War on the Poor or Helpful Heart of Republican President?

     I was surprised to see an article today in the Washington Post saying that President Trump was declaring as a result of his visit to California, that he wanted to take federal action to clean up homeless encampments in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I was personally stunned at the vitriol against said "homeless," but also by the fact of the matter that his proposed action as leaked by insiders is liberal in nature.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-homeless-people-hurt-the-prestige-of-los-angeles-san-francisco/2019/09/17/71e71b9e-d982-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html

   In truth, I don't really have a problem with him trying to set up a better place for the tenants of Skid Row in Los Angeles. I just don't understand how it is a federal matter. I'd be really more comfortable with the effort if The President would arrange for legislation for block grants to be passed down to local governments to address these problems as they see fit. His proposed action is even termed in this article as "sweeping unilateral action ON homeless." Sorry to say so, but that sounds a little bit like Bismarck meets American liberalism. It's taking the presumption that the government must fix everyone's problems and then applying a unilateral sweeping approach. 

   I can understand the economic vision of Trump here. After all, everyone will blame or praise him later for the economy during his time as president. However, there are more factors involved than "property values" of real estate and what these owners want done. Any action like this is only like a temporary "band aid" and does not really address underlying problems that cause homelessness. Among those underlying problems for many people would be not only the issues of mental illness and drug abuse, but also unemployment, housing costs, under-education, divorce, criminalization, and abuses by systems such as the criminal justice system and mental health systems. All this is not to mention the actual rights that these people are supposed to have- to peaceably exist without interference. The homeless have the same Fourteenth Amendment rights of equal protection under the law as the rich business and property owners of these cities. I don't agree with the legal preference here guarding more highly the rights of the rich over the impoverished. 

   Whenever you reduce rights by police interference and criminalize any given activity, you are only feeding back into the law enforcement and justice system which makes money off of the tickets and cases that come in. On top of it, the system marks people with charges on their criminal records, only to mark them again for loitering or camping when that system in the first place was the cause of their unemployment and their plight. This is a vicious circle that only stops when people get an understanding and show compassion- that includes the police and everyone involved.

   It is not like there is currently nothing being done about the issue of homelessness. Police do actually take action in California cities on a regular basis to clean up homeless problems. These problems persist, though, because the underlying causes are not being dealt with, and also people, to a certain degree, have a right to be that way so long as they do not damage property or loiter unwanted. Also, the poor do see regular police actions and interventions on them as being a "war on them," unless the actions are compassionate and those doing it can listen to their actual wants, needs, and complaints, and give them options in their favor to choose from. To leave the matter to private property owners to police their own property with security guards is actual a more Republican/conservative approach to the problem, and that is the way it typically has been done in a lot of places. However, that practice makes for a very uptight urban environment where passerbys are not even allowed to stop and/or stand in front of certain building locations. Guards may be as strict as they want to be about what can and cannot be done on the property. 

   I know I am being a little bit critical here, but Trump's rhetoric on this topic does seem to be little bit dehumanizing to the poor. I would like to see done a very humane approach to helping the poor in these cities, and one which respects people's right to exist peaceably without interference from Big Brother. Perhaps the President's zeal could be balanced out, as I stated above, not only by more local oversight on the funding, but also with a humane approach that respects of the poor as persons created in God's image. 

   I think the "prestige" of a city should be of lower concern than the "justice, fairness, and equality" of a city, not to mention "charitable ethics" of a city.