Redding Mayor and Bethel Mega-Church Elder Julie Winter recently sent a letter to Governor Newsome asking the State to fund what is basically a concentration camp for the area's three thousand homeless people, where they would be forced to stay until they can somehow manage to become housed and "self-sufficient"
Under this proposal homeless detainees would also be deprived of whatever meager income they may have until the government agents in charge are convinced that the homeless person will only spend their money on what these agents deem acceptable.
The obvious illegalities of her fascist proposal aside, she failed to acknowledge that Redding's rental market is nearly non-existent, and that the local rental vacancy rate was less than two percent even before last year's devastating fires. Nor did she mention that the thousands of Bethel adherents who have flooded the area in recent years are - to a notable extent - responsible for Redding's severe housing shortage. More than a few local families and what are often elderly and/or disabled individuals have lost their housing to crowds of Bethel students, who bring in far more money for greedy property owners than many locals can afford to pay.
This heavy deluge of outsiders into our small city has contributed directly to local homelessness. It has also raised the cost of whatever housing remains, which makes the poor even poorer (and closer to homelessness), and creates a situation where fewer people working in the area's many low-wage jobs can actually qualify for a roof over their heads.
I have a two-fold alternative proposal. Bethel provides no housing for its several thousand "supernatural" students, or the countless other Bethel groupies who invade the area every year. Neither will we be seeing any housing included in Bethel's upcoming $148 million 39-acre mega-church complex. I would suggest that Bethel use some of its $60.8 million annual income to provide housing for its students and other followers, which would free up existing housing for the actual locals, and potentially lower rents.
Secondly, the Redding City Council has chosen to ignore recommendations from Housing First program experts, who made the provable case that supportive housing - however minimal - has dramatically reduced chronic homelessness and improved prospects for the mentally ill/substance-addicted (often one and the same) as nothing else can. It has also saved participating cities millions of dollars a year in the process.
Perhaps Bethel could get the ball rolling on that program locally, since it does little else to help address a crisis it's at least partially responsible for creating except pass the plate on occassion for Shasta County's single vastly over-crowded fire-and-brimstone homeless shelter, with its largely failed punish-the-sinner approach.
Purging its world-wide base of operations of unsightly homeless people has been high priority for Bethel. However, there's a right way and a wrong way, and forcing people into a prison/concentration camp facility until they accomplish the impossible (without the addition of more humane and practical solutions) is definitely the wrong way.
Patrecia Barrett
