Real Change News | Tim Burgess’ proposal

September 16, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 41

Director's Corner

Tim Burgess’ proposal

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After Tacoma’s introduction last year of the most restrictive time, place, and manner of panhandling restrictions in the nation, we knew that it was only a matter of time before Seattle followed suit. Councilmember Tim Burgess announced this week in the Seattle Times that he will introduce legislation to the council this fall that echoes the Tacoma approach.

Some of these are reasonable enough. No one, for example, wants to be panhandled while using an ATM machine. Outlawing begging on freeway on-ramps, however, is not about public safety. This is about perception.

Over the last three decades, inequality in America has steadily widened, and this is nowhere more apparent than here. The glass residential fortresses that have erupted on the downtown skyline bear witness to our changing demographics. Seattle, like cities throughout the nation, has become an island of affluence in a sea of rising inequality.

Urban poverty, meanwhile, has only become more extreme. As the bottom has fallen out of an irrational system, the ailing human services infrastructure has fallen further and further behind in meeting the need. When misery collides with affluence, the affluent become uncomfortable, and the miserable are blamed.

The answer, in cities across the nation, is to deny the social forces at work and to focus on individual failure and “deviance.” Suddenly every man is an island, and if your island is an eyesore, then you, personally, must be to blame. Laws are passed to encode this as public policy. The outward signs of extreme poverty are criminalized, surveillance and policing intensify, and the jails fill with those who are surplus to the workings of the economy.
When a homeless person goes to jail, they are no longer “homeless.” Indeed, jails have become the national federal housing program.

The Burgess proposal isn’t about panhandling. It’s about the management of visible poverty. More is at stake than anybody realizes, and we won’t stand by and let this happen without a fight.

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