Leaders do little as homeless crisis gets worse
March 17 − To the Editor:
While the Willand Warming Center is the focus of all attention about the homelessness crisis in Strafford County, most leaders continue to fiddle while the crisis deepens. They have done so for years and if they continue to follow their well-worn pattern over the past 3-5 years, the line, “Let’s cross the finish line and talk” will end the same way – doing nothing while more residents fall into experiencing homelessness.
Many of the leaders at the town, city and county levels will continue to lie (by omission and/or commission) about the situation and what the demographic make-up of those experiencing homelessness. They will also bemoan “affordability” of rent but refuse to do anything about it but say, “We need to do something” while doing nothing. This is not from a lack of information or ability but is mainly from a lack of backbone and a lack of leadership.
“But it costs money and we can’t raise property taxes” is something that I’ve heard from local officials for the past couple years while interacting with those officials on this subject. This statement is a canard - a false, deliberately misleading storyline. We’re already spending the money to chase around those experiencing homelessness, transporting those experiencing homelessness, hiring more police and/or social workers, paying large sums for emergency services, and the costs of cleaning up encampments. What we’re doing is spending far in excess of $2 million annually (just in the Tri-Cities) and only making the issue worse for those experiencing homelessness, the police and social workers who interact and work with these folks.
While the city governments perform dog and pony shows touting services, the reality is that there is no place for these folks to go. The shelters have been full since the Winter of 2021-2022. There are not enough housing units in the county to house the folks experiencing homelessness, even if the available housing was actually affordable. The main reason for the increase of homelessness in Strafford County has been the (roughly) doubling of rental prices in the past 3 years. Since the Winter of 2021-2022, the homeless population has almost doubled.
The largest (and scariest) demographics that have been newly introduced to homelessness? The elderly and/or disabled and working families with children. While the press and local politicians want to focus on only roughly 20%-25% of the population of those experiencing homelessness (those with substance and/ or mental health issues), they ignore the 75%-80% of those experiencing homelessness and the causes behind this explosion of residents becoming unstable.
What we need to require of our local, county and state officials is to stop purposefully fiddling while “Rome burns.” There has been no shortage of information available to them. There has been no shortage of ideas on building affordable housing brought to them. There has been no shortage of shelter options provided to them. There has been no shortage of offers of help from local agencies and agency staff to explore options and ideas. What they lack (in general and not all politicians and officials) is the needed backbone, vision and moral fortitude to actually start moving forward and lead.
Jim Ricker
Farmington
(Formerly the Homeless Services Manager of CAPSC)