This past Friday, my roommate and I decided to enjoy the fall weather and go walking around the Vista. We observed a man wearing all camouflage and lugging a huge backpack. He was leaving McDonald’s with a little vanilla ice cream cone. I didn’t know fur sure, but my mind jumped to the conclusion that he could possibly be homeless
Homelessness is a visible issue in Columbia, and I believe it is something that makes college students uncomfortable. We sometimes think of ourselves as confined to our campus and our secure college housing, and when we do venture out to 5 Points or even the Vista, we act as though we are shocked and horrified by the poverty and homelessness confronting us there.
Whether or not we think of ourselves as such, we are in fact residents of the city of Columbia, and our city’s problem of homelessness made headlines this past summer when the city announced its plan to remove those living on the streets of Columbia. That is really all the news seemed to say about the plan, and if you use your brain you can gather that “removing” a whole population is not plausible without mentioning how you will approach them, where they will go, and how you will ensure your plan’s success.
In early September, Columbia City Council voted to take back the former decision they had made in regards to the city’s homeless. The original plan discussed included mentions of a shelter outside of the city and a plan to give all homeless seen loitering the choice of jail or the shelter. Supposedly a shuttle bus would be provided to take the homeless to the shelter, but not much is discussed about the options that await them there. Forcing them into jail time for some menial crime like loitering is exploitative and unproductive.
What it comes down to is that the Council had put into place a whole plan for dealing with the homeless, quickly realized that elements of it were flawed, and now there seems to be no formal strategy of how they will address the problem. All that seems to be present in articles concerning this issue now is speculation. It all makes the entire city of Columbia look like it doesn’t know what it’s doing.
Thankfully in the wake of the recant on this plan, a councilman reportedly said the city would not forcibly confine anyone. Even so, providing a bus service to a makeshift shelter is nothing more than treating these people like cattle. Local news station WLTX Columbia has a video on their website showing the site of the future shelter, which looks to me like two big garages. A homeless shelter is meant to provide a temporary home. Somewhere comforting where resources are right at these people’s fingertips.
Obviously homelessness in Columbia is an issue. However, the local government can’t just sit around and speculate on what they think might be best and call it a decision. They need experts in mental health, drug rehabilitation, and social services to help them formulate the best strategy. And they can’t expect a plan to work if they are doing it halfway. Talking about removing the homeless people is not the same as talking about removing homelessness. Removing homelessness would mean making it so that no resident of Columbia is without a home, not simply removing individuals from sight by forcing them out of highly populated areas and failing to plan for what will happen next.
The local government took back their former plan, and I simply wonder now where is the new one?