With respect to Jennifer Holder's letter about Tent City in the May 2005 Kirkland Courier.
Let us assume for the moment that the Nixon/O'Brien bill is not a thinly veiled attempt to make it economically impossible for churches to host a homeless encampment, and that those behind the bill genuinely have the best interest of the homeless at heart. Even with that assumption, the claims behind the bill simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
The regulations that the bill attempts to co-opt are labor laws. Labor laws exist to govern the relationship between an employer and an employee, since historically employers have been known to take unfair advantage of employees. This simply does not apply to homeless encampments.
Churches (or other entities, for that matter) gain no benefit from hosting a homeless encampment, and could not possibly be thought of in any way to be taking unfair advantage of the homeless. Their motivations are altruistic, and the homeless need no "protection" from the churches.
In fact, one hallmark of the Eastside encampment known as Tent City 4 is that churches provide a site without any mandatory participation from the homeless with respect to evangalism or work around the church. Of course, Tent City 4 residents are welcome to attend services, or to otherwise help out, but this can hardly be thought of as the church taking advantage of them.
The other element to the proposed legislation that the proponents appear to be overlooking is that few, if any, churches could afford to provide the kind of housing required by the labor laws being co-opted. For an employer, the cost of housing the employees is simply a basic overhead cost, much the same as a salary. In fact, for any employer, the cost of housing the employee is simply a basic overhead cost, even when the employer doesn't provide that housing directly; the employee simply requires a higher salary in that case. In all cases, the employer has a business model in which these costs are recovered, through sales of product, services, etc.
In contrast, a church has no way to recoup the costs related to providing the kind of housing the labor law requires. The costs associated with the homeless encampments as they stand now are already significant, and few churches are operating at anything approaching a surplus even without those costs. To require the same kind of housing afforded migrant workers would result in no church (or other entity) hosting a homeless encampment.
As a result, the homeless who now at least have a community, a safe place to reside while they get their lives back on track, would simply wind up back where the homeless have traditionally been forced to go: on the streets, under overpasses, trespassing in parks, etc. It boggles the mind that anyone would think that this is somehow an improvement.
Holder writes "roving tent cities merely sloughs off the underlying issue at hand," but she fails to recognize that the legislation to which she refers does nothing to the contrary. It doesn't fund the living standards; it just dramatically raises the bar for anyone trying to provide any assistance at all.
I wholeheartedly agree that everyone, not just migrant workers, deserves safe, sanitary housing meeting the most basic requirements. I also agree that while Tent City 4 and similar encampments are a step up from the current alternative, homeless encampments in general don't meet what I consider to be a reasonable minimum standard of living.
But the burden of providing that minimum standard of living should not be put solely on those organizations who attempt to simply provide what they can. If we are to write laws requiring minimum standards of living for the homeless, theburden should be on all of us.
Giving Nixon and O'Brien the benefit of the doubt, with the presumption that they genuinely have the best interests of the homeless at heart, I challenge them to write legislation that makes sense. I challenge them to write legislation that fully funds adequate housing, food, medical care and any necessary counseling and training required to allow a homeless person to become self-sufficient. Don't waste time on some jury-rigged legislation that won't even have the effect that's supposedly intended.
Peter Duniho lives in Kirkland.[[In-content Ad]]
