Posted by Thomas 12/1/03

The San Francisco Chronicle is running a five part series on the seemingly permanent "homelessness crisis." Today's (12/1) installment follows a family who moved here in 1999, to get away from the winters of Vermont, and because they heard one could easily get a job and housing. Perhaps not so incidentally, they also left behind the relatives with whom they had been living. Four years later, they are living in an old Dodge van, sending their two children to school, and waiting around all day for the kids to get home. Their sole support is a monthly Social Security check for about $1200, plus whatever unspecified returns they get from begging on the streets. The writer isn't much interested in that particular topic, and doesn't mention whether or not the children are ever involved in the family business. These people make it clear that they are not stupid. Both parents have some degree of physical challenge, but neither seems to have explored the option of work in an environment which does not rely on physical effort. In other words, they have chosen pauperism — deliberate dependence on others via a refusal to work. Their only hope for bettering their circumstances lies in reasching the top of the waiting list for HUD's Section 8 housing voucher plan. Thus, they would more than double their monthly receipts from the taxes paid by people who ignore their aches and pains, and shuffle off to work every day. The permissive welfare state which enables this pauperism, and the moral climate created by those who find such people to be worthy beneficiaries of false "compassion," combine to keep them in a morally degraded life of utter dependency. Even worse, their children are trapped in a dangerous and degrading life chosen by their parents.