by Dan Everhart
On Sept. 4, a group of local human rights advocates, organizing under the name “Housing Not Handcuffs,” expressed their outrage over Chico City Council’s consistent and enduring ineptitude on the matter of homelessness by disrupting the meeting in protest over conservative enthusiasm for criminalizing our unhoused neighbors even further.
The rich enjoy more polite means of gaining Council’s attention, the rest of us must purchase it with speech amplified enough to be heard above the deafening roar of their wealth.
A serious problem has grown steadily worse for years and still no viable solutions are blossoming from local government despite such fertile circumstances. Elected officials reject all research, reason and experience in response to the common modern social problems of wealth inequality, economic exploitation and housing affordability. For many years now, Chico’s General Plan has described deepening shortfalls in affordable housing. For even longer, City Council has done nothing to reduce the problem or to forestall its projected worsening.