Podcast Episode #6 – A Thoughtful Response

How Rights and Responsibilities Relate to Trash | By Donald Burnes

After listening to the #6 podcast on street homeless encampments and trash, I was reminded of one of my sessions in my class on homelessness. This class dealt with rights and responsibilities within the framework of homelessness.

As I talked with the class, I suggested that we consider three major groups of concerned citizens: those experiencing homelessness, especially those living on the streets, the unsheltered; the commercial, retail, and overall business sector; and the general public. I also indicated that I thought each of these three groups had both rights and responsibilities.

Let’s first look at rights, and I don’t necessarily mean legal rights, but rather general moral rights. First, for the unhoused, I asserted they had a right to a safe, secure, and hospitable place to sleep at night. For the commercial and business community including tourism, I indicated that they had a right to unfettered business activity. The general public had a right to pleasant open space, clean parks, clean streets and major thoroughfares, and safe sidewalks.

Now, let’s look at responsibilities. Those experiencing homelessness do have responsibilities, namely, to take care of bodily functions so as not to despoil public or private property, dispose of trash in acceptable ways, minimize public disturbances as much as possible. However, in order for the unhoused to carry out their responsibilities, facilities must be made available—port-a-potties, shower trucks, trash receptacles/dumpsters, medical emergency equipment available in case of physical or behavioral health emergencies, etc. Without these facilities, how are the unsheltered supposed to take care of bodily functions in a clean and sanitary manner, dispose of trash safely, take care of medical emergencies?

For the commercial and business interests, they have responsibilities too. To make sure their rights are protected, they must work to ensure the necessary facilities are available to the unsheltered. If they don’t want human urine and excrement or human bodies on their doorstep, they have a responsibility to ensure the unhoused have acceptable facilities. They also have a responsibility to the general public to create a positive community environment both for improving their own revenue and for working toward the public good. Either through creating facilities by means of their own resources or by advocating that the city provide the appropriate facilities, they must fulfill their own responsibilities.

The same is true of the general public. It is by creating political pressure on the business community and/or by urging the city to provide facilities that the public can fulfill its responsibilities. I would argue that members of the public have a significant choice to make, i.e., to focus on their own personal well-being or to be sensitive to the well-being of the entire community.

In the early part of the #6 podcast, Liane Morrison asked, “Why doesn’t the City provide trash receptacles?” Unfortunately, that excellent question is never answered. An educated guess would suggest that it would be much cheaper for the city to provide the appropriate facilities and even hire an unhoused person to monitor and oversee each encampment than it is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to sweep the encampments regularly. Such a change in approaches would also be of tremendous benefit to those forced to live in such unhealthy environments.

Finally, I ask you to stop and think about this whole picture. In fact, all three groups—the unhoused, the business community, and the general public—all want basically the same thing, namely, to have the unsheltered off the streets. Admittedly, each of the three groups has a very different rationale behind their objective, but the basic goal is the same. Why can’t the three groups come together in true collegial collaboration and work towards achieving this single important goal? Wouldn’t that be a novel approach!!!

Don Burnes has been working in the homelessness arena for almost 40 years. He and his wife are the co-founders of the Burnes Institute for Poverty Research at the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.