Federal, state, and local governments have failed our most vulnerable and marginalized groups time and time again. Fresno’s unhoused population faces discrimination, harassment, and intense weather on a day-to-day basis. Now, a new city ordinance that is malicious and inhumane makes it illegal to be homeless.
As an editing staff, The Rampage agrees that homelessness is an issue. We believe that taking action is essential to getting people basic needs like housing, food, hygiene access to clean water and ending homelessness statewide and nationally.
The ordinance states that a violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor and can carry a one year jail sentence and/or fines up to $1,000. How is someone who is unhoused supposed to start new and apply for housing or jobs when they are either in court, jail or paying off a fine with money they do not have?
Furthermore, how does this actually help the people experiencing homelessness? Are people sleeping in dirt lots on the side of roads in over 100 degree heat or heavy rain too good for them? Is it so good that the city has to charge them $1,000 or a year in jail?
This law isn’t for businesses or for the betterment of a city, it’s for the people that are looked at as less than, out of sight and out of mind. To ignore the ignored.
Tolerance is not acceptance and lacks empathy.
Fundamentally, to tolerate is to put up with groups until they can be taken away and forgotten by any means necessary.
This is not how to fix homelessness. Not here, not anywhere.
It is barbaric to see people as criminals when they are sleeping on benches, starving on the ground or in need of help.
The solution is not deterrence and punishment. It is selfless service.
Understanding that these are humans, not pieces of trash discarded on the side of the road.
Treating humans like humans shouldn’t be politicized or looked down upon.
The ‘golden rule’ everyone learns at some point in their lives is “treat others the way you want to be treated.” We are emotional beings to our core. We care when something happens to someone, at least to a degree.
From first-hand reporting, some of the Rampage staff has talked to the unhoused community of Fresno and what we saw weren’t dangerous criminals or lazy drug addicts.
Instead of police intervention into encampments we should expand housing and create programs that allow people to get back on their feet: create job opportunities specifically for the unhoused, teach financial skills in order to succeed and reduce barriers and stigma so that people can ask for help without feeling like a burden.
A society should be judged on how it treats the least of us and, in that regard, Fresno and its government and law enforcement fails to show empathy and understanding to a population that’s asking for help.
