The Daily Agenda: Everything looks like a nail
Mayoral candidates talk tough on homelessness ... Jail is go-to option for some ... Today is last day to register to vote.
You can tell a lot about a person, or a political candidate, by how they talk about and treat powerless people living through their most vulnerable moments.
How we want our elected officials to deal with homelessness is one of the most important questions voters will have to consider in next month’s elections for Tucson’s mayor and three council members.
At two recent forums — one on Sept. 27 and the other on Saturday — the candidates outlined their approach to solving the problem, and the role that law enforcement should play.
Boiled down, independent mayoral candidate Ed Ackerley and Republican Janet Wittenbraker would quickly reach for a law enforcement solution if they were elected. Mayor Regina Romero, a Democrat, said she wants law enforcement to play a lesser role so “the right work is in the right hands,” such as the community health staff the city hired in recent years.
To be clear, Ackerley and Wittenbraker both acknowledged the tragedy of homelessness and said they wanted empathy to be part of the solution.
But when you watch the forums (and we hope you do) you can see moments when the hard-nosed approach starts to run wild. As the saying goes, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
At one point, Ackerley said fining people for giving money to homeless people is “something that we could look at.” That would mean the police could fine you for rolling down your window and handing a dollar bill to a destitute guy on the median.
Wittenbraker also was quick to reach for the arrest option, like when she talked about how strongly she disagrees with the city’s Housing First approach, which focuses on getting people shelter, even if they use drugs.
“We need to hold our citizens accountable. And if they’re not, they need to be arrested. And that is it,” she said.
Ackerley echoed that hard line when it came to people with a fentanyl addiction.
”We need to give them choice A or B: They either go get some help or we incarcerate them,” Ackerley said.
Wittenbraker was laser-focused on fentanyl whenever homelessness came up. She said roughly 80% of homelessness was attributable to substance abuse. She said it at both forums, but she didn’t give a source either time.
That seemed high to us. We looked up the “point-in-time” counts, which showed about 25% of local homeless people suffer from a substance abuse disorder. Wittenbraker may have been referring to the chronically homeless, who have a considerably higher rate of substance abuse.
When Ackerley was asked how he would handle homelessness at the Sept. 27 forum, his answer was “let’s get the cash registers ringing really loudly.”
That’s obviously a great thing for the local business crowd to hear. But also, he’s not wrong. As he pointed out, more sales means more sales tax revenue, which means more money for the city to spend on programs that can help the homeless.
When Romero made her case, she pointed to a “holistic” approach the city adopted after she was elected in 2019, such as the Housing Affordability Strategy for Tucson.
At the time, the city did not have an organized plan to “address the need for more affordable housing and the growing parallel crisis across our country of unsheltered homelessness and the fentanyl and opioid epidemic,” she said.
The number of local homeless people, particularly those who have no shelter whatsoever, has skyrocketed under Romero’s leadership.
But to be fair, the numbers have skyrocketed most everywhere -- mostly due to factors over which a mayor has little to no control. And she has put in place various programs to deal with homelessness, with some success.
City officials also developed the Housing First program, which Romero called an evidence-based solution that is just one “piece of the puzzle.” That program led to more than 600 people getting permanent housing in its first 18 months.
All told, there were about 2,200 homeless local people when officials did the point-in-time count in January.
It’s easy for Ackerley and Wittenbraker to hammer Romero’s failures when it comes to solving the homeless crisis. And changes to the way we police homelessness may, in fact, be part of a solution to the city’s homeless problem.
But simply throwing more addicts in jail and outlawing giving a buck to someone who’s down on their luck does not address the root causes of, and cannot solve, Tucson’s homeless epidemic.
Shortage of services: The availability of Spanish-language mental health care treatments across the state is decreasing, Cronkite News’ John Leos reports. The percentage of facilities that offer mental health care in Spanish dropped between 2014 and 2019 in 44 states, including Arizona, per one study. Only about 8% of the U.S. psychology workforce identified as Hispanic, compared to about 18% of the U.S. population.
“When it comes to expressing emotional distress or emotional elation, we gravitate towards the Spanish language,” Manuel Zamarripa, president of the National Latinx Psychological Association, said. “When we are not able to do that because the person across from us can’t understand, that’s incredibly significant.”
Get out the vote: Today is the last day to register to vote for next month’s general election, the Arizona Daily Star’s Nicole Ludden writes. All ballots will be mailed out by Wednesday. The last day to put your ballots in the mail is Oct. 31, but drop-off locations will be open from Oct. 11 through Nov. 6. Replacement ballot centers and drop-off locations are available from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.
You can vote with your dollars to support local news this election cycle. Just click the button.
Creating safe spaces: A local leadership coach and nonprofit CEO has created a new networking group in Tucson where people of color can talk about career growth and leadership in a space that’s free from objectification, tokenization and marginalization, the Arizona Luminaria’s Becky Pallack writes. The first two Ascending Leaders in Color cohorts were started in May by Frank Velásquez Jr. with scholarships from Community Investment Corp. and the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona.
Funding online education: Pima Community College has been awarded $3 million to help low-income and Hispanic students complete degrees online, the Pima Post’s Ruth Behr reports. The grant will help Pima create of a Virtual Success Center with online coaching, mentoring and other virtual engagement opportunities, and also fund new content and professional development for staff. Pima continues to see an increase in online enrollment, with 47% of classes this semester being offered online.
Relooking at the future: The director of the University of Arizona’s newly formed School of Mining and Mineral Resources says his vision includes re-engaging the mining workforce, reimagining mining education and reinvigorating mining research, El Inde’s Tanya Ence writes. The UA is one of only four mining schools in the country that has a laboratory where students can get hands-on experience.
“The need for abundant minerals is absolutely urgent,” said director Misael Cabrera. “At the heart of it is that if we’re going to replace fossil fuels with electric energy, we are going to need a lot more minerals than we’ve ever needed in the past.”
Mallfunction: Park Place Mall’s new management company is hoping to re-engage the community and bring in new experiences, after purchasing the mall for $87 million at a foreclosure auction, KVOA’s Gabriel Paz and Katie Burkholder report. The property had an outstanding loan of $154 million and was owned by Brookfield Corp., which also owns the Tucson Mall, when it went into foreclosure.
10,000: The number of homeless people in Maricopa County.