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Drug Addiction, Politics and Affordable Housing.
Can handle any drug problems?
Can we get the city to keep its promise of affordable housing?
After we finally got the city of San Jose to agree to giving us affordable housing in
April, and keep our shelter open until then after two weeks of news coverage by every TV station
in the Bay area, the local newspaper, lots of radio stations and The
the city gave in, and not only let us operate a shelter,
the shelter closed, in April. Keeping drug addicts from taking over
the shelter was our new challenge, and if the past is any
guide, the city will try to reneg on its promise and we'll have to
fight to get it.
Drug Addiction
Drug addiction
warps people's brains so much, drugs become their God. Whether its crack,
heroin, or crank, it destroys people's sence of decency.
They're even more psychotic than CEOs! They see
everything in terms of getting the next fix. They see people just as
objects they can control, whether it's people they can con or people
who they can steal from. The main problem with jail for them is that
it's harder to get drugs behind bars. Eventually their face becomes
dead, empty and souless. It's impossible to reason with drug addicts, so
we have to kick them out before they destroy the group. My concern is
that the leaders will not realize how serious the threat from drugs
is. After the fight we had with the city, we might forget how bad the
problem is.
December
I'm very surprised how well we're dealing with drug and alcohol users
while our shelter is at the church. People who come in loaded are told
to leave. There are lots of TV news crews here, because the city is
threatening a $2500/day fine, so it's doubly important now! The
city backed down, gave us a shelter to move into, and agreed to put
us in permenment affordable housing by April Fools Day.
January
The New Shelter
Now that we're out of the glare of TV cameras, the leaders have become very
lax on drug abusers. They have decided to set up things democratically,
very one has a vote, even the most warped addicts.
Democracy and Drug Addiction
Some things just don't mix! There are three groups in the shelter.
1) Drug Abusers.
2) People who know how dangerous drug are.
3) People who think understanding by itself, is all that is need to end
people's drug problems.
There are people here in group 2 who feel nervous about the situation
here, but there are enough people in groups 1 and 3 to be dangerous. The addicts
have mad life uncomfortable, the addicts are kicking people around so much,
they started to drive decent people out. Once
they were the majority, they kicked out anyone who would stand up to
them. We decided to admit only families, but there were mothers who had
drug habits coming in. By the end of May, it was still our major problem.
April 5,1998 The city is trying to reneg on its promises.
no housing yet (even though they've had 4 months to find it).
They have given the shelter a 30 day extension.
The Easter Protest
Two newscrews - Channel 7 & 8 were there. As always, we were
on our best behaviour. During the march we stopped at a
building that was declared public access by the courts.
(It contains some city offices as well as The Fairmont Hotel.)
In front of the TV cameras, a rather burly security
guard shoves us! I'm not certain if any of the newscrews
go that picture but, it would be great to have them make fools of
themselves in front of 100,000 people!
May
After some very heated arguments with city officials, they have
agreed on putting the residents up in hotels for 1 month, again on a
temporary basis. Are they stalling for time until the primaries (early June)?
They certainly are making this as tough as possible, so we don't
have enough energy for organizing.
Drugs
Living in hotels, we have a good chance to get the drug addicts out.
Sometimes they'd cash their rent checks for drugs, and additionally
the hotel managers are keeping their eyes out, for trouble, evicting those who
are using. We're supposed to be moving into permenent housing in June,
and we really need to weed out the addicts before then.
Late May
The drug problem has gotten so bad that myself and all 3 other housemates who
belonged to the homeless alliance have left.
It's a tragedy that we managed to get housing and now we're no one decent can
live there, just because we weren't willing to evict the alcoholics and drug
addicts among us!
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