Opinion: Obstructing compassion at the Safe Parking Lot

I’m thinking about what Mother Theresa would do, facing California homelessness. I suspect she’d roll up her sleeves and start helping the first person she saw. So, how is that different from what local charity organizations are attempting with the Encinitas Safe Parking Lot? True, it’s small-scale, temporary, and imperfect.

But at least it’s something.

Programs for homelessness, like universal healthcare, should be operated by permanent governmental agencies. They shouldn’t need to be done on a one-off basis by charities. However, in the absence of such programs, what local charities are doing should be applauded, not attacked.

But it seems the little parking lot for a few homeless people has tapped into cultural anxiety. It’s the gateway drug to hordes of homeless people just waiting to invade Encinitas and destroy our homogeneous, upper-middle-class idyll.

Yes, deeper issues are at play. Along with a healthy dose of hysteria.

Could a parking lot for 24 cars have such a cataclysmic effect on a city? Of course not. Instead, the issue is a dog-whistle for Kristin Gaspar neo-cons. Like her guru Trump, she understands that fear sells.

Is it a coincidence that anti-parking lot groups are portrayed heroically on right-wing news sites, where they accuse the city council of turning Encinitas into a “homeless sanctuary city,” a “political cesspool”?

Talk about language designed to excite the fearful right-wing mind! And now, brand new city council campaigns are being launched on the back of this little issue, using fear as their weapon.

Yes, California has a serious homelessness problem. The question is why the problem erupted at this particular time and place, during an economic boom (pre-pandemic anyway) in the richest state in the richest nation on earth. Answer: it’s a structural economic problem based on income inequality, skyrocketing real estate prices, and corporations paying too little in taxes.

People say, “I’m too compassionate to support this program. I’m waiting for a better solution to come along.” Well, that’s not only unhelpful; it’s disingenuous. And now NC3 is suing the city for procedural missteps. Funny how “proceduralists” only speak up when it’s politically expedient.

Yes, laws like the Brown Act are there for good reason. The problem arises when proceduralism is utilized purely as a Mitch McConnel-style tool of political obstruction. Then it’s just another refuge of the scoundrel.

This is a moment when the notion of building walls is ubiquitous. A con-man has based an entire presidency on the fear of what’s on the other side of an imaginary wall. Is it possible that arguments against the little parking lot are just the building of another wall? That some local centrists are being unknowingly pulled into the Trumpian vortex-like zombie Republican senators? That the definition of compassion has become obscured?

Darius Degher, Long-time Leucadian