Month: May 2022

So much for the 9th Commandment

Exodus 20:15: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Christians of all denominations recognize the 9th Commandment as a broad prohibition against lying. 

Explanation: This commandment forbids bribery and forgery and even the least suggestion contrary to truth. It forbids libel, slander, and backbiting, and calls for the truth and nothing but the truth.

In Revelation 22:15, we are told that “whoever loves and practices a lie” will be outside the gates of the New Jerusalem, and in Revelation 21:27 “But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA CD5, Eastern Washington) often touts her Evangelical Christian bonafides, so I took her seriously when she posted the following statement concerning the “Supreme Court leak” on her website:

Nearly every Democrat in Congress is on the record supporting the Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act. It creates a national standard mandating all states offer abortions of unborn children for any reason and at any stage of pregnancy up until birth. The Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act is more radical than Roe. It must be stopped.

There is no such thing as a billed dubbed “The Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act.” McMorris Rodgers must assume that those sufficiently in her thrall to visit her website will trust her honesty as a Christian woman and not delve further. 

McMorris Rodgers has always felt free to display her religious belief that human life begins at conception, that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, a woman’s right to govern her own body should thereby be rescinded, and abortion ought to be outlawed. Why, now that Justice Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe has been leaked, does McMorris Rodgers ignore the 9th Commandment to bear false witness about the content of a House bill she has already voted against? 

Consider that, until now, voters could cast a ballot for McMorris Rodgers feeling assured that her rhetoric did not matter. After all, a woman’s right to determine her own bodily autonomy was protected by Roe, and Roe was considered settled legal precedent—the Supreme Court Justices she cheered on even said so. Suddenly, now that those same Justices look like they are about to be overturn Roe, McMorris Rodgers’ opinion is a clear threat to the human rights of more than half the voting population. Alarm bells are ringing. She must lie about the contents of the bill she voted against in order to demonize those who supported it.

The bill about which McMorris Rodgers concocted her offensive lie is H.R.3755 – Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill on September 21, 2021, on a vote of 218 – 211 (Roll no. 295) with only a single Democrat voting Nay, Henry Cuellar (D-TX) along every House Republican. The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 is now before the Senate, where there is a movement to force a vote that would put every U.S. Senator on record for or against. You can read the text of the bill here. If passed (it won’t be, thanks to the filibuster and Joe Manchin) it would write into federal law the rights of women to manage their own medical care and while balancing those rights against the rights of a healthy, viable fetus that is not threatening the life or health of its mother. 

The Roe v. Wade decision was a compromise between the the rights of women and the rights of a fetus. Here’s the way Doug Muder puts what is essentially both the majority opinion on women’s and fetal rights in one of a series of excellent posts on Monday, May 9th. It happens that it is just such an opinion that mirrored in Roe and in the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021:

Based on little more than intuition, I suspect a large majority of Americans could accept this general framework, which is not terribly different from the status quo:

• The moral value of life in the womb increases with time. A newly fertilized ovum evokes little empathy, a ready-to-be-born fetus a great deal.
• Before the abortion option is closed off, a woman deserves a fair chance to discover that she is pregnant, to consider her situation, and to discuss the matter with people she trusts.
• Given the growing significance of the fetus, the woman has a responsibility to make a timely decision.
• She should be allowed to reconsider if significant new information becomes available about her own health or her potential child’s quality of life.

My own preference would be to keep the government out of the decision entirely, but I could live with this kind of compromise.

Importantly, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 (as did Roe) leaves it to the states to legislate around limiting access to abortion after fetal viability—as long as such legislation does not intrude on the “good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, [that] continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” This Women’s Health Protection Act would negate hateful Republican legislation at a state level that disparages women’s (and physicians’) intelligence. Legislation now on the books in some states (awaiting the official Supreme Court decision) would, for example, force a woman to carry an anencephalic fetus (a fetus without a brain) to term—adding to the risk and to the heartbreak—or face a criminal penalty. How much denigration of intelligence will women put up with from (usually male) legislators’ conviction that their religious belief supersedes a woman’s right to her own body and her (and her doctors’ intelligence) in managing it?

McMorris Rodgers bears false witness, she lies, about the name of the bill (“On Demand”) and she lies about its content (“for any reason at any stage of pregnancy”) while the bill would simply federally codify Roe v. Wade, the judicial decision from 1973 that a large majority of U.S. voters want to see preserved—likely in the logical manner Doug Muder puts forward above. 

Why does a proudly “Christian” legislator resort to to the sin of lying? Like all Republicans, McMorris Rodgers was elected as she spouted anti-Roe v. Wade rhetoric. She proudly touted her minority religious belief (not shared even by all Christians) that a fertilized egg is a human being, while she felt safely assured that actually overturning Roe v. Wade was somewhere off in the future. Voters who believed that we enjoyed a right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent could, with fair comfort, vote for McMorris Rodgers while they could rest assured she lacked the opportunity as a legislator to act on her rhetoric. Now it looks like precedent-and-womens’-rights-be-damned by five right wing Supreme Court Justices, all of whom paid lip service to “settled precedent”, are likely to grant McMorris Rodgers the power to legislate based on her narrow religious belief. 

McMorris Rodgers (and Republicans in general) have a problem. Her (and their) absolutist view that all abortions should be outlawed because, to them, a fertilized egg is fully human is not popular. For voters the idea that a fertilized egg deserves rights that exceed the right of the woman in whose uterus the fertilized egg might implant makes no sense. Now voters need to reckon with the possibility McMorris Rodgers’ might, in the foreseeable future, be able to vote to federally outlaw all abortions based on her extremist belief. 

The sin of McMorris Rodgers’ bald-faced lying about the name and content of the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 must seem justified to her in order to paint the Democrats’ bill to codify protections for women’s rights as extremist—which it is not. She is desperate enough to break a fundamental Commandment in order to take the spotlight away from the impending judicial removal of the precedent that would make her previously empty legislative threat to the rights of women a worrisome reality. 

Do not let her get away with her lie. Don’t give her a chance to vote against the right of a woman to control her own body. Send her packing with this fall’s elections. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on May 10 entitled “Democrats are proving to be the real extremists on abortion” Henry Olsen echoes the lies told by McMorris Rodgers. The comment section is scathing (but this is the WaPo after all). Clearly, these lies and distortions will be the Republican unified voice on the matter. Of course, neither Olsen nor McMorris Rodgers provides a link to the actual bill. They prefer that their followers do not actually read it…

Whom Does He Represent?

There is an old adage that goes, “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to quit digging.” The burning of fossil fuels is one such hole. It is worth our while as citizens to notice those who quietly insist on continuing to dig. 

Al French, an architect and real estate developer supported by real estate interests and developers, has served as one of three Spokane County Commissioners since 2010. In his three four year terms in office he has become the most powerful elected official serving in Spokane County. Despite that position of power Mr. French seems to prefer working quietly out of the limelight as he pulls the levers of government in favor of the interests that support him. This year, as Spokane County moves to a five commissioner system Mr. French faces a new challenge: prior to this year the three county commissioners only needed to survive the top two primary within their district of residence to go on to a county-wide general election in November. This year all five commissioner seats will be filled through primary and general election contests decided by the voters solely within the candidates’ district of residence. Mr. French’s lives in new District 5—and he has a very credible challenger, Maggie Yates. 

Mr. French did not take conversion to the new structure of county government lightly: he quietly mounted a legal challenge to the new system, a challenge that went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. He and his fellow plaintiffs lost. Most county voters probably didn’t notice. 

Al French played a major role in the massive flap over the firing of the Spokane Regional Board of Health’s public health officer, Dr. Bob Lutz, but French was careful to avoid the limelight. At the conclusion of the meeting at which the Lutz firing was orchestrated for public consumption, Mr. French, obviously well-prepared, immediately put forward his favored compliant replacement for Dr. Lutz. No fanfare, no demonstrating against public health measures, just quiet pulling of levers behind the scenes to oust a physician health officer no doubt considered by some to be insufficiently business friendly.

Nor will you find any bald statements about climate denial by Mr. French, but it should be no surprise that Mr. French quietly appears among those pulling the levers in support of those builders, developers, and real estate people who, finding themselves in the climate change hole, want to keep digging.

A lot of government happens out of the limelight with little notice by the voting public. Such was the minor flap fluffed up in the media over natural gas hookups. Natural gas may be “cleaner” to burn than, for example, oil or coal, but it is still a greenhouse gas. Incremental movement to wean us off burning natural gas is an environmental good. A perfectly logical, low impact way to “quit digging” in the global warming hole is to stop outfitting new buildings with natural gas hookups and gas appliances in favor of electricity-based heat pumps and household appliances. 

Citizens concerned about impending climate change disaster—a majority of the populace—would agree (if they had a voice) to quit digging in this climate change hole by limiting new natural gas hookups. It makes perfect sense as a regulatory nudge in the right direction. Such a regulation would eliminate the cost of extending natural gas infrastructure—but it would require accommodation in the building industry to the idea and cost of outfitting new construction with heat pump technology. 

Here’s where the local City and County of Spokane story thickens—mostly out of the public eye. This eminently reasonable idea of limiting new installations of natural gas infrastructure was floated among the proposals made in an action plan draft released in 2021 by the City’s volunteer Sustainability Action Subcommittee. The Subcommittee had worked for two years to update the City of Spokane’s 2009 Sustainability Action Plan, something many of us were unaware even existed.

Alarm bells must have started ringing in the local builder/developer community. This Sustainability stuff is fine when it is just words to sooth environmentalists, but this might actually affect how we do things! This could cut into our profits! 

Instead of arguing this proposed regulation limiting new natural gas hookups on its merits in open forum (where they would likely lose) the builder/developer community mounted a disingenuous astroturf campaign to cut off municipal action. Municipal “Proposition 1” would have modified the City charter. Here’s the clever wording:

Shall the Spokane City Charter be amended to adopt the Spokane Cleaner Energy Protection Act – preventing the City from adopting any code, ordinance, or regulation that would prohibit the use of hydroelectric power or natural gas?

The effort was backed by a political action committee, “Spokane Citizens for Cleaner Energy” that was almost entirely bankrolled by the Spokane Good Government Alliance PAC. The major contributors to the Alliance include hotelier Walt Worthy, Washington Trust Bank, and building industry organizations. The whole thing was cloaked as a “citizen’s initiative” to foster the illusion that the Proposition was really about encouraging the use of “clean energy” by implying climate equivalence between hydroelectric power and natural gas. Gross, sickening doublespeak.

In addition, Proposition 1 propaganda ginned up fear and loathing among the voters by suggesting that the City Council might require residents to endure the cost and nuisance of changing out gas burning appliances and gas heating for electric heat pumps in existing structures; that Prop. 1 was necessary to prevent such intrusion. Pure hype.

Proposition 1 was struck down by Spokane Superior Court Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren before it reached the ballot . The Proposition was disallowed on technical grounds that a proposition cannot be used to modify municipal code. By that time, however, the builder/developer investment in Prop. 1 had already paid dividends: before it was passed by the Spokane City Council, the proposal to ban new natural gas hookups in the City going forward was stripped from the Sustainability Action Plan.

But the chess game played around the prohibition of new natural gas hookups still wasn’t over. Roughly six months later, on April 22 of 2022 an article appeared in the Spokesman entitled, “Washington council significantly restricts use of natural gas heating in new commercial buildings”. Specifically, the “council” in the article is the State Building Code Council (SBCC). The SBCC is composed of 15 members, including our very own Spokane County Commissioner, developer Al French, one of three who voted against the Code change: 

On an 11-3 vote Friday, the council approved the commercial energy code, which goes into effect on July 1, 2023. The vote followed a nearly seven-hour meeting marked with delays caused by a few members of the public who were attempting to disrupt the virtual meeting by screaming, shouting expletives, using a racist slur and interrupting speakers. The meeting also was extended as a result of several procedural delays and lengthy debates on how the revisions would impact construction.

Board member and Spokane County Commissioner Al French opposed the heat pump provisions and made a number of motions to defer the code’s adoption to a future meeting, citing different procedural issues. In voting against the code, French said it should ultimately be up to the Legislature to set the code.

One can only imagine who was behind “a few members of the public who were attempting to disrupt the virtual meeting by screaming, shouting expletives, using a racist slur and interrupting speakers.” 

Al French, like Cathy McMorris Rodgers, would never say, straight up, that they believe that global warming is a hoax. That would be far too honest and direct. It might cost them votes from their base. Instead, they work behind the scenes, dragging their feet, opposing common sense efforts to curtail carbon emissions on committees, councils, and in slimy, deceptive efforts like Proposition 1. The business/building community that support French and McMorris Rodgers attack anything that might, even at a stretch, affect business profits—climate be damned.

These multistep processes are the way government works. The major work of addressing climate change is accomplished in many small battles, most of them only at the periphery of the voters’ awareness, like the recent vote of the State Building Code Council. It’s time for us voters to pay more attention and vote these disingenuous foot draggers out of office. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

If you think, as a resident of Washington State, that you’re protected even if Roe is overturned you may be sadly mistaken

Overturning Roe might well be the beginning of a massive rollback of personal rights—if we let it. If the recently leaked draft of a majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade becomes the final opinion of the court, not only women’s rights are at stake but also much of modern Americans’ understanding of our personal constitutional protections. 

In Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, we citizens were found to possess a constitutionally recognized “right to privacy”. In the case of Griswold that right to privacy extended to the freedom of married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction. Prior to Griswold some states felt free to outlaw the purchase and use of contraceptive materials—a prohibition many young (and not so young) people today can barely imagine in our United States. 

It is this same “right to privacy”, written into the majority opinion in Griswoldby Justice William O. Douglas, that guarantees a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability outside the womb (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

The five Supreme Court Justices who seem bent on overturning the protections for women under Roe v. Wade are implicitly rejecting William O. Douglas’ concept of the right to privacy upon which Roe rests. All five are “originalists” of one flavor of another. If they see fit to reject Roe and the right to privacy on which it is based, nothing else that rests on the right to privacy, nor, indeed, a lot of precedent set since the New Deal can be considered safe. 

I remember being taught in high school that the U.S. Constitution, along with its amendments, including the Bill of Rights, protected individual rights against the tyranny of the majority. Among those rights, I was taught, was the right to privacy, a right not spelled out in so many words, but a right that arose both from common law and, by extension, from rights explicitly granted in the Constitution and amendments, particularly the Due Process Clause of the 14th. I was also taught in high school that precedents, once established by the Supreme Court, almost always become settled law. 

Overturning Roe v. Wade signals that the freedoms that I was taught in high school were guaranteed by the Constitution and by precedents established by the Supreme Court are imaginary; that states (and/or the federal government itself) may pass laws meant to control the most personal aspects of our lives, including, but not limited to, the purchase and use of birth control, our private sex lives (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003), and our rights to marry (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015). 

Make no mistake: Alito’s draft is a reactionary assault not only on women but on all of us who thought the basic conduct of our private lives was constitutionally protected. 

In its immediate consequences, Alito’s draft, if it remains the majority opinion, would throw law-making around abortion to the discretion of the states, that is, each state could enact whatever laws it wished to restrict a woman’s right to control her own body. For residents of Washington State Governor Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson offer a deceptive complacency: Washington women’s right to an abortion, they point out, was assured by voter initiative in 1970, three years before Roe was decided. A state initiative, however, is no match for a federal prohibition imposed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President. 

We are at watershed moment in the history of our country. Five Supreme Court Justices who were put in office by Presidents George W Bush and Donald Trump, both presidents who gained office based on a minority of the popular vote, now seem poised (along with Justice Thomas) to toss out the right to privacy that underpins the understanding of personal freedoms that most Americans alive today grew up believing were guaranteed. They want to take us backward. They are not conservative, they are reactionary. They have only a minority mandate yet they are willing to tear down the protections the rest of us thought we possessed.

Overturning Roe v. Wade by taking over the federal judiciary has been Republican orthodoxy since Republican operatives, hoping to advanced their business interests, sold themselves to Evangelical Christians in the mid-1970s. Do not for a minute think they will stop after overturning Roe v. Wade. The next step, already contemplated, is to put enough Republicans in Congress and a Republican President in office who will vote for a federal prohibition of abortion.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers would vote to federally outlaw abortion and thereby override Washington’s 1970 voter initiative. Any of McMorris Rodgers’ concerns about “states’ rights” would evaporate in an instant. Anyone who votes for a Republican and still expects to keep a right to privacy in the conduct of their own life is making a big mistake. Republican voters who consider themselves “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” can no longer pretend to have it both ways. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry 

P.S. I thought this was pretty rich. CNN reports:

GOP Sen. Susan Collins [a Republican who always says she supports abortion rights] said on Tuesday that a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade published by Politico was “completely inconsistent” with what Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh “said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”

What fantasy world does she live in? All the clips from hearings with these Supreme Court nominees show them saying that Roe is established precedent, an obvious statement. Not one of them said that being established precedent would keep them from overturning it… Originalists disdain the right to privacy—and no one but an originalist would be put forward by the Federalist Society, a group devoted, for business reasons, to setting us back to the time before the New Deal.

A Recommendation

The work of video documentarian, Ken Burns, is a national treasure. His most recent contribution, Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns, comes in two episodes, each about two hours long. Both episodes are currently available to stream on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) with a donation to your local PBS affiliate (for Spokane it is KSPS). No matter how much you know about the life of Benjamin Franklin, the century in which he lived, and the Revolutionary period of U.S./European history you are guaranteed to find something new and insightful in this documentary, including insights relevant to current events. Here is the link:

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/benjamin-franklin/

Each viewer will be struck by different insights from the film based on the viewer’s background. Here are just a few of mine:

1. Benjamin Franklin’s life (1706-1790) spanned most of the 18th century, overlapping with the rigid Boston Puritan Clergyman Cotton Mather (1663-1728) and extending to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
2. Franklin was the only man from the British Colonies in American who was widely known and revered in France, and much of Europe, for his scientific achievements.
3. Franklin’s proof that lightning was an electrical phenomenon and therefore not simply the judgement of God relieved 18th century Christians of the need to explain why God’s wrath should be so frequently visited on church steeples and church bellringers. 
4. Franklin was by far the most worldly of our “Founding Fathers” after years spent in London and in Paris and, before that, years spent traveling the colonies as deputy postmaster-general.
5. At age 81 Franklin was by far the oldest of the prominent influencers the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. At the time Jefferson was 34, Hamilton was either 30 or 32, James Madison 36, and John Adams was 52. 
6. The Revolutionary War might in many ways be considered the First Civil War. It pitted neighbors against neighbors, brothers against brothers, and, in Franklin’s case, fathers against sons. 

Watch Ken Burns’ Benjamin Franklin. You’ll not regret the experience.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

She shows her colors

Mayor Woodward needs to listen to voices beyond the business community that got her elected. We all share a goal of making downtown Spokane a happy, vibrant place to visit. Apparently, we differ about how that should be achieved. 

In an article dated April 27 in the Spokesman entitled “Mayor still supports 250-bed shelter” Mayor Nadine Woodward revealed what she thinks of the growing number of Spokanites who find themselves unable to secure a place to live:

I think we need to get to the point where we’re working to make homelessness less comfortable and get people connected to services.

Mayor Woodward offers us some clarity on her concept of human nature: People who find themselves without shelter in Spokane, a place with an extremely tight housing market characterized by skyrocketing rents and home prices just need to be made a little more uncomfortable in order to motivate them to “get connected with services”. The implication is clear: The fact of a person being homeless means they are lazy, deficient, lacking in the qualities that should motivate them to somehow acquire an address, a cell phone, proper clothing, transportation, medical care, and a job, all the things necessary to seek still possibly unaffordable and unavailable housing, never minding any of the details of how they wound up homeless. In that laziness and deficiency, even less comfort, according the Ms. Woodward is a desirable motivator.

Mayor Woodward’s goal is single-minded: provide enough nominally available “low barrier” beds in one simple facility so that, in accordance with Martin v. Boise, it becomes legally defensible to enforce the sit/lie ordinance and thereby clear downtown. Were it not for Martin v. Boise one has the feeling that Mayor Woodward would have been thoroughly content with simply making the unsheltered “less comfortable” by simply directing the police to chase them from camp after camp. 

Evidently, whatever visits to homeless shelters Ms. Woodward made before her 2019 election, visits featured in the media to demonstrate her compassion, those visits must have left her with the impression these shelters were a little too comfortable to provide proper motivation. Never having significant contact with the homeless who had no access to a bed in a shelter; never having taken part in a point-in-time (PIT) count; and refusing to hear the voices of those who actually worked with the homeless population for years, Ms. Woodward assumes that anyone who has fallen on hard times needs the same one-size-fits-all approach—and a bit less comfort—in order to motivate them to find a way out of their predicament.

George Critchlow, like any good citizen should, quickly took up Mayor Woodward’s solution in a proposed letter to the editor:

Mayor Woodward thinks we should make the homeless “less comfortable” apparently on the assumption that their discomfort will motivate them to improve their circumstances. I ran across a man sleeping on a downtown sidewalk this morning. He had no blankets or sleeping bag. His only “shelter” was a couple of pieces of cardboard. My immediate thought was how we might motivate him by making him less comfortable. The answer, of course, was to take away his cardboard so that he might have an incentive to pursue a better life. I believe we citizens should personally participate in advancing the Mayor’s compassionate agenda, but I regret to say I did nothing. Now I am feeling a bit guilty. I will endeavor to be a better person in the future. And I hope other concerned citizens will actively work to help the homeless by making them more uncomfortable. There are a range of options – we can take away their blankets, their tents, maybe even their food and meds. The task will be easier come winter. Mother nature will do the trick so long as we remain committed to improving the lives of the homeless by making sure there is no emergency shelter.

Mayor Woodward would like nothing more than to make the homeless issue disappear. She squeaked into office backed by real estate, developer, and business money that endeavored to link crime and homelessness—and offered simplistic “solutions”. Prominent among these solutions were those proposed by Larry Stone in his video entitled “Curing Spokane”: a newer, bigger jail; more police on the streets; and, bizarrely, more downtown parking and a downtown bus station put underground. Is it any wonder that it is Mr. Stone’s building out on Trent Avenue that Mayor Woodward now proposes to lease as a primary warehouse for the homeless, a place where they presumably can be made less comfortable in order to better motivate them to connect to services that have, up to the present time, proven to be inadequate?

The Mayor’s revealed strategy is to provide the number of one-size-fits-all beds necessary to declare the problem of Martin v. Boise solved—so she can move on. Ms. Woodward’s “We need to get to the point where we’re working to make homelessness less comfortable” is right up there with “Let them eat cake” (Marie Antoinette) and “the 47%” who “believe they are victims” and “are dependent on government”. One can only hope Woodward’s quote will be as memorable as presidential candidate Romney’s—and yield the same electoral result come November, 2023.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Maurice Smith, local video documentarian, a man with vastly more experience with those who find themselves homeless in Spokane than Mayor Woodward will ever have, writes:

1. “The 2020 PIT [Point in Time] count showed 541 “Unsheltered” individuals experiencing homelessness outside the shelter system. Although the 2022 PIT results have not been officially released, preliminary numbers that are circulating suggest that the 2022 “Unsheltered” count is 800(+), for a NET INCREASE of 259 (or 48%). In other words, the Mayor’s proposed shelter will only accommodate the increased numbers from 2020 to 2022, without creating a net increase in shelter bed availability.
2. “I’m encouraged by the public announcement by Catholic Charities of their plan for a NEW shelter to replace HOC [House of Charity on Pacific Ave downtown]. Many of us in the service community have been aware of this plan for a couple of months. I find it interesting that Catholic Charities was able to secure 3 possible locations for their new shelter while the City couldn’t find one location until Larry Stone rode to their rescue. The 300 bed capacity of the new shelter would represent a net increase of 165 new beds after accounting for a 135 bed swap between the new shelter and the existing HOC. By my math (800 minus 250 minus 165 equals 385) that would leave us 385 beds short of accommodating the “Unsheltered” population (with nearly all adult shelter beds currently running full). That’s roughly the population of Camp Hope (last count was 401).
3. “The administration (and the downtown business community) should be enthusiastically supporting Camp Hope [the homeless encampment on Department of Transportation land near 2nd and Thor] as its existence means that 400 homeless individuals are there and are NOT under bridges and in alleys and doorways downtown. Close Camp Hope (as the Administration has been trying to do with DOT since its inception) and those people are going to head downtown.
4. “Now that the Mayor is getting the shelter she has invested most of her political capital in [the proposed 250 bed shelter on Trent [in an industrial area near Trent and Mission], her true attitude and agenda is being more brazenly revealed, “I think we need to be able to offer the kinds of resources that people need to move them out of homelessness rather than make them comfortable in their homelessness.” In case you’ve missed the point, the purpose of law enforcement sweeps of the homeless from downtown and from camps has been (and continues to be) to make them so uncomfortable that they will give up and go to a shelter (apparently, with or without available beds). In the Mayor’s 17-page Homeless Plan DRAFT (which I read and critiqued), this is called “Compassionate Accountability.”  How it is somehow compassionate to make people experiencing homelessness miserable is a twisting of the English language that is beyond reasonable comprehension. 

Yours for the Shalom of Our Community,

Maurice Smith

Executive Producer”