To all my Sacramento County neighbors who don’t want a homeless triage center in their ‘backyard’:
Let’s pretend that a triage center was opened in McKinley Park.
The neighbors are furious, they protest at City Council meetings. They claim it’s not fair to have a “pig with lipstick” in their neighborhood.
They demand one gets opened in North Sacramento and elsewhere. They demand others take on the burden of 100–200 hundred homeless. They yell about the decrease in property values. They scream about what the center has done to their neighborhood, the filth, the smell, the increase in crime, drugs, trash, feces, dogs, etc., etc., etc.
Now based on what you just read, just how eager would you be to have a center in your neighborhood?
Would you demand your city council person build one?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Now, pretend McKinley Triage Center is successful, that they’ve housed 120+ homeless, that they have gotten homeless jobs, I.D.s., necessary medical and mental healthcare. Pretend crime in the area is no worse than before the center, and McKinley neighbors speak about the positives of the Center, about the reduction of homelessness in their neighborhood.
Pretend your city council person comes to you and says, “Look at the success of this center, the people helped, the millions saved by not having to clean up camps, paying for emergency room costs, arrests, confinement, court costs. Would you be open to us having a triage center too?”
Would you now be more open to the possibilities?
—Louis Warfield
Flommist Louis Warfield is a fabrication specialist who runs the award-winning Rhino Design Studio, “You dream it, we’ll build it.” Copyright © 2018 Louis Warfield.
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