Appoint a Czar!
Appoint a Czar!
Oregon's newspaper of record published yet another milquetoast piece in the opinion section from someone connected to some agency, educational institution, church, publication, elected office, advocacy group or organization tasked with addressing the homeless issue that called for their strategy to be implemented to ameliorate or solve the crisis. It's always much better than the other countless strategies promulgated here, there and everywhere.
Whatever that particular strategy is. Usually it's barely mentioned with any detail and never with a time line for implementation. All these pieces are written in the professional polished language of bureaucracies, both public and private ones, and I often finish reading them and end up asking: so who is in charge? what are they doing? what is it costing? and when the hell do they get started?
It has become increasingly clear that in the greater Portland metropolitan area that there are dozens of government agencies, non profit organizations and private parties who want to get cracking and get shit moving along. The money is there. Oregonians have taxed themselves to pay for programs. The land is there. The public supports action. The crisis grows worse by the week. Any opposition, even to sweeps with plenty of notice, will get steamrolled in the court of public opinion.
As I write this from my cozy arm chair with a gin drink at my side with no attachment to any particular strategy, it is also increasingly obvious that there too many cooks in the kitchen whipping up the solution or solutions.
The idea of local control and local initiative is not going to succeed on a wider scale. Some counties in Oregon are doing absolutely nothing to address anything related to the crisis except incarcerating more people, which makes the situation worse in the long run.
A summit in Oregon should have been convened a year ago, or two, and the Governor should have appointed a czar of some kind, and yes, call the position a czar, and give that person the power to make timely and ultimate decisions to address the crisis instead of leaving it up to all these competing agencies, organizations and private parties.
Is this calling for some kind of anti-democratic action? Yes and no. There would be input, debate and then decisions get made and then people on the ground get to work with a sense of urgency, palpable urgency to get people off the streets, into housing of some kind, clean up the garbage, and take a harder and longer look at the root causes of this New American Diaspora and address those as well.
Yes, it is easy saying all this from the chair and with my gin, but everything is so discordant on addressing the crisis, except one thing: there is recognition a crisis exists and both political parties agree action is required. You can't say that about most problems in America.