I'm extremely frustrated at the totally flaccid way that government in America, at all levels, is responding to the fact that so many Americans are being DENIED access to even the most basic housing, while, at the same time, coddling the favor of the financially-empowered - businesses and individuals alike - who suck on the blood of those who are the financially-challenged and psychologically-suppressed of the nation.
We have waited decades for the so-called “free market” to solve the problem - a pipe dream that didn’t just never come true, but turned into an absolute nightmare for the nation. Anyone who thinks there is a free-market solution to homelessness in America is an idiot. After all, what's the usual definition of someone who isn't quite sane? If you don't know, it's this - it's someone who approaches a problem, over and over again exactly the same way, and fails every time, yet continues to do so, absolutely convinced that, at some point, it will magically succeed.
Christ! Does no one see: this is a fucking national crisis - the prime signature of the slow collapse of a nation moving helplessly toward the condition of a failed state. As far as failed states go, I already have one under my belt of places lived in for decades - South Africa, now reaping the fruits of past indifference to the plight of the dispossessed and oppressed and sliding inexorably, with every passing day, into the maw of future failure as a nation. The parallels between my experience of perception there, in the late 1960's/early 1970's and the current condition of American society are eerily similar. I’m not scared. I'm disgusted.
Anyone who thinks the chaos in South Africa today comes down to race isn't reading enough. What it comes down to is GREED on the part of those who have much, on the one hand, and DESPERATION on the part of those who have nothing, pure and simple - the garden-variety wealth/income dichotomy that now so bedevils the United States. Once firmly ensconced, that order of things becomes a power unto itself, and cannot be changed by civil means, human beings being what they are.
Americans, though you may not realize it, your precious democracy - the one you are so loudly proud of - is now being quietly taken over by a force of money that you seem to have neither the smarts, nor the stomach to go up against. One day soon, you will wake up and realize that you are no longer as free as you once believed fervently you were. There will be a chain around your neck when you look in the mirror, and on the other end will be a giant faceless creature with an insatiable appetite for every last cent you manage to scrape together and every ounce of energy you can drag out of your depleted being.
That, exactly, was the life of bantus and coloureds, when I left South Africa; so don't think it can't happen in America. The forces that now propel tens of thousands of Americans into living in their vehicles or, God forbid, into encampments or onto the streets are a lot more powerful and sophisticated than those that formerly controlled the lives of people in South Africa. And having seen what happened there when the chains were removed, they are not about to make the same mistake in the US.
There isn't much time left for the people of this nation to prevent that from happening. Robust countermeasures are needed, post haste, and the sole entity with the power to turn the tide (albeit slowly) is the government owned and maintained by the People for their greater benefit.
The only thing that will temper the rapacious appetite for money that informs what the providers of housing now charge is a MASSIVE TIDE OF GOVERNMENT FUNDED, PRODUCED AND MANAGED HOUSING - housing that is both basic and robust, yet potentially improvable and available for purchase by INDIVIDUALS ONLY who opt to occupy those dwellings, initially as renters.
CHEAP RENTAL HOUSING IS THE KEY.
If you think the private sector has a secret yen to sell to the lowest and the poorest, stop dreaming. It ain't never gonna happen. Period.
GOVERNMENT DID IT WHEN GI's CAME HOME FROM WWII & ONLY GOVERNMENT CAN DO IT NOW!
One thing is for sure: if it doesn't, nothing will get better and it almost certainly will get progressively worse.
Beyond that, it's terra incognita of the kind you don't want to live through.
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