Please, people. Stop telling me how great I am for helping homeless and unhoused people. It does absolutely nothing to help them, and my ego is big enough already.

It’s not about me. It’s about us. What I need is not your praise. What I need is your action. To end homelessness, we (as many of us as possible) must persuade our elected officials to change the zoning codes, the laws, and the system itself.

It’s really about all the people that government, free enterprise and contemporary society have left to fend for ourselves.

If you want to change this system, you must change yourself because unless and until you do, you are the system.

You can start small. Just say “our homeless”  instead of “the homeless” when you’re talking or writing. Own it. Because until we own the problem, we are the problem.

If saying “our homeless” feels strange to you or makes you uncomfortable, that should tell you just how embedded you are in the system that tolerates abandoned people in the streets, in the camps and in hiding.

homeless-industrial complex

Sierra Roots volunteer Monte Cazazza (R.I.P.) was a selfless advocate for homeless people. More than anybody, he put his boots on the ground in the worst weather to help the homeless people of Nevada City.

Monte used to complain bitterly about the “homeless-industrial complex.” He believed nonprofits and government agencies were more interested in sustaining themselves by maintaining the homeless status quo.

The status quo is, at best, keeping the problem from getting worse.

Monte had a point. I attend a lot of Nevada County Board of Supervisors meetings. I see the nonprofits and government agencies come to the meetings to ask for grant money or permission to do things to “address” the homeless problem – instead of solving it.

Our current system of managing homelessness is tantamount to cleaning up flood damage while the dam is still leaking.

The Sierra Roots/No Place to Go Project has never asked the county for money. Instead, we’re  asking for changes in the codes, laws and systemic policies that cause the homeless/unhoused problem.

Not only are we asking for changes, we’re offering solutions. We are advocating for two systemic changes:

#1 The establishment of safe locations for people to camp and park or live in alternative communities. Our sister organization, Nevada County Home Path, is making progress on an alternative community of transitional shelters.

#2 Legalization of alternative dwelling units (AltDUs) on private property. This includes tiny homes on wheels AND RVs and trailers.

Home Free?

Everybody needs a safe place to be. It’s a human right. It’s hard enough to hold down a job, go to school and/or raise a family without being told to move along or being forced to relocate to anywhere but where you are already safe and welcome.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson that it is not cruel and unusual to punish people who have no options. Apparently, the Bill of Rights (Eighth Amendment) doesn’t apply to homeless people. It is now legal to arrest or fine people for being homeless even when there is no place for them to go.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to sweep homeless encampments prioritizes wiping out encampments over providing housing. He’s offering counties and cities money if they sweep the camps – and taking away money if they don’t.

Details are still sketchy, but Newsom’s on record of promoting “tiny home” communities. These communities that have already been built have the look and feel of homeless detention camps: Stay in this camp or go to jail.

This is fraud by euphemism. The regimented beds-in-boxes he’s calling tiny homes are not homes. Real homes have bathrooms and kitchens. His tiny hoaxes are little more than hardshell tents.

Imagine: It’s 2 a.m., it’s raining, you have diarrhea, and you have to get dressed to go outside to run to the communal toilet over by the fence, hoping it’s not occupied, hoping you make it in time.

How homey does that make you feel?

alternative ordinance

In an encouraging attempt to mitigate the housing crisis, Nevada County is proposing a tiny homes on wheels ordinance that would allow the legal placement of tiny homes on wheels (THOW) as accessory dwelling units on private properties.

This is a good half-step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. Functionally, RVs and trailers are also tiny homes on wheels.

To exclude RVs and trailers is wrong. People already are living in RVs and trailers on private property. Including them in the ordinance would go further in making more affordable housing available.

The arguments against including RVs and trailers seem to be that they don’t look “residential” and as one THOW advocate told me, “Tiny homes attract a better class of people.”

Well, excuuuse me! I’m sorry if RVs and trailers offend some people’s delicate, elitist and classist sensibilities. If trailers and RVs are the only housing available to us, that doesn’t make us low-class people if we choose to live in them. I know some low-class people who live in big, fine houses.

What we live in does not define the content of our character any more than the color of our skin.

It’s about us

The Sierra Roots/No Place to Go Project intends to challenge the proposed tiny homes on wheels ordinance by advocating the inclusion of RVs and trailers. During this homeless/housing crisis, housing people is more important than “residential” aesthetics and class snobbery.

If you agree, please contact me at tomdurkin@sierra-roots.org or 530-559-3199. We – not just me – must mount a concerted effort to propose expansion of the THOW ordinance to include RVs and trailers.

This isn’t about throwing money at the problem. This is about solving the problem.

It’s not about me. It’s about us. Government and the free market have failed us. We the people must band together to show our elected officials that we want housing for the people by the people.

Because it is in the shelter of each other that we live.

Tom Durkin is the creative director of the Sierra Roots/No Place to Go Project, which is funded by the Upstate California Creative Corps and the Nevada County Arts Council. He may be contacted at tomdurkin@sierra-roots.org or 530-559-3199.