EDITORIAL: Mayor, council can't handle the homeless problem
(Editor’s note: This is an editorial, expressing an opinion about recent activity from the administration of the City of Kokomo. It should not be confused with news reporting. The report pertaining to this opinion piece can be read here.)
I have a cat. I don’t like my cat. She was a rescue that faced abandonment a second time. Rather than leave it to that fate, I took in the cat. She became my responsibility.
The cat doesn’t poop where I want it to every time. The cat isn’t concerned about keeping her food in the bowl. She doesn’t communicate well or observe boundaries and rules. And she tracks kitty litter everywhere. I spend a lot of time cleaning up her messes and making sure she has everything she needs to live comfortably.
I wish she wasn’t my problem, but I’m not going to throw her out on the street or take her to the animal shelter. I accepted the burden. As “mayor” of my house, I have a duty to care for my “citizen.”
It seems like a simple concept, but Mayor Tyler Moore doesn’t understand it. As mayor of Kokomo, he has a responsibility to all citizens, regardless of income, social status, education … you get the picture. And yet the city’s homeless population is routinely harassed and further victimized by Moore’s policies and edicts.
The Moore administration introduced a new ordinance this week, designed to push the homeless out of public spaces. It provides no solutions to homelessness. In fact, it is actually written to address the belongings of the homeless, such as they are. And in an act of willful malice, it proposes the homeless be forcibly relocated to a non-existent shelter bed or be arrested for trespassing.
Tyler Moore is working to criminalize homelessness through a thoughtless, ineffective law that serves to justify the behavior his administration has employed from the start.
Why is he doing this? If history is any indication, someone complained to Moore about the homeless residing in the stairwells of downtown parking garages and the gazebo across from City Hall. These are real problems. Moore should act to end these situations.
But his ordinance does nothing to improve matters. Once passed, the city can give the homeless notice that their belongings will be seized if they don’t remove them. The homeless themselves will be removed if they are caught “camping” in a public space, but the city has no place to put them except jail.
By the admission of Councilman Greg Davis, the bill’s sponsor before the Kokomo Common Council, there haven’t been available shelter beds for homeless men for two years. There are very few beds available for women. The police are instructed to move the homeless, but they can’t put them where the city insists they go.
That leaves three options on the table. Arrest the homeless person for trespassing. Leave them where they are, which doesn’t fix Moore’s annoying phone calls and complaints. Or force the homeless to find some private property to occupy. That’s right. Your backyard is fair game. Of course, that path leads to jail, too.
A homeless guy pooped in a stairwell in a parking garage. Moore installed cameras to watch him and proposed a law to shuffle him around a bit. Of course, he could have unlocked the restrooms at City Hall so the homeless might have a pooping alternative.
But that might mean cleaning up a mess. Like the one in the stairwell right across the street. Hmm. Or is that a problem for downtown businesses to address? Should Cooper’s Pub or Cook McDoogal’s entertain the homeless and their defecation?
A homeless guy spent most of last year living in the gazebo in Millennium Park. Moore is taking his stuff for a couple months and pushing him … where? The stairwell? Another park? Under a bridge?
Don’t think this is something new. Moore hasn’t had an answer all along. Several homeless camp in Future Park – a park that 99 percent of the city’s residents have never seen or used. But all it takes is a phone call to get the mayor to mobilize city crews to dig them out of the woods and throw away their belongings; many of them provided by local churches as a ministry to the homeless.
That’s right. Not only does Moore have no interest in properly addressing the homeless situation, he works actively against those who are trying to help. When this purge took place in 2021, churches rushed to the park and loaded up belongings for the homeless so that the city wouldn’t take them. They didn’t get nearly enough. They had to watch their good works be loaded onto the back of a dump truck.
Sadly, the Kokomo Common Council seems oblivious to the problem and all too proud to pass this ordinance, ignorantly presuming that they are doing something good for their constituents. Guess what? The homeless are still homeless when you’re done patting yourselves on the back. They just don’t have that blanket anymore. That bag with a few toiletries some charity gave them last week? It’s gone, too. Congratulations.
It's a safe bet that none of the homeless vote. No address? No voter registration. So, Moore and the council aren’t hurting their re-election chances. Heck, with less than a quarter of the city even bothering to vote, it’s obvious that a dereliction of duty doesn’t come with consequences around here anymore.
So, I guess I’ll just throw this old cat out on the street. Maybe she’ll end up at the pound, but it’s pretty full. I’ll just let someone else deal with the problem. If the mayor doesn’t care about the least of us, why should I care about a cat I don’t even like?
The least of us … that sounds familiar. Or it should to a good Catholic, right, Tyler?
Matthew 25:40 -- “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”