On fining the homeless for sleeping outside

There’s something very romantic about self-destruction and sabotaging your life, and taking a hammer to it. – Gerard Way

I rarely read the Aurora columnist because she’s rarely worth reading. On rare occasion a topic does grab my attention, but having failed to learn from previous such forays, I’m always disappointed with the result.

Her recent piece on the Supreme Court granting municipalities the right to fine the homeless for sleeping in public places is no exception. It follows her typical template of making the minimum effort by calling an expert and liberally quoting them. She offers no real insight into the simplest issues because she doesn’t understand what the issues really are.

Though I generally ignore her because it’s so easy to do, this is a case where her latest high school effort requires a response.

Contrary to what she, her experts, and most homeless advocates suggest, it is NOT noble to be homeless. The homeless are not romantic figures, who but for a few bad breaks, would be living a vibrant middle-class life. With all due respect to those who make the effort, the solution to this chronic issue is NOT the kind of self-serving intervention that gives the “helper” an inflated sense of sainthood, but does nothing to actually help the people they purport to serve.

I realize that’s a rather blunt declaration, but it’s dead on. I also understand the 30-year-old Jeff Ward would be aghast at what his senior self just said. Such are the vagaries of living a reasonable life, and perhaps, enjoying some hard-earned wisdom.

We’ve covered this before. There are two groups of homeless. The first consists of individuals who’ve suffered a series of economic reversals generally due to poor choices. These folks tend to take advantage of whatever safety net is available to get back on their feet. For them, it’s a temporary setback.

But they’re the vast minority. The far greater category is those who suffer from a serious untreated mental illness and/or chronic alcoholism and drug abuse. These lost souls generally refuse help of any kind. They’re the ones you’ll find sleeping on sidewalks and in parks.

According to The National Coalition for the Homeless, 55 percent of the unsheltered are alcohol dependent and another 25 percent addicted to drugs. I’m sure there’s some overlap, but it’s a huge number regardless, and a dire indication of what municipalities are up against when attempting to serve these people.

Even if there were enough beds, shelters have rules regarding drug and alcohol use, so the chronically addicted avoid them.

Then there’s the specter of mental illness.

In a groundbreaking 2024 study, University of Calgary post-doc researcher Rebecca Barry and her team hit the streets to administer standard psychiatric tests to assess homeless participants’ mental health. They found that a whopping 67 percent of that population suffer from a serious mental health issue like bi-polar disorder, antisocial personality disorder, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, substance abuse and mood disorders.

Once again, for argument’s sake, let’s say we have enough shelter beds to accommodate all manner of indigent folks. How do you convince a mentally ill individual to accept that kind of help? The answer is you can’t. But despite that stark reality, there’s a perniciously sanctimonious doctrine whereby most homeless advocates believe that if regular folks are forced to bear witness to poor people sleeping in their parks, they’ll finally allocate the funds to address the scourge.

The first problem with that theory is even a city the size of Elgin lacks the resources to pull it off. The second is, even if they did somehow come up with the cash, how do you address a population where 80 to 90 percent refuse help? Here’s what I mean.

In an effort to better accommodate the “unsheltered,” Elgin placed porta potties in the Chicago Street parking garage. The homeless displayed their gratitude for that effort by defecating right next to them. So, while affordable housing, better mental health care, and more shelter beds are always a reasonable goal, like it is with most of our social ills, throwing money at them never works.

Look no further than the Chicago public school system. So, what are municipalities supposed to do in the face of a chronic homeless problem that defies resolution?

I’ve used this analogy before. If any of us came upon a drowning man, would we ask him if he needed help? And if we did ask him, and he refused, what then? Would we walk away? Of course not! We’d jump in and save him regardless of how much he resisted. Similarly, if one of our children were suffering from a mental illness, would we simply sit back and watch it take its toll? Would we let them dictate their own treatment? Of course not! We’d see that they received the best care possible despite their current delusions.

So how is it that, with two-thirds of the homeless suffering from mental illness and another third incapacitated by substance abuse, we’re content to simply sit back and watch it happen? I understand the Nurse Ratched fear of an authority committing people to a hospital or rehab facility against their will, but what so many well-intentioned “experts” and “advocates” ignore or miss is the Constitution doesn’t guarantee an inalienable right to self-destruction. And the people who embark upon that path have no right to take the rest of us down with them.

The older I get the more I fervently believe the only answer to the vast majority of our societal ills is some form of tough love, not the enabling dynamic that so many liberals, progressives, and homeless advocates espouse.

Do I like the thought of penalizing the homeless for sleeping in parks? Not really. The fines should be easily forgiven so we don’t add another brick to an already heavy burden. But the alternative is what Elgin’s Carleton Rogers Park has become. Families don’t visit that public facility anymore, do they? Until we acknowledge that we have to limit their options and insist that the chronically homeless get the treatment they need, even if it means being involuntarily committed, nothing will change.

There certainly hasn’t been any real progress in this regard since LBJ introduced his “War on Poverty” way back in 1964. So, let’s stop doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.