Its a scary thought. People slept outdoors last night in a situation exactly like this. That isn’t that big a deal in the southern United States, but here in Iowa last night it was 5 degrees. Five. You need to be outside at about 3 am sometime to get a real feel for what that temperature feels like. That’s dying weather. Every so often the Des Moines City Council gets a bee up their butt and has the police and fire department go down by the riverside and bust up the homeless encampments under the guise they are a “fire hazard”. They don’t provide an alternative or any help, they just say “you ain’t living here!”
What the point of that is, is beyond me. The “campers” have setup a situation over the summer accumulating enough stuff to survive the winter, and the City kicks them out at the coldest time of the year. Now they have to go somewhere else. For 20 years I’ve wondered, the State Fair campgrounds is only used 2 weeks a year, why couldn’t Des Moines’ homeless stay there the other 50 weeks? Think about it. You have fire grates, electricity, water, toilets, showers, comparable heaven to living by the river. The infrastructure there is setup for camping. Not only that, but by having the homeless in a centralized spot, access to associated help would be much easier.
The “can’t do” attitude that permeates bureaucracy is what prevents it from happening. The big obstacle I see would be where do they go for the 3 weeks around the Fair? You’d think you could get area philanthropic groups to help clear them out/move them back for the 10 days of the Fair. I don’t know. The whole thing is rather daunting. The first I noticed it was in the early 80’s during the Reagan administration. It was all the rage because the media wanted something to bash Reagan over the head with like the country’s new homeless problem was his fault.
In a case about 1978 , most of the State run mental institutions were emptied. The ACLU and others felt it was wrong to institutionalize incompetent people against their will. It was much better to put them on the streets where they couldn’t possibly survive. So big surprise Reagan inherited Carter’s stupidity. It was further made worse by the move to outpatient the problem to “residential facilities”. What that meant was instead of State run hospitals with good wages and funding, they ‘privatized‘ (funneled money to their cronies) into group homes.
Nothing got solved of course, it just got that generation of politicians through the next election under the guise of “cost savings”. They couldn’t leave well-enough alone. Iowa for example had 5 or 6 hospitals covering each region of the state. Not perfect but we didn’t have people dying from the elements under bridges. Now in “modern” America we have the authorities busting up camps no different than during the Depression or after the Civil War. How progressive.
Central Iowa Shelter & Services Family Promise of Greater Des Moines
[I hope “Randy & Elaine” made it last night. Their camp looked exactly like the one above. The knock on Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta was that keeping people on subsistence living did nothing to improve their situation. On the other hand, when people are barely holding on to the last rung of society’s ladder, kicking them out of their tent in winter isn’t a good thing either. “Teach them how to fish” in the spring, make sure they get through the winter first.]
JOPPA seems to be taking it to the streets. Boots, heaters, propane tanks, man stuff. The name is from Acts 9:36.
Iowa life 
When I worked in Flagstaff, which is up in the mountains, I never understood why so many of the homeless stayed there in the snow and ice. Sometimes, drunken ones would be found downtown, passed out in the snow, by the police, and they’d haul them to the ER. The smarter ones always headed south to Phoenix in the autumn. I was in Flagstaff when a homeless person started a wildfire with his cooking stove and almost burned down the town. It looked like Armageddon with all the smoke and flames, and the sun was red as hot coals. Several more fires were started by homeless people which did massive damage to the mountainsides and led to mudslides and flooding when the rains came. Needless to say, the town began cracking down on the homeless. One thing that was blatantly obvious to me when I worked in mental health is that there is no place to put these people. So many cannot take care of themselves, and yet, they are allowed run free in society because their “rights” might be violated. It’s actually cruel and barbaric treatment of the mentally ill. They are left to fend for themselves, and so many of them do not take their medications or keep the appointments with their case managers. There were abuses with the state hospitals, but that could have been corrected. Instead, we ended up with this free-for-all situation that is hurting everybody, when all we have to do is re-open the state institutions and give actual help and aid to the people who can’t function in society. There is so much ignorance about mental illness and the mental health system, I just cringe when I hear political activists and politicians talk about it.
Thanks for those insights. I saw an old movie from about 1946. The hero was on the lam/lamb. Where he hid out was fascinating. In the old days a big city would take like an old warehouse and turn it over to a charity. They charged like .50 cents a night and the people who needed it could sleep there on cots and would have access to sanitary facilities. The revenue would be used to pay the staff (people trying to get back on their feet) to clean and wash the bed clothes each morning. Centralized services. Beat sleeping under a bridge. Flop-house? The charity would get their “do-gooder” feeling, the homeless would stand a chance to get on their feet. A little hope. Joppa here each spring has their list of people who didn’t make it through the winter.
There are three homeless shelters in Flagstaff, but many people would refuse to go there. 1. Can’t drink or use drugs. 2. Bedbugs and unsavory characters. 3. Religious affiliations for at least one. 4. Don’t want to follow the rules. So, I don’t know what to say. You can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. All you can do is offer the services.