Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 344: Protect The 31 Flavors (w/ special guest Tracy Rosenthal)

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

This week we're joined by Tracy Rosenthal, who's written a really incredible article for The New Republic about the upcoming Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of being homeless in America. Tracy went to Grants Pass, Oregon, to report the story, and found that the town is a microcosm for how towns and cities across America are dealing with this pressing social question. Read the article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/181036/new-sundown-towns-grants-pass-v-johnson Read more of Tracy's work here: https://tracyrosenthal.com/ I'll be reading here: https://www.michlers.com/pages/read Support us on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

All right, welcome to the show this week, everybody. We're joined by Tracy Rosenthal, who has written a article for the New Republic about homelessness in America, but mostly specifically about the Supreme Court ruling that's coming up about this. Before we get into it today, there's two things I wanted to bring up uh one of which is related the other is kind of actually related um did you did y'all see that the uh so ireland is is like getting ready to um i guess like acknowledge uh palestine as a state like acknowledge the palestinian state and so like all these like israeli account like hasbara accounts are like putting out all this stuff about ireland and they're like making like some of the most like irish racism against the

irish has come back in a big way because like in the israelis are are reviving it it's really amazing but they like made this this guy israel katz I don't know, Israel's Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs, made a video where it's like, Hamas thanks Ireland. And it's like... Listen, I'm going to go ahead and tell you something. If the Israelis are coming for Michael Flatley, the Lord of the Dance, next, then my hate only intensifies. I wait.

Now I'm looking for, there was this like amazing t-shirt that's being sold on Etsy. Hamas is in its gay era. I saw that. Are you seeing this? I need one. I need one too. Or two. love it it's like yes hamas is like everything now hamas is gay hamas is irish hamas is bees oh interesting because the did you hear about the idf soldiers that uh like stepped on a bee's nest and had to be taken to the hospital

so then there were all these amazing bee memes of uh like beat like bees are hamas it's amazing this must have been some sort of yeah primitive trap they set for us yeah that's insane um i did see a video yesterday, because, like, the Al-Qassam videos are starting to come back, and, like, honestly, one of the... probably the best I've seen so far was, like, an IDF soldier was very clearly about to, like, do one of those dumbass videos they do where they, like, try on a woman's dress,

and, like, he was very clearly about to put on this dress and just got like sawed in half by like a sniper by a sniper bullet it's pretty amazing that on top of everything else all kassam has to be like reinventing cinema right no like it's amazing it truly is it's i don't it's just like the amount of suspense in these videos the way they like build towards a climax is uh something that's really you know truly remarkable um but uh anyways i just needed to share that i thought it was very funny that like we've not seen racism against the irish in like 150 years and it's like if anyone's been it's like, if anyone... It's been a while. It's been a while. But there's nothing you can say about us

we wouldn't say about ourselves, you know? And another thing I would say is, you know, if this is going to go to, you know, Drake and Kendrick style petty insults, listen, I think we've seen enough evidence from Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson to dispel that one myth you know about the Irish um yeah it's like I guess okay so there's there's that and then I wanted to bring up

something else this is there's this is kind of related to what we were going to talk about this is in the New York Times um this is an incredibly stark article I read. Perhaps you saw this. I don't know. But the title of this article, As insurers around the U.S. bleed cash from climate shocks, homeowners lose. I just wanted to read a little bit from this article. It's about how in states like Iowa and even states like arkansas kentucky ohio utah like home insurers like they're not insuring homes anymore and it is causing it's

like pushing the entire insurance market to a potential collapse that could have like devastating effects on the entire economy um the insurance turmoil caused by climate change which had been concentrated in florida california and louisiana is fast becoming a contagion spreading to states like iowa arkansas ohio utah and washington even in the northeast where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year the trends are worsening in In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states, more than a third of the country. That's up from 12 states five years ago and eight states in 2013. The result is that insurance companies are

raising premiums by as much as 50% or more, cutting back on coverage or leaving entire states altogether. The growing tumult is affecting people whose homes have never been damaged and who have dutifully paid their premiums. Cancellation notices have left them scrambling to find cover to protect as often their biggest investment. So like the thing is here is that oftentimes for you to get a mortgage, you have to have an insurance, a home insurance plan. an insurance a home and home insurance plan and so it's just what we're gonna talk about in your article Tracy it's kind of like intimately tied into this

but it is interesting like how you have this perfect storm of things happening all at once you know one of which is that we've seen like these gradual inflation and accompanying rising interest rates at the very same time that climate change has made insuring a home and even being able to get a mortgage basically impossible. So you've got rising rents, rising interest rates, rising costs of even owning a home, which is this standard bearer of asset accumulation in the United States, all kind of happening at the same time. And basically, the effect is just pushing people out of shelter in general, whether that's in the form of renting or homeownership. I know that your article doesn't necessarily dig into the minute, all the different ways and what's driving homelessness and what's causing it. causing it but i do think that like in the in the if we're looking at this as a watershed like this is obviously like one major tributary like climate change is just pushing people out of homes in general for all kinds of different reasons but i don't know it's just one of those like we've it's

kind of been like a recurring bit on this show like you you pick one data point right and kind of like focus on that is like this thing that's indicative of like larger society's decay and i just read that article before we got on this morning before we started recording i was just like man it's like this is quite astonishing yeah i think it's really you know it's like it really illustrates the trap that we're in when we built an economic system around the inflation of property values. And we've basically displaced individual security like from the state onto that value. And, you know, I think that climate change is really just like like homelessness. It's like one of the things that points to the fact that we need to rethink this

system entirely yeah i think the thing you think you're exactly right we don't even really have a choice one of the things that is so fascinating to me about climate change is that like it's even stretching the the bounds of of like middle class i don't know like social citizenship right it's like it's it's even like we think about climate change is primarily something that's going to be affecting poor and working people around the world but it's even creating these contradictions in like how we've structured our society overall even at the like the kind of like middle class and upper middle class level so if you have like 18 states a full third of the united states where like you can't even get homeowner insurance anymore like what is that what does that mean for the future right

like that basically what that basically means is that homeownership is impossible in at least a third of the country and there's no there's no i don't And there's no, there's no, I don't know, there's no way around that. It's not like the United States can just step in and say like, all right, well, we're going to backstop the insurance. They could, I guess that's what they did with health insurance. I guess they could step in and say like, all right, we're going to stabilize this market by just purchasing plans, which is what the government does with health insurance. I don't think they're going to do that though is what the government does with health insurance. I don't think they're going to do that, though.

I mean, health insurance is a basically, like, guaranteed scam in a way because people are always going to be sick. But homeowner insurance, I don't think there's any way that the government's going to step in and do that because, like, there's no... Once again, if you've got climate change, like, destroying all these homes and assets, I don't know why the government would do that. Well, it's just interesting to think of this class of stranded assets being generalized,

like from the kind of beaches of Miami and Fire Island to homes at risk of fire in all of these states and i think that it um that kind of you know but but then i think like you know this is devaluation of speculative investment like the only thing that its value indicates is that someone else is willing to pay for it um and so that that kind of like massive devaluation that would be like a kind of an economic collapse is actually, you know, like, like, you know, just thinking about I mean, I think I spend a lot of time thinking about like peak property value in the sense of like peak oil. Like we have to we have to find like a managed decline of property values. managed decline of property values that is true it's it's something that's like it's it's so interesting that like i don't know we were in san francisco actually which is a uh big part of the story that you've written for the new republic but and you know it was me and tom and our buddy sam and uh sam and I kind of got into this argument about like

the Soviet Union and Stalinism versus Tritskyism and we were talking about like well you don't want to like reproduce the mistakes of the past and I've been thinking about that though and it's like the the central task of communists now is not the same as it was in the 1930s it's it's actually the opposite like we have to basically figure out how to do degrowth communism. Like, their task was growth communism. And so it's not even really a question of, like, repeating the mistakes of the past, because we're on kind of entirely new terrain.

And it's like, as you said, it's like managing the decline of, like, this entire asset class. And, like, what do we even do with that, right? If it's been, I don't know. Or go ahead and start interesting. No, I feel like it's like, I mean, this is, you know, like not to do the book plug, but, you know, the book plug is that this process of socialization, right. That like there is a massive amount of wealth. It's like 60% of the world's wealth is held in real estate and 75% of that is in housing, right? So the process of socialization that that demands from us in order to like redistribute that hoard is really like, you know, like that's the task. I think it's like,

as you said. Yeah, it's... Go ahead, Tom. I was just going to say, I was eating a protein Pop-Tart that was crumbling down my chest while y'all were having this discussion. Slack-jawed yokel. Like, yeah, yeah, say more about that. Well, it's... Like I said, it's one of those things, it's one of those data points

that as you think about it, like, it seems like if you look at stories like this homelessness is definitely in the cards for all of us eventually and it's and it's it's an interesting thing because you've got a system taxes and being out on your ass that's exactly right three things you look forward to this guy yeah and Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's the thing if it's, I've just witnessed this in Letcher County. Part of the reason I moved to Lexington was after the flood, so many properties were destroyed.

So many houses were destroyed. The housing stock in general just like numerically went down. And that caused rents to go up and it's also causing like it's also causing like all kinds of disruptions in the housing market there and so like i i think that the thing is is it's an overall a large national phenomenon that we're seeing more and more of and i think it's why this go ahead another thing compounded, I hadn't even thought about this, but right before the flood, there was this thing, because it's something I'd always mulled,

and I didn't really understand why. It's like, why we come from the poorest places in the country, but homelessness in the sense of urban homelessness is not the same. I knew one homeless person my entire life growing up you know this dude paris that like everybody knew you know like he was just the guy that like he lived at this place from this grocery store and i didn't understand really why that was until like i saw this thing there were 3200 school kids in lecher county that were like deemed housing insecure which i guess is functionally homeless but like in for their purposes means that like multiple nights a week you're staying at an aunt

uncle cousin friend grandparents that's why you're trying to go to school and and and and do the whole thing and i'm curious how like you know like those type of weather events that destroy all these properties and then render what properties are available, basically, either a long-term like mold remediation project or just not suitable to live in, you know, or, you know, you're just going to expose yourself to all sorts of, you know, health things. Like, what does that mean? And 3,200 is not a small number in a place of like 20,000 people. Yeah, I think, I mean, I was just going to say that one of the people that one of the unhoused people that I talked to in the story was displaced by fire, like her Alameda fire that destroyed like something like 2,000 or 3,000 homes, like basically she had to move

her camper because of that. And through that process, like, was ejected into the streets. And so I think that that kind of like, rolling climate change displacement, like, it's or like, it's so suffused that like, I mean, all I had to do was hang out in a place for a week and meet somebody who had that experience. Yeah, weirdly, I mean, we're recording this on May 23rd. Like earlier this week, there were these insane tornadoes in Iowa. And I didn't know this until the flood in Letcher County a few years ago.

But what happens, and I think we've talked about it on the show but there's a contradiction built into how we deal with this in the sense that like what happens after a natural disaster is the FEMA will come in and they will basically pay you to demolish your home and then nothing can ever be built on that land again and so it's this weird thing where we like remove this land from the property matrix and it becomes like kind of like post disaster land like nothing can be done with it and i and i don't i don't know how that works with fires and and tornadoes but the thinking is with floods is they're trying to remove things from the flood plane to reduce future flooding but it creates this contradiction because like you you have to

have some place for those people to then go and if there isn't somewhere for them to go then they just wound wind up uh houseless and i think that's the thing one of the things that struck me reading your article, Tracy, and that I found so fascinating was that there's this, we have all these kind of like assumptions about homeless people. And one of which is that like all of them are, let me rephrase it. It's this weird thing where when we're talking about homelessness, at least in the policy sense, it's usually tied to addiction. And I was really astonished the extent to which that is played out in all the various policies you review in your article, all the people you talk to. Everybody seems to want to treat homelessness with the same ways we treat addiction, which is really bizarre to me because I wouldn't necessarily,

I mean, it's not even true that all homeless people are addicted. And, but it just, maybe it's because like we have the healthcare infrastructure now, it needs to be deployed and used some way towards the surplus population, or maybe it's because we just don't have any other you know imagine political imagination outside of that but it is fascinating um the extent to which uh we just automatically assume oh someone's outside of their outside of their home on the streets oh they must be mentally ill or have addiction issues. And it's like, as you pointed out, it's like, that's increasingly not the case.

Yeah. I mean, I can talk about this if you... Please do. Was that a question? Just teeing you up there. Was that teeing me up? I was like, right. Okay. I'm ready. Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. No, I mean, this actually surprised me, you know, because like, I didn't really know this history. So it really ended up changing the thing that I imagined that I was going to write into like what I ended up writing. But like, I guess I feel like

I need to say like a few things about the relationship between like policies of homelessness and addiction. And like, please, one has to do with the like, Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. I think I said that word right. That is like at the basis of this Supreme Court case, which is basically like, is it or is it not cruel and unusual punishment to criminalize people for sleeping in public or like living outside. And the way that the courts have been dealing with that problem is a case about addiction. So like in the early 60s, there was this case, Robinson v. California, when a black heroin user was stopped by plainclothes officers and arrested for having track marks on his arms, right? Like not for having drugs, not for selling drugs, but like for having the marks of being a drug user. And

that case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And they ruled that basically like this was cruel and unusual punishment, that making it a crime to be an addict was cruel and unusual punishment because addiction, like in the court's view, was an involuntary status or a condition, right? It was like criminalizing people for who they are and not what they do. Right. Like status versus conduct, I think is what you said in the article. Exactly. Yeah. Like that's the basis of that divide. And then like in 2006, that's when the Ninth Circuit, right, which is like the Western Court of Appeals, like uses that precedent to basically it's the first time that the courts make an Eighth Amendment ruling about criminalizing homelessness. And it's, it's in a settlement against like a law that comes from Los Angeles, which was like a blanket camping ban in Los Angeles. And they use the same logic, right? They're like, it's cruel and unusual punishment to criminalize homelessness because it's an involuntary status. Right. And so like all of these subsequent rulings, right, the ruling

that, you know, the, when the Oregon court rules in grants pass, they're building on this. When like Martin B. Boise, which is like the case that kind of like launched the courts into the national spotlight as a player in homelessness policy, right? Like that, they're all building on this foundation. So like part of it with addiction, right?

Is that like, there's this kind of historical artifact of like 50 years of, of like the interpretations of the United States constitution, right. That is at play here. But then I think there's like a whole other side, which is about, you know, like, um, you know, it it's like if you think of the war on drugs, like we know that the criminalization of illicit drugs has been a really effective strategy of punishing, controlling and eliminating people like made surplus by our economic system and like, you know, poor people and people of color. And so I that is definitely a part of what's happening when we see the criminalization of homelessness and the criminalization of drugs happening at the same time.

And then a third thing that I think is like really important is like probably, you know, like one of the things that I get into the most in the piece is like how addiction plays a role in neutralizing homelessness, right? Like this idea, like drug treatment doesn't make a typical two bedroom cost less than four full time minimum wage jobs, right? It doesn't bring back unionized industrial labor, right? And like, this is, I think that this is like part of this bipartisan project that we're seeing right now is that, you know, to, to basically look at, like, if you look at the statistics, it's like 16% of unhoused people across the country have some kind of substance abuse disorder, right? So like, not only is that a minority of the unhoused population and like not only does it like completely avoid recognizing the physical and emotional toll of living outside that might like encourage someone to use drugs,

but it completely ignores the root causes of homelessness, right, which are in our housing system and our economic system. economic system. So I feel like right now addiction, you know, it's like you see, like London Breed is like drug testing welfare recipients. And like every week, Gavin Newsom has some new hair washing program with like an alliterative name that's like treatment, not tense, you know? And like, I feel like this is a really, addiction is a really useful way of stigmatizing homelessness, of individualizing homelessness and making homelessness seem like a voluntary choice, like even like a lifestyle, you know. And I yeah, I mean, I just I feel like that's what we're hearing in the oral arguments of the case. And it's like really scary just to think about how that's being weaponized for the institutionalization of like really regressive and punitive and failed policies. like there's signs everywhere about like don't give panhandlers money and i think part of that is just they want to sort of keep this sort of tony horse town image kind of thing up and sort

of you know push the so-called riffraff you know to the margins or whatever but it is it is funny like you you have people like all my life i've just said like you know don't give that guy any money you know he's he's probably got a four bedroom house and a swimming pool you know he's he's probably got a four-bedroom house and a swimming pool you know like it's you know people you know yeah begging for change on the streets or are you know just they have mansions they go back home to right yeah yeah so dumb totally i mean it is like a fantasy of controlling what people do right like but like in order to access like meager resources that will benefit your life like you need to be subject to discipline and control like and we see this in the welfare system and like and

that sort of same sense of like paternalistic control is like what we you know like they're gonna spend it on drugs yeah the poor law right like that was the thing for like municipal planners in like early capitalist society in like the 19th century. Like you have to find a way to displace capitalism, creates contradictions that it then has to manage. And, uh, you know,

in early capitalist development, it was like, well, we're just going to put that onto the family and then obviously you see this change around like what we call like the progressive era in the early 20th century where the government starts to take that a role on with the welfare state and taking that and then with the neoliberal era we once again return to that to that position where we're displacing those contradictions and we're displacing the uh you

know the the the duty of social reproduction i guess and being able to like keep it up putting it back onto the family i think one of the things that was so fascinating about the piece i didn't really know any of this is that in a way things were kind of i think as you just mentioned it like the unhoused population was seen it was seen as like an involuntary condition even under the bush years i think like even under george bush they had this almost humanitarian approach to it i think was it like housing first was that what it was called um and i think i guess my question here is like is the you said jurisprudence earlier i'm gonna throw that word out it sounds smart i'm sorry i'm sorry i got some latin scholars i think i think i used it right well like if i didn't like someone call me and just tell me i'm

an idiot i don't know don't don't i let No, don't. I'll take the bullet for you there. It's like the hate stories. Thanks, y'all. It seems like, though, the legal framework and everything is moving towards a position that, I think you just said it, it is not only voluntary to be unhoused, but that it is it is like a a basic like condition i guess what i'm getting at is like they've become like dehumanized writ large right it's not just that it's like it's

an involuntary thing that like we have to adopt a christian jesus like posture towards like you know help the poor feed the you know give alms and everything but it is now at this point it's kind of like morphed over the past 20 years and i have some thoughts on why we could talk about that in a minute but it's sort of like morphed into this thing where they are now like a whole population subhuman in many ways and that explains how the republicans and democrats are kind of uniting in a way to approach this. So let's talk about that case. Like, everybody's heard about this case.

It's going, I think it's already been argued in front of the Supreme Court. It's going to be decided on at some point this summer, probably June or July or something. I wanted to talk about the case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Who initially started this case? Who brought it and why and where? Yeah, I mean, the case really originates with one unhoused person who people describe to me as both motherly and a force to be reckoned with.

both motherly and like a force to be reckoned with. I think that she had this kind of like sense of having been wronged that she wanted redress from. And so she was like 59 years old and she lived in Grants Pass, Oregon for almost two decades and spent six years living outside. And during that time, she was arrested and jailed dozens of times. She was banished from all public parks and she was like ticketed so much that she owed the town $5,000 in fees that like, obviously she can't afford to pay. And I mean, her predicament really sort of showed like what the purpose of the anti-homeless laws in the city were right like they basically made it illegal to sleep or rest in grants pass oregon um on every inch of public land 24 hours a day right so like there was no place to go where you could rest

legally outdoors and so she sued the city, right, arguing that these laws were, you know, constituted cruel and unusual punishment. And the court ruled in her favor, sort of leveraging that, you know, what I said before, that like this is criminalizing an involuntary status. People are engaging in what the court, I think I'm, I think I'm quoting them accurately, like the unavoidable biological necessities of sleeping and resting, right? Like that, those are the acts that people are engaging in. And so what the court did was establish an injunction that allows unhoused people to rest in the towns, like six or so parks for like, I mean, they only have like 24 hours at a time and we can get into that later.

Right. But, you know, so the the Oregon District Court ruled in her favor. And I think, you know, unfortunately, Blake died before she knew that she won her case. But it really I mean, it both changed and didn't change the landscape of the policing of unhoused people in the city. And, you know, then the city appealed and it appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. And that's like how we got where we are right now. Yeah. And I think that even I think that even wasn't it like even Gavin Newsom and a lot of I say even Gavin Newsom, of course, Gavin Newsom. They encourage the court to take it up. Yeah. So I feel like I mean, you know, like there was so much bipartisan support for the case.

Right. Like I think you can point to the law firm, which is representing this town of Grants Pass in the Supreme court. That is the same law firm that defends Chevron against a class action in like environmental pollution suit. They represent the Dakota access pipeline. They won citizens United. And yeah. And they were also the, they were the lawyers who blocked the Florida recount and put George W. Bush in the White House. Like this is the legal team that is like on deck to criminalize homelessness across the country. Right. So it's like it is really like I think it's really important to situate it in that like broad right wing project. But I think like it's like we can't let ourselves off the hook and just say like, oh, it's like a conservative project. Right. Because it's really like all of these Democratic politicians lined up to send their like amicus or like friend of the court briefs, basically begging the Supreme Court to take the case.

Right. That's L.A., Portland, Seattle, San Francisco. And like, as you said, Gavin Newsom. San Francisco. And like, as you said, Gavin Newsom. Right. And like, you know, I feel like I was like reading that New York Times article where they're like presenting this as a rare alliance. Right. But this is like an ongoing bipartisan project that liberal politicians are trying to shift the blame and they're trying to criminalize poverty because they basically like have no imagination for the kind of transformative policies we would need to actually stop people from becoming homeless. And like instead, right, they're basically in a frenzy to sweep people out of sight so that they can claim like some kind of political victory, like, you know know in having done nothing but make people's lives a little more miserable it's first of all the lawyer in that the lawyer that works for like evil evil and evil partners or whatever it's like her name is like straight out of like an 80s sci-fi movie it's like the ant evangelist or something i the ant evangelist i i like you couldn't you really can't make it up that's right central cast yeah but uh second second of all it's like i mean just like everything else this year it's like uh all i hear about is like how i need to vote for biden because the supreme court is run by conservatives and we need more liberals on the

supreme court and it's just like oh wait but like you guys are literally recommending court cases to go to this conservative supreme court to be ruled on conservatively it's just like okay it kind of undercuts the whole fucking argument i just i also think it's just really important that we point out like that the only thing that this court case, like the only thing that Oregon's state court said that the district court said that the city can't do is make a blanket ban, criminal homelessness 24 hours a day, right? So cities have immense powers to do like time, place and manner restrictions on sleeping in public. Right. And nothing prevents them from enforcing their ridiculous drug laws or their health laws.

And nothing prevents them from building housing, providing casework, giving people medical care, bathrooms and like supplies to survive outdoors. Right. So like all of this stuff that like where these liberal cities are like begging the Supreme Court to do what it is historically doing, which is restrict people's human rights, is like, you know, and they're doing this under the language of being like micromanaged or even like, you know, like I love when they say they've been handcuffed or straitjacketed, you know, like, and it's just so disingenuous and like, and, and really, and really dangerous. It's just like, they want it to be open season to like ticket and jail people for the crime of not being able to afford rent. What, what, that is one of the things that was so astonishing to me about this story. about this story there was two things the first was i've already mentioned the extent to which addiction our theories around it our approaches to it are sort of suffused with our approach to houselessness but the the second thing was like how many people in your story how many liberals quote civil rights leaders to excuse what they're doing like i think san francisco mayor london

breed like quoted fanny lou hammer like i'm sick and tired of sick and tired of being sick and tired in like as an excuse to like clear out an encampment or something it's just yeah i mean it's dark as shit no it really is it's it's astoundingly bleak and as you said like the the question is is almost kind of moot in a way because like san francisco has like 23 or 24 different like anti uh homeless laws on the book you know what i mean like they they basically have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want which is you're right like looked at another way they have carte blanche to actually provide these services i think they they basically want just a kind of like legal precedent to to be able to point to though and just be like oh well the

supreme court said like you know we gotta we have to do this this way um but or go ahead no i mean i was gonna say it reminds me like this isn't making it into the piece but like san francisco started putting up these signs like um uh like camping is illegal in this area because we have resolved encampments in this area and that kind of tautology of making something illegal that for a problem that you have not solved right like you wouldn't need the sign if you solve the problem and and something about that sign it just really encapsulates the whole fucking problem and the like that kind of liberal approach to the crisis well and i think the thing is and i want to talk a little bit about where this case came from this little town in oregon called grant's

pass i think one of the things that's so fascinating one of the reason this piece is uh reasons this piece resonated with me is because it mirrors in a lot of ways a lot of the things that I've seen happen in Eastern Kentucky over the last, like, you know, just looking at the news articles and everything over the last 10, 20 years. But, like, part of this all began

as, like, essentially, like, an economic development project in the early 2010s in a place like Grants Pass. And they had this roundtable trying to, and we can get into a little bit what happened in Grants Pass over the last 20, 30 years, but basically this roundtable looking into tourism. And you have these business leaders,

community leaders coming together and like there's one quote specifically i found from your piece um where they were talking about this round table about quote-unquote vagrancy problems a councilman explained the utility of punishment quote until the pain of staying this staying the same outweighs the pain of changing people will not change and i think that's the basically their whole approach here it's just like make it so difficult and arduous slap them with as many fines uh send as many police officers after them as possible to just get them to go anywhere else but here and that's kind of their approach to this so like i wanted to talk about grants pass like what is why has this town kind of become emblematic of how we uh approach this issue like what what is going on in grants pass and why has

it become the centerpiece of this and not a place like san francisco or you know seattle or something i mean yeah i guess yeah i'll just say first like, you know, that the laws basically do put into practice this fantasy that homelessness is a behavior you can discipline people out of or like deter people from, right? Like when the criminalizing of homelessness has no peniological purpose, right? Like the pain of staying the same, right? Like that this is a condition that people are in because of their choice. Like that's what's implicated in that statement and all of the officials. And like, you know, it's just also important to know, like one of the officials at that roundtable was the founder of the Gospel Rescue Mission who has the town's only shelter, which is like, you know, the pray to stay facility where people have to like go to church services, quit nicotine and like exist in their quote unquote birth gender to access a bed, you know? And so like this is the kind of yeah, like this is the kind of soup that is like this is like rhetorical soup that like anti like criminalization policies come from.

Like this is like rhetorical soup that like anti like criminalization policies come from. Yeah. And I think I mean, I think, you know, there's like a couple ways to talk about how Grants Pass serves as this sort of like microcosm for a larger thing. You know, like one of them is like economic and then the other one is kind of like like shows the sort of political dynamics. So like I'll try to do a little bit of both, but that until the 70s, the town's industry was timber and that industry collapsed. And after the crises of the 80s, what we've seen is a turn to real estate and tourism. And that has meant rising property values and rents. And so, you know, this place of 40,000 people now has a homeless population of 500. And like, these are dynamics, right? Like the collapse of industry, the expansion of service and real estate economies, like, like that, that is everywhere, you know, that like, um, increasingly like capital turning to fracking urban space,

um, as a source of like, um, like as, as its source. And, um, you know, like, I guess, I mean, I also think it's important, like, even if we're talking about the 20 year history to talk about a little bit of longer history and that like that of white supremacy right like grants pass was a literal sundown town and the clan held hurt hooded marches on sixth street the local newspaper told people of color like you better roll up your bed and ride and like um i just i think it's important to name that legacy as like um that sits underneath the kind of new economic regimes that sit on top of it, you know, like when we think about like, what Ruthie Gilmore calls like the changing same. But anyway, and then I feel like, to look at like the political dynamics of like,

what's happening in the city as a microcosm of what happens elsewhere, right? Like I talk about the two constituencies in the town like the long sign liberals and the flag flying conservatives and they actually do really reflect the national approach um you know in in the town like during the 2020 uprising the like right wing did an open carry guard of their american flag yeah like literally patrolling the baskin robbins um those 31 flavors god damn it they have to be protected the 31 flavors people acting out it's like amazing and like um but you know i i feel like there is an and in the town there's like been ongoing vigilante violence,

like against the encampments, right? Like homeowners, like, you know, they'll like throw trash, beat their horns, yell things like, like shoot guns in the air, you know? And I think it's like, um, as we see like this revanchist turn across the country, you know, and we think about more, you know, I think when we think we're thinking about right now, the policing of encampments and the relationship between vigilante violence and the police, like the Klan and the police, the, you know, the sanctioned violence and the violence that, you know, the law would just like look the other way at. I think that that's like really, I think that's a really

important thing to sort of keep an eye on in this moment where like this turn towards like real dehumanization, as you said, and has has been a part and parcel of the criminalization of homelessness. Like Kentucky just passed what is like a stand your ground law on steroids that has made it legal to murder an unhoused person for trespassing on your property. Right. And like this this kind of recruitment tool that homelessness serves like like don't let Florida become San Francisco. Like, that's like a Ron DeSantis slogan now, right? Like, I think, you know, I feel like this right wing turn is like really important to name. But at the same time, it's like, you know, the liberals have like, equally punitive, but just simply like more sophisticated policies, you know, and like the mayor in the town, Sarah Bristol, right? Like, and you know, like the conservative tried to recall her, right? But like in her tenure, she's like made 10 new laws to criminalize homelessness, to like nitpick people

with buffer zones where they can't be like She banned using tent stakes, right? So people can't put their tent into the earth. And she moves people every 72 hours, right? And someone refers to this policy, moving people like they're farm animals. And right now in the place, there's two police officers dedicated to... two police officers out of six police officers in the entire town's patrol to spend all of their time policing unhoused people. Like that's how much resources are being devoted to criminalization. So I feel like, you know, this is a trend across the board. Like liberal cities are doubling down on the criminalization of poverty. Like you said, like they're also criminalizing panhandling and like serving food to people

who need it. And then the other thing that they're doing, and this is like the last thing I'll say on this is, you know, when you listen to the mayor in the town talk about expanding low barrier shelter capacity, right? Like what you really hear is that she's not doing that for humanitarian reasons, right? But for reasons of political expediency. And this is true elsewhere too. You know, like these court rulings have said, no, you can't arrest people if they have no place else to go. And liberal cities have taken this demand and said, okay, like let's build

shelter so we can push people off the streets. Like you have the mayor of Sacramento, who's like, like invents a right to shelter that comes with an obligation for unhoused people to use shelter, right? Like the right to shelter as a right to police the poor. And I think that like these dynamics, I mean, I just, I feel like there's so much in the town that you just like, to me, really, it just really performed like the entire national debate. I think you're right.

And that's another part that I didn't know about that they build these shelters and then essentially force them into these shelters. And not only that, like I think you even talked to someone in Grants Pass who like for them and their partner to go into a shelter, they would have to like give up their dog

and they would have to do all these things that just like jump through all these hoops and meet these standards and criteria that would like make them like fundamentally different people you know what i'm saying that it's just like why why would i do that you know what i'm saying and and then yeah and they're temporary and they're temporary spots like these are temporary like this is temporary housing this isn't like you know this is like a place with no guarantees. And I think that like, you know, I get into this more in the last piece that I wrote about the policing of homelessness, but like, you know, the way that I sort of came to look at it, it's like, oh, if it takes the cops to put you there, that place is probably a jail. And, and actually when you

look at the kind of rules, like the really like the curfews, the limitations on belongings, on pets, on partners, like what you see is that like, you know, the point is not necessarily the provision of a human need. Right. It's punishment for the crime of not being able to afford bread. Exactly. I mean, it's yes yes it's criminalization of like survival strategies it's it's i think the thing is one of the things that i found so um once again resonant about about the thing about the piece was like you've got all that but then like you've got this added dimension that is something i've studied at length in eastern Kentucky and that is the essentially deputization of middle class people middle class homeowners social citizens to basically go after what they consider like social deviance like you have this really amazing passage here liberal politicians

appease their house constituents by empowering them to personally order encampment sweeps alongside amazon packages door dash dinners and movies on hbo residents can now expect policing on demand um in 2017 complaints from san francisco residents directed police to address quote-unquote homeless concerns nearly a hundred thousand times that's just in one year and um i mean the same thing happened here in the 2000s with the uh opioid crisis um they created this program called operation unite where they would basically encourage people to set up these chapters these are these groups where they would then go out and find people in the community using drugs and then basically dime them out to the police or go after them personally and it kind of created i don't know it's just like created these insanely rinse in the social fabric of these communities um and you kind of have this

like sort of like vigilante politics that grows out of it um and so i don't know i mean i want to talk a little bit about that i want to talk a little bit about like you know why i don't know i guess i don't really know what the question here is but like in a world where we have fewer and fewer people actually owning homes actually being able to purchase their way into what we would call, yeah, the social citizenship of this country. Do you think that that dynamic will get more and more kind of acute, more and more violent?

It seems to me that that's probably the case, right? You've got people who can buy into this fewer and fewer, and so they want to hold on to can buy into this fewer and fewer and so they want to hold on to it with more and more desperation and so then they lash out at groups that they've determined are subhuman or deviant or rendered surplus i don't know i guess i just wanted to get you to talk a little bit about that part of your piece because it's something that you know that that i think is we talk about like the jurisprudence we talk about like the legal stuff but i also want to talk about that kind of like i guess you got populism i don't know what other word would you would use for that yeah i mean i

think you know and i guess there's like a lot of there's a lot in my head right now but um you know i mean i feel like that's really important and in the way that we think about even like how police as an how the police as an institution were formed, basically like legalizing bearing on our present where people's relationships to place, to taking up space, to their survival, to claiming land for, you know, to so that they can meet their human needs is being policed in this way. And this is coming at a time when the consolidation of wealth, specifically in real estate capital, is reaching like a zenith that we've never seen and ejecting people from like and ejecting people from their homes. And I think that like, you know, this also sits on top of the way that, you know, for the last hundred years, like the government has produced a bifurcated system of homeowners and tenants, basically subordinating tenants as second-class citizens, not deserving of the entitlements and privileges of homeownership. And, you know, like and I think, too, like we should really think

about the kinds of immense subsidies that are going to homeowners and the immense subsidies that are going to prisons. Right. So the two strategies that like the two dominant strategies for dealing for housing people, right? Like, you know, and I think we need to think about prisons as a form of public housing. This is publicly subsidized, publicly funded housing, as is, you know, like the loss of revenue from homeowner subsidies. It's actually like, you know, like these

are, um, these are like hundreds of billions of dollars. Um, and so I think that like comparing these strategies, the kind of containment strategy that is public support of prisons and the kind of privatization strategy and like wealth, like individualized asset based wealth and accumulation strategy that is like homeowner subsidies. And that these are the two tracks that, you know, the state has devised for dealing with the social question of, and the question of human rights, which is the basic human need of shelter. Right. And if you don't need, I mean, if you want a, as stark and vivid an image of that as possible, look to Letcher County, Kentucky, where they just had a flood that killed many people,

wiped out massive amounts of housing and infrastructure, and they're trying to now build a prison there. I went to the public comment period hearing about this, and multiple people were up there like, we need housing, not a prison. But in their minds minds you're right like it's a prison is housing and you have to actually though do the social maneuvering then to get people into the prison you can't just like immediately go out and start rounding up everybody in the community because then people get like oh you actually have to like

go and you know write the policy and criminalize the survival strategies that funnel them into that housing block. And I think, too, like or, you know, in the age of like, you know, like like politicians doing like kentacloth and, you know, saying sorry for mass incarceration, the expansion of punitive, the punitive shelter system is really like a shadow side of the, like of the, of the prison. So like, even as, you know, like there's been such successful organizing against the expansion of prisons, like so much of those resources and so much of that like punitive, paternalistic like engine of control is being now funneled into the expansion of shelter.

And it really is just like a shuffling of the same populations that like are caught in the police dragnets. But like you're right now, they, instead of being criminalized for the script of, you know, like a, whatever quality of life issue was like a crime in the eighties. Now it's like that we we've made a new crime of, or we've revived the old crime of panhandling again. And so I think just like being very clear that like even as you know like that that drive to control is like is slippery and and to name that it's not just like it is true there's amazing work being done to like decarcerate and yet like um you know this is like in some ways the expansion of the shelter system is incarceration by another name.

In fact, I think I'm glad you brought that up. I would take it even a step further. And I think that the entire health care industry serves. I mean, if you're looking at political economy, like look, for example, at Letcher County. What happened in the last 30 years i would imagine probably something similar happened in grants pass oregon a major extractive industry collapsed at the same time that the health care industry which was built up through the union gained health employee benefits was on the rise and our health care so it was called like what was it the miners

hospital it was the umwa hospital system and a transition a transition had to occur from one economy to the next in letcher county like you get these like fucking netflix shows like dope sick they're like oh everybody's addicted to drugs like this is a wasteland of blah blah blah what that that was it's because they're bored it's because they're bored they're depressed they're like hurt from mining that is part of it but the major purpose that the opioid crisis served and this is what i've been trying to get at for years. It was a social medium through which the transition from coal mining

to healthcare had to occur. You even had people literally sitting on the boards of the anti-drug initiatives in the 2000s who were healthcare executives, literally saying this will be good for continued revenue streams. And a lot of these health care corporations they have diversified into a forced shelter uh you know rehab facilities all these things it

helps them to like i said continue revenue streams because it it occupies that weird niche in between actual formal incarceration and this weird gray area where everybody is surveilled, drug tested, and things like that. Like, the reason why we tie addiction so closely to homelessness is because we have to have a way to essentially be able to dehumanize them in a socially acceptable way. So, like, never mind the effect that, you know, the fact that, like, mass addiction is a public health issue. It's like, well, it can also serve this other function to solve the housing crisis, either in the form of prisons, rehabs, forced shelter, or just extermination outright. And so I don't know. It's just an interesting thing. I think that your piece kind of connected some of these dots that I've noticed.

And that's why I think Grants Pass is an interesting place that it would occur, because as soon as I was reading your article, and it's like, timber industry it's like okay well there we go it's like it makes a lot makes a lot of sense um but i don't know i mean i mean i guess you know just we're close we're coming in on an hour here i guess just to kind of like um kind of like wrap things up i wanted to um yeah i guess i wanted to like kind of put a finer point on some of the differences between like conservative and liberal approaches to this because your article does get into um how conservatives approach this how liberals

approach it um we've hinted at a lot of it here there are some differences i mean there's also a lot of similarities they find a lot of unity but i kind of wanted to talk a little bit, like I said, kind of put a fine point on how like these two constituencies, these two blocks, political blocks approach this issue. Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess I would say that like the central difference that I see is really their approach to resources, right? Like the right has very little interest in throwing money at social problems, right? They think that responding to social misery is the job of church and charity, right? Like that they prioritize private religious institutions, like the way that the gospel rescue mission functions in grants pass. But I would say like, you know, Democrats like love to throw money at a problem so they can say they're solving it, but ultimately make it worse.

Yeah. And and that is really, for me, the difference. Right. demolished public housing and replaced it with privately owned, publicly subsidized, what they call affordable housing, but isn't affordable and is only temporary, like is only temporarily affordable anyway. And so like, you know, it's like these sort of privatization schemes that are, you know, basically in the same way, like just like the criminalization of homelessness, these are expensive ways to make the problem worse. And like that is, I think like, to me, that's like a really big difference. And then, I don't know, I mean, I'm just thinking of like, you know, that moment where London Breed is like on the steps of the court quoting Fannie Lou Hamer when she's saying

she wants the total power to sweep people off the streets. Someone behind her is holding up a sign that says homeless industrial complex. Right. And that was really interesting to me because that was the title of like my last feature about homelessness. Right. And I think it shows something complicated, which is like a critique that I share with the right wing, which is that Democrats by funding, like by their willingness to throw money, not at solutions, but things that seem like solutions, but make the problem worse, right? Like what they've done is build up this like shadow industry of punitive, unaccountable nonprofits. And in LA and in San Francisco, these institutions charge the public the price of a month of rent for a single tent in a sanctioned homeless encampment. One tent is one tent is the price of, of like the average rent.

And so I think like, you know, it's, it's interesting to have this overlap with the right wing, right? Like, but of course, like what I imagine is not the right solution, right? But it's like a reinvigoration of public institutions and support. But I think it speaks to this dynamic where the right is really adept at understanding, at recognizing a threat in liberal policy that actually liberals have no plans to deliver. But they are so organized and incredibly successful at foreclosing any of those possibilities in advance.

That's a great point. Look, that's a great point. I think the thing is, I myself have gotten this weird position where it's just like, I see how the right-wingers, they're not, weirdly enough, the right- right wingers aren't and maybe this is the kind of whole point of reaction they are not as burdened with the imperative of mystification that liberal democracy requires and so like they can kind of like cut straight through it and see like all right you are basically you're taxing your residents to support, like, forced shelter, but then also, like, you're clearing out the same encampments that you're pouring money into

because it allows you to keep this very tenuous relationship with the cops who hate you anyways because you're the mayor. Yes. I don't know. hate you anyways because you're the mayor yes i don't know the whole thing is just this it's just this like roiling mass of like inconsistencies and incoherence that is that mirrors the larger liberal democratic project at large um which is that like yes you just keep throwing money and resources at the problem because that helps you mystify it further because actually grappling with it would implode the whole thing i don't know it's and it's very interesting you

brought that up i mean i think that's really i think that's really well said and i think that like when we think about the centrality of property relations to like the liberal order and like what it is that the like that, you know, our democratic process was invented to protect property owners from the property list. Right. So like the fact that these sort of systems of mystification are built up around this just like makes so much sense. And like, you know, but at the same time, like I wouldn't, you know, like obviously part of what's motivating the right is like, like,

undeniable bald face racism, right, that is very successfully laundered through their dehumanization of homeless people. And then also, like, one of my favorite things that I found in researching this was this, you know, like, Joe Lonsdale, who's like a founder of Palantir and has this think tank that basically exists to lobby states to criminalize homeless populations and remove resources from permanent housing and put them into treatment, right? Like one, you know, like basically is advocating that we need to dismiss, quote, the Marxist idea that American capitalism causes homelessness, right? And that again, right? Like in a way, like he, that is the, like, as you said, that's the right wing demystification of the problem. It's just

that he wants to dismiss it, right? But like, it's just that he wants to dismiss it. Right. But like, it's just that he wants to dismiss it, which is actually like I mean, in a way that like that's why, you know, it's like like if they weren't ultimately so ineffective, violent and evil, like I would spend more time in pity for the liberal because it is a very confused life. and pity for the liberal because it is a very confused life you know it's gotta be it's gotta be well that's what makes it hard to actually i don't know i mean because like i feel like we've been dancing around this especially since october 7th we've been dancing around this for probably years though which i mean is the liberal the main enemy here? Because like genuinely, like I obviously like hate the conservative because they want to kill me. But like the liberal, it's just like, how do you even? Well, but letting you die, like what's the difference between letting you die and killing you? And that's actually like, I think that, you know, for me, me it's really about like it's all right to have two kinds of enemies one that wants to let you die and the other one that wants to kill you

and you just need like different strategies to address both of those enemies it sucks to have to do it at the same time when they are and it sucks because they are always using you to triangulate against each other right but it's just like that's the triangle it's true i mean i one of the things that was funny about your piece is like one i think the guy that wanted to do the cal psych thing he was pissed that newsome was stealing his idea yes my idea yes yes schalkenberger or whatever who wrote um like uh like why progressives ruin cities and then he accuses Gavin Newsom of stealing his fantasy agency that fuses policing and mental health services right yeah I think that that's gonna be and I've already seen this um you already pointed to it in kentucky but like that is really

the future it's like i as someone who struggles with uh addiction and mental health it's fucking maddening that uh that is basically like what is uh going to be the kind of terrain on which this gets played out um but but yeah I think that that's the thing. It's like that's their method of being able to just adopt the kind of like mass exterminationist policy. You know, the liberals don't call it that. They don't even really see it that way. But I don't know.

I think that that's really, however, you know, kind of wrapping up here, I think that's the, however, you know, kind of wrapping up here. I think that's the utility of pieces like yours, like the one you wrote. And I got a lot out of it. And I really encourage everybody to go read it. It's for the New Republic. It's called The New Sundown Towns. And Tracy, do you have anything else you want to plug?

I know you've got something. You've got a book coming out. Oh, right. I'm supposed to start doing this. I'm supposed to start doing this. You're supposed to start plugging the book. You've got to plug the book, homie. This is my first book plug.

Baby's first book plug. Okay. Yeah, it's September 24th. Haymarket is going to publish Abolish Rent, written by me and my mentor, Leonardo Vilches. And shit, I've never done this before. What am I supposed to say? Just say buy the book. It's the best book. Yeah. Pre-order. I actually, I think we don't have a pre-order link yet. I'm sorry. But yeah. What's it called and what's it about? Let's hear that. Okay. The book is called Abolish Rent. And it's, you know, it's basically a polemic against that power relation that we spend every first of the month

in dread of. It has a history of the housing policies that have basically trapped tenants in the subordinate status that we find ourselves. And it really is the stories of poor and working class people organizing in the Los Angeles Tenant Union, which me and my mentor helped start to really take on those power relationships at the level of their landlord and at the level of the city and like you know imagine another way of relating to land to our cities and to each other hey for baby's first book plug i think you that was a hell of a first go i gotta say all right all right why thank you i'm like don't say that phrase baby's first butt plug, like too fast. Because it'll sound like something else.

You're right. Baby's first butt plug. I'm just not. That's okay, too. Look, I also remember baby's first butt plug. So there's not, there's, what is that? All-inclusive space. All right.

We're doing butt plugs. We're doing book we're doing book plugs butt plugs that's that's great i'm happy to be here it was no really but actually thank you so much for inviting me it's been really cool well um go check out tracy's new book uh when it comes out two days before my birthday i shouldn't say i shouldn't drop my birthday on here but uh you guys can do math. Yeah, definitely. I'm marking my calendar right now. There you go. I'll buy it for myself.

Go buy Tia's a copy of Tracy's book for his birthday. Yeah, that's true. You're everybody like every single present is going to be my identical book. You're just going to have a stack of them. 24 copies. I wish I had that many friends, Tracy. Unfortunately, no. Okay, well, I'll send you a couple. 24 copies. I wish I had that many friends, Tracy. Unfortunately, no. Okay, well, I'll send you a couple. I promise.

Please do. Please go check out Tracy's book and please go read their article in The New Republic. We'd love to have you back on sometime. Yeah, I'd love to. We can examine more anti-Irish

sentiment from the Israeli government. That would be great. All right. Well, thanks for tuning in, everybody. We would also like to encourage you all to go check out our Patreon. Holy fuck, I got a plug, too. I have a plug, and I just remembered. I was like, I got to remember this.

I'm going gonna fucking forget on the 27th memorial day uh the the evening of the 27th i'm doing a reading at kentucky native cafe in lexington they asked me to read i was like i'm a journalist i hope that's all right they were like no please like you know we don't care and so uh i'm gonna read some real motherfucking journalists for a public audience. I've never done that before. So we're going to see how it goes. I usually just read people's deranged articles to make fun of or my friends' good articles like Tracy's. But I'm going to read my own article for once.

So that is, if you want to check that out, I'll probably have a link in the show notes for that. And we'll also have a link to Tracy's article. So anyways, please go check us out on Patreon. That's in the show notes as well. We'll see you next time. Thanks again, Tracy.

Thank you. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you.