“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

I hadn’t commented before on the lack of planning for extreme weather shelters in Orange County because the Observer and the Orange County Register seemed to have the matter well in hand. But since apparently no one on any of the City Councils in the County has been listening, a comment from yours truly on the front lines might have some value.

It seems clear, given the scope of the unhoused problem in Orange County, that every city from La Habra to San Clemente should have at least one operating emergency winter shelter. This certainly would have been welcome this past holiday week, where, thanks to the multiple atmospheric rivers passing through from the tropics, we had one of the wettest Christmases on record.

And yet, there was no emergency program ready to receive on the instant those needing shelter from the downpours that swept through on Christmas week. Even Santa Ana and Fullerton, unlike previous years, had made no such provisions. To say that was inexcusable is an understatement.

By the time this sees print, the Christmas Storms will be gone, leaving many leaky roofs, potential mudslides and other collateral property and personal damage in their wake. And yet, county officials claim we are better situated for unhoused shelter this winter, with more shelter beds and hotel voucher programs in place. However, as Claire Wang noted in the opening paragraph of her December 24 Register story, “Orange County is entering winter again without a dedicated emergency shelter for homeless people,” and whereas emergency shelters are designed to get people temporary shelter quickly, there is no such guarantee with the added shelter beds and voucher program.

Also consider the words of Michael Sean Wright, director of field medicine for the Lestonnac Free Clinic in Orange and founder of Wound Walk OC, quoted at length in Wang’s article: “Folks who become unhoused or housing unstable do not adhere to a calendar…If you happen to become unhoused during times of inclement weather, there are no opportunities for you. To hear a county of this size with tens of millions of dollars say, ‘We’ve done enough,’ I say, ‘Look out your window today and ask if you’ve done enough.’”

Predicting emergencies is still an inexact science, but it was well known, days in advance, that the aforementioned atmospheric rivers would bring hard rains to the region around Christmas time. If plans had been made months in advance to utilize emergency facilities–as had been done in previous years–this emergency could have been handled.

Unfortunately, Santa Ana and Fullerton, in particular, have chosen–for the past 3 years–not to prepare and open the facilities at the National Guard armories in those cities. No explanation. Just apparent unwillingness. Inexcusable. Unacceptable.

If we are ever going to get a handle on the unhoused crisis, two key things need to happen:
1) we need to find out what methods work, and which don’t, and dispense with the latter;
2) use the new technologies in energy collection and home building to optimize housing availability.
For instance, it should be glaringly obvious to anyone even vaguely familiar with the problem that jailing the homeless should end immediately. It is a waste of money and only serves to further traumatize and stigmatize an already obscenely traumatized and stigmatized population.

We have the capability to build “tiny” homes quickly and cheaply. We have multiple non-coal and gas resources available to light and power those homes–hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, and solar power, amongst them.

The idea of “drill, baby, drill” to solve our ongoing energy crisis is obsolete and antiquated. There is, therefore, no longer any reason why anyone should be homeless.

Dovetailing with the need to solve the crisis in housing is the equally encroaching crisis in employment. Jobs are becoming scarcer through automation, which has been the trend since 1970 and has exponentially accelerated with the increasing development and sophistication of artificial intelligences.

What no one is saying — the “quiet part” — is that computers don’t need to be paid. They do not draw a salary. They have no expenses for which a salary would be required. So, why not use those savings and the profits derived thereof to pay the workers who were put out of work by automation? That is the thinking behind universal basic income, which I have written about repeatedly.

Denmark recently concluded its own experiment with UBI, and the results were the same as in other studies worldwide: those given UBI did three things:
1) paid off overdue bills;
2) made purchases of needed materials not previously affordable;
3) put the remainder into checking and savings accounts. The obvious advantages to economies worldwide are starkly apparent.
“But what will happen to people when they don’t have to go to work? Won’t they just lie around, smoke pot and play video games?”

At first, some will. But then, they will get bored with that and will start to think about these questions posed by Buckminster Fuller:
“What was it I was thinking about when I was told I had to ‘earn a living’ — doing what someone else had decided needed to be done?
What do I see that needs to be done that no one else is attending to?
What do I need to learn to be effective in attending to it in a highly efficient and inoffensive-to-others manner?”
That is the future we should be working towards. Innovation and invention are born when one has time to think. “Innovation leads to prosperity and prosperity leads to peace.” Jack Ma.

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