The Unhoused Will Feel It First

An election reflection

Hey everyone. I know we’re feeling a lot right now. You may be sick of emails and takes. I get that. Do what you need. And if you’re ready to spring into action, read on.

If you’re a person of any privilege whatsoever, we need you to care about homelessness more right now than you did on Monday.

And I know that if you’re here, reading this, you already care. Probably a lot.

But we need to be honest about what’s coming—what’s already here—and who will experience it first.

This year has already been a disaster for people who experience homelessness, and both parties are to blame. While it was ultimately Trump’s Supreme Court nominees that allowed for the Johnson v Grants Pass ruling, it was Democratic governors and mayors like Gavin Newsom, Jacob Frey, Ted Wheeler, and the like who rushed in to gleefully use the ruling to terrorize encampments. (All of whom also believe themselves to be significant future players in the Democratic Party.) The same people who wrote Project 2025 for Vance, Musk, and tech conservatives also fund the Cicero Group, who are responsible for all of the anti-homeless legislation that’s been sweeping the country the last four years. Despite typical party politics, the Cicero Group’s legislation finds eager implementers in the Bluest cities.

incredible protest art (as usual) from WRAP - https://wraphome.org/2024/11/05/accountable-organizing-through-outreach-in-our-communities/

Homelessness, in this way, is a bellwether for where our country is headed. All of the at-risk vulnerable groups—immigrants, women, LGBTQIA+ folks, black and indigenous peoples—are all overrepresented in homelessness, and have the added vulnerability of being without a home. The way this country has treated unhoused people in 2024 anticipates how these same vulnerable populations who have homes, incomes, and some safety nets will be treated later.

Many people in America have great reason to be afraid that over the next four years that they will be targeted by community violence, be unprotected by police, and face criminalization and even imprisonment simply for being who they are. Our government has showed their willingness and ability to do this in how they’ve treated unhoused people. We’ve allowed this to happen—in some cases even cheering it on—believing it won’t one day come for us, too. After Tuesday, I’m less sure than ever that this isn’t a template for what will continually be expanded to more and more groups.

If this is their template, we need to develop ours.

We must resist demonization, dehumanization, scapegoating, and discarding of groups of people wherever we see it—and right now, both parties are united in doing this to unhoused people. (And Palestinian people… see this post from earlier this year to understand the connection.) Our resistance in this moment to protect people experiencing homelessness from violence, criminalization, and domicide must foreshadow our resistance for everything we fear is coming.

Whatever you imagine or believe you will do when the thing you fear is coming, you should be doing now to protect unhoused people. Every inch we cede to these forces of dehumanization is momentum they will use to harm us all.

Pastor Martin Niemoller’s First They Came is as prescient as ever:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Now is the time to speak out on behalf of those who are already being targeted indiscriminately by all those in power. If we don’t… well, we know how the poem ends.

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