California is good at a few things involving technology and conservation. Unfortunately the state’s major cities have had decades to fix the urban homeless population problem and hasn’t. The reason for that may be the nature of democracy itself, for it tends to elect bad politicians that haven’t good ideas about how to improve civic matters, too often. For the homeless problem the solution is simple; build suburban camp and ride lots for the homeless to commute downtown.
Like park and ride lots that work, camp and ride lots would bring a suburban population of commuters to the urban core and back. Dedicated buses would operate all day to bring the urban homeless to a safe camping area with real policemen security the site, real surveillance cameras and strong, semi-private cam sites. Residents could stay for a year, free. They would have a post office with free postal box and clean, secure toilet facilities-with individual toilets to avoid problems associated with semi-communal facilities used by unsupervised homeless people.
Each homeless village for two-thousand souls would have a medical clinic and detox facility. The savings to taxpayers would be great in not needing to arrest people downtown or provide emergency medical transport to emergency rooms.
The downtown terminus would be like a job and counseling center for the homeless who could use the location for phone calls, work searches, food and so forth.
With the exclusivity of urban centers where the jobs are located many of the poor are precluded from looking for a job without the risk of living on the streets. If the poor individual looking for work has no drug problem it is possible they will learn to get one in the urban jungle of despair. Living on the street is an unhealthy environments with urban traffic noise, pollution, crime and complete lack of physical security, cleanliness etc. It would be useful for anyone in such a situation- and many there are for not everyone has the intelligence and wit to innovate some sort of productive employment and living situation with all of the up-front costs and low wages- to have the knowledge that they can have a functional and secure base from which to search for a way to improve their life should they wish to try.
It would be necessary for security purposes to register every camp resident. The state should make sure they all are supported with real i.d. cards that are requisite for getting a job. It would be necessary to have language translators for foreign residents, and illegal aliens and their culture should be in a separate facility than legal residents and citizens in order not to harm the Americans with a host of foreign problems that could adversely impact them. Sacramento and L.A. have ample space to construct secure camp and ride facilities if they had the good sense to do so.
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 