Thread by @neonflag

What the hell is this. This legislation came out of nowhere 10 days ago. It appears on its face to prohibit municipalities from providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness.

legis.ga.gov/legislation/62…

#gapol #atlanta

Some state senator drove by encampments on the way to the capitol and decided the best thing he could do is to force them to sleep in the cars they don't have or in pillboxes instead of, you know, an actual apartment.

It prohibits spending more than $35,000 per unit on shelter, exclusive of land costs. Which is to say, it prohibits building an actual home within 100 miles of Atlanta.

It also treats Atlanta in fundamentally different ways than the rest of Georgia. Because white Republicans.

It also mandates that street outreach teams operate with a police presence. Because, surely, amid an extraordinary increase in violent crime, the best use of police power is to harass the homeless.

As though anyone has this kind of staffing.

More to the point: the bill doesn't just undermine Housing First, by requiring police it all but guarantees that homeless people will get arrested, because many will refuse to cooperate with outreach in the presence of a cop. Mental health outreach case workers know this well.

I assume this is the semiannual venting by some elected official who thinks he's "doing something" about unsightly homeless people where, somehow, all the people actually working on the problem have failed.

Because, surely, inflicting more pain at government gunpoint will work.

The bill is sociopathic.

It is embarrassing to read. It is Hee Haw politics that should shame decent people. And it is going to waste the time of folks who have better things to do.

And yes, @SummersForGa, I mean you. Cut the shit.