowns. (Yes, I said “low income;” I don’t see any bums establishing camp in Moraga!)
& yet some of them ARE THE FORGOTTEN VETS😪
Best solution I’ve heard. Pass it on to the ones in charge.
I cannot state that local agencies are doing all they can for two reasons: first, I do not see them doing anything, and second, not sure there is much they can do anymore. The current administration, in an effort to destroy the Republic, has enabled, and promoted, the invasion of our country by multiple millions of illegal aliens. With this comes all the crime, drugs, mayhem. We also see the federal government try to deliberately stop “local agencies” who do try to stop/impede this invasion (look at Texas).
The rise in these camps is not being ignored by many of us in the public. We deliberately try to avoid them. We curse with disgust at the level of litter, trash and filth that are prevalent/ubiquitous in these camps, knowing there is nothing we can do, as this group is offered considerably more support/acceptance than the hard working citizen.
It’s a tough discussion to be sure.
We all have freedoms.
Freedom is not free.
The price of freedom is responsibility.
Those who refuse to pay the price should not have freedom.
That’s the simple answer, but not necessarily the proper one.
I think it’s a place to start.
California has 33% of US homeless living in the state, with a population with 11.6% of the US.
That’s 3 times the total US percentage. Bound to be some living near you. Bleeding heart types
(like the ones feeding them) are responsible, voting liberal politicians into office. Those Dem
politicians know full well how much money that means. SF spends roughly $77,000 per each
homeless person, and it is helping kill the City. And on and on…..
Beware the Homeless Industrial Complex
In SF,
“A self-proclaimed’ old-school junkie’ who moved from Texas to San Francisco because ‘it’s f*****g easy’ to be homeless there claims he’s being paid by the city government to live on the streets, getting $620 in cash per month and hundreds of food stamps while he sells Narcan and enjoys Amazon Prime and Netflix on his phone.
.
‘This right now is literally by choice, literally by choice. If we’re going to be realistic, they pay you to be homeless here,’ James, a homeless man with face tattoos who has been living in San Francisco since June…” …
.
“…it only took one phone call to receive government assistance, including hundreds in cash and food stamps worth approximately $100, and notes that the ‘free money’ is motivation to remain homeless.”
dailymail https://tinyurl.com/bdhc5put
.
“We should measure welfare’s success by how many people
leave welfare, not by how many are added.”
–Ronald Reagan
.
“Government does not solve problems;
it subsidizes them.”
–Ronald Reagan
There’s plenty of money. Problem is a really small number of people have most of it. And they want more.
Oh yeah that’s the problem…you’re such a deep thinker. Money is not even real.
😘
I smell communism that statement
I’ve seen tents in the shrubs on the FWY side of the fence along 680. That overpass near the In-N-Out gets cleaned up and then two days later its back and even bigger than before. Many of the bus stops Near Target PH and where those Casinos are have people slumped over in them. That side driveway along the old Wildbirds store location on CC Blvd looked like something you would see in the SF Tenderloin. Things are baaaaad.
I notified the city of Concord about the homeless encampment under the 680/ Concord Blvd overpass last week. Said it was a CALTRANS problem and that the mess will be cleared out next week. We’ll see.
Typical passing the buck by Concord once again.
It may be a CALTRANS Easement, but the problems caused are in the City of Concord….
It is Concord’s Problem.
what about the big mess in CVS parking lot Clayton rd under the bart tracks?
It’s a complex civic issue. There are plenty of resources available too. However, you cannot force help if they are unwilling to accept it. A better comprehensive approach is needed. It may just be a matter of relocating those willing to a community environment in which they are accepted and not stereo typed simply for their outward appearance.
So why are they unwilling to accept help? Is it they don’t trust government?
I think after the Vietnam war. There was a lot of substance abuse in association. There wasn’t any escape from it and eventually became part of the social norm.
they cant drink and do dope and urinate anywhere at a shelter,give them a hotel room they destroy it
No, it seems like most local government approach to this is to ignore the issue and recite the mantra, “being homeless is not a crime” while surrendering public spaces. There is no plan, voters keep approving money that just disappears with no results or accountability and the problem just keeps getting worse. Eventually we’ll look back at this as the biggest government disaster of the modern era.
Raising the minimum wage does not help either. It just causes another round of inflation. The more you pay people the more that is expected of them. What will employers expect if they have to pay $20+ an hour? The raise will just drive out more small businesses and make the big companies more like feudal lords.
I want to help… I’m going to donate a trash can with a lid, a rake and a box of big heavy duty plastic trash bags so that all these poor folks don’t have to live like rats in all the filth & trash they generate.
Let’s all chip in & give them some garbage cans, maybe a broom too.
Keeping their illegal camps clean & tidy will enable these HOBOs to regain a little self respect and give them something to do other than just lay around smoking dope & drinking booze.
They move on when its so overloaded with trash and bicycle frames,and the cops never check the frames for being stolen
Agencies better start doing more now that Prop 1 (barely) passed. Let’s see how the billions are spent. I’m not holding my breath.