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Sue Lani Madsen: Showing true compassion for the homeless must include a candid assessment

Sue Lani Madsen, an architect and rancher, will write opinion for the Spokesman-Review on an occasional basis. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)

A blue sedan turned into the side street as our patrol car pulled up to the stop sign, the driver frantically waving for attention. It had so far been an uneventful ride-along with Cpl. Erin Blessing of the Spokane Police Department on an ordinary afternoon last summer.

We had responded to a Crime Check complaint of someone with their dog sleeping in a silver car for several days. No car in the quiet residential neighborhood had matched the description.

The elderly woman in the sedan passenger seat lived down the block. The driver was her concerned younger brother visiting from out of town. They were returning from lunch, where she had confessed she was troubled by two squatters in her backyard. We followed to check it out.

Two men came around the corner of the small house as we talked with the woman’s son. Her backyard had been turned into a homeless encampment of tarps, tents and trash.

We flushed out a woman and a dog sleeping in a red car, a woman crashed out on a mattress in the laundry room who had recently been released from jail and a woman in the back bedroom with an outstanding warrant. That last one got a ride back to jail, although the other transporting officer suspected she wouldn’t stay long.

The elderly homeowner had attempted to regain control of her property with a hand-printed Do Not Enter sign on the front door. Her compassionate offer of a cup of coffee had ended in a very real threat to her own health, safety and property. Cpl. Blessing shooed away the trespassers, lectured the son on cleaning up the mess with little hope her words were sinking in and made notes to contact the neighborhood resource officer for follow-up.

It foreshadows the future for Spokane unless the conversation shifts away from polarization and jeering at public meetings.

It’s a tough conversation to enter, according to Mark Richard, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership. The champions of compassion are quick to stereotype anyone who objects to problems caused by the hardcore portion of the chronically homeless as mean, selfish and worse.

At the KPBX forum on homelessness held Wednesday at City Hall, Richard was disappointed in Councilwoman Kate Burke’s visible eye-rolling from the podium as she scoffed at the notion that his members are “already at the table and willing to bring greater resources to the table.”

There’s a silent majority who have thanked him for saying what they don’t feel safe enough to say in public. “We have huge hearts, we want to help, but there is a growing level of frustration turning into anger because the situation is spinning out of control,” said Richard.

Sustainable solutions require facing root causes. Those temporarily without housing due to financial setbacks or fleeing domestic violence are different populations than the chronically homeless.

Increasing the stock of affordable housing requires facing the unintended consequences of policies that drive up rents and make it harder for landlords to take a chance on a tenant with an imperfect rental and credit history.

The blue lights in the Downtown Spokane Public Library are not aimed at them. It’s the pitiful 85 percent showing up nightly at the House of Charity drunk, drugged or addicted. They deserve and receive compassion, not vilification.

Then there are the ones who are dangerous, aggressive or irrational not because they are homeless but because they are high.

“People walking into your house or business to sit on your furniture, demand coffee, steal a few things – is objecting to that unreasonable?” asked Richard. “In order for the community to win and the downtown to win, recovery from addiction has to be part of the solution.”

Cities with effective strategies, like Oklahoma City and Providence, Rhode Island, have comprehensive approaches facing the entwined problems of addiction and mental health. It will take respectful and candid conversation to meet or beat their success.

It’s not compassionate to enable those with disabling mental health conditions or addiction to live in squalor. They deserve better than to be left alone. And allowing uncivil behavior, sidewalk camping and drug use to go unchecked is not compassionate towards the larger community. They deserve better too.

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