During a recent cleanup of a Vancouver encampment, Jamie Spinelli of the city’s Homeless Assistance and Resources Team told The Columbian, “People who don’t have another place to live still have to physically exist somewhere.”
A reader raised a similar objection after an article I wrote about public camping laws. Replying on social media, they wrote, “Probably the cruelest thing is to ask such a reductionist, binary question, then criminalize camping without actually funding or providing any services.”
I understand the impulse behind both comments. Homelessness offers no politically painless answer. We seem to be waiting for a policy that helps everyone, pleases constituents, feels compassionate, and never requires anyone to say no or look cruel. That policy is not coming. Feeling compassionate is a poor measure of whether a policy helps.
The undeniable truth is that people sleeping outside remain our neighbors. Their needs are real. So is their agency and their obligations.
This is where the phrase “without providing any services” does a lot of work. What counts as a service? When is an alternative actually available? And when should a person’s response affect what the public owes next?
Now, there is a difference between having nowhere to go and refusing the places available. Yet even that distinction depends on what was offered and why it was refused. A shelter may be unsafe for someone’s children or unable to accept a pet. A person in psychosis may be unable to understand or weigh the offer. In these cases, declining a placement does not necessarily mean that a workable alternative existed.
Other refusals concern conditions a person does not want to accept. A shelter may prohibit drug use or require residents to respect their neighbors. Those conditions do not make the shelter unavailable simply because someone refuses them.
The same question arises when someone has already received housing and loses it through violence, threats, repeated drug use, or property damage. Does that create a fresh obligation to provide another placement before public camping laws may be enforced? If every refusal or lost placement returns the full responsibility to the public, what responsibility remains with the person receiving help?
The provider has some responsibility here too. What was done to help the person keep stable housing? Handing someone keys and evicting them ninety days later for violations they were never helped to avoid is not much of a program. Some people need help learning how to clean, cook, maintain basic hygiene, budget, find work, or remain sober. Accountability should include clear expectations, instruction, correction, treatment, and a real chance to change. Any serious conversation about providing housing must include the support people need to keep it.
The distinctions I have outlined are not an excuse to play word games or an attempt to dress indifference in the language of justice. A city may fail to offer a workable option. A provider may fail to help someone keep it. A person may lack the capacity to use the help offered. A person may also refuse it or lose it through his own conduct. However, collapsing all of these into “nowhere to go” hides where help failed, where greater resources are needed, and where responsibility still belongs to the individual.