citationsneededpodcast

Episode 173: How to Sell Police Crackdowns on Homeless People to Liberals

Added 2022-12-21 14:40:39 +0000 UTC

"The city has had 125 daily interactions," New York Mayor Eric Adams tells the Daily News. "We’re working to solve the homelessness crisis, with innovative mental health interventions," San Francisco Mayor London Breed tells reporters. The city needs to "clean up homeless encampments," countless city officials tell us. Everywhere we turn, our elected –– largely Democratic –– governors and mayors are talking about quote "solving the homelessness crisis" without specifying what, exactly, these plans entail.

Saying elected officials are going to harass and displace the homeless population until they’re incarcerated or leave our city and wealthy neighborhood sounds unseemly and inhumane. But this –– minus the occasional and insufficient attempts to offer public housing –– is more or less the strategy of most big cities: Send in police to "sweep up" encampments, enforce low-level drug offenses and ticket the unhoused for loitering and camping, But saying this is the plan sounds mean, so, over the past couple of years, as America’s housing crisis has grown more acute and the end of COVID-era tenant protections unceremoniously sunset, a cottage industry of pleasant sounding euphemisms have emerged to sell police-led homeless crackdowns to squeamish liberals.

The right-wing, historically, is fairly upfront with its bootstrap, austerity logic. And they, for the most part, don't run major cities where the homelessness crisis manifests. Liberals and progressives –– short on resources and political incentive to actually address the underlying issues –– need to sell the same played out, discredited carceral attempts at removing Visible Poverty but, unlike Republicans, can't do so in explicit terms. So, a PR regime emerges to paper over these glaring contradictions, leading to heretofore unseen levels of bullshittery.

On this episode, we going to examine four popular euphemisms employed by "blue" city leaders to sell the same old carceral playbook to their wary, self-identifying progressive constituents, how these programs do little to address the central issues of a lack of affordable and free housing, and how city leaders –– with wildly insufficient federal support for housing, a foaming anti-homeless media and suffering from institutional political cowardice –– are left with little more than meaningless "emergency declarations," Tough Guy, Take Charge press conferences, and nice-sounding rehashes of the same failed, cruel policies of austerity and precarity.

Our guest is The Wren Collective's Henna Khan.

Guest

Henna Khan is a criminal defense attorney, litigator and now an advisor at The Wren Collective. She previously served as a staff attorney for the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.

Show Notes

“Interactions,” “Mental Health Intervention,” “Cleaning Up Encampments”: The Squishy Euphemisms Media Use to Make Liberals Feel Good About Criminalizing Homelessness

Adam Johnson | March 4, 2022 | The Column

Mayor Eric Adams Delivers Address on Mental Health Crisis in New York City and Holds Q-and-A

Eric Adams | November 29, 2022 | The City of New York

Media’s Crime Hype and Scapegoating Led to Crackdown on Unhoused People

Julie Hollar | December 7, 2022 | FAIR

Adams’ Forced Hospitalization Plan Will Have Lifelong Consequences

Jerry Iannelli | December 7, 2022 | The Appeal

Statement from the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU on NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ Recent Mental Health Directive

Statement | December 9, 2022 | CIR/SEIU

NYC Mayor Eric Adams's terrible plan to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness

Bob Hennelly | December 13, 2022 | Salon

Patients familiar with NYC mental health system skeptical of new Adams policy

Bahar Ostadan | December 14, 2022 | Gothamist

Forced Treatment for Mental Illness Is No Treatment at All

Arvind Sooknanan | December 16, 2022 | Slate

‘A Burden on the County’: Madness, Institutions of Confinement and the Irish Patient in Victorian Lancashire

Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland | May 2015 | Social History of Medicine

The Nineteenth Century British Workhouse: Mission Not Accomplished

Brenda Derin | December 2019 | Dominican University of California

The Asylum, the Workhouse, and the Voice of the Insane Poor in 19th-Century England

Peter Bartlett | February 1998 | International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Solving Poverty by Reforming Moral Character: How the New Poor Law Failed 19th Century British Society

Fiona D. Xu | 2020 | Inquiries Journal: Special Editions

Oliver Twist and the workhouse

Ruth Richardson | May 15, 2014 | British Library

***

References

Environmental Nonprofit Calls For Cleanup Of Homeless Along American River Parkway As Fire Season Approaches

April 22, 2022 | CBS Sacramento

California bill would ban homeless encampments along American River Parkway

Chris Nichols | April 12, 2022 | CAP Radio / NPR

Clean up underway in homeless camp near Utah State Capitol

Spencer Joseph | April 27, 2022 | FOX13

Majority of D.C. residents support clearing of homeless encampments, Post poll finds

Kyle Swenson, Emily Guskin and Scoot Clement | February 24, 2022 | The Washington Post

Adams Plan to Remove Homeless People From the Subway ‘Right Away’ Has Hit a Delay

Greg B. Smith | February 27, 2022 | The City

New York wants to stop people from living in the subways. But where will they go?

Ryan W. Miller | Februray 21, 2022 | USA Today

***

Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

****

Citations Merch!

The Citations Needed merch store is open! Continue to support the show by picking up a t-shirt, tank top, sweatshirt, tote or coffee mug for yourself or your favorite Citations fan.

*****