Philly Uses Chainsaws to Solve its Homeless Problem

With no notice or fanfare, the city cut down the trees that stood along the north side of Logan Circle nearest to the Vine Street Expressway.  In recent months, the city had already cut down trees on a few other patches of land on a nearby stretch of above-ground Vine Street.  Why all the cutting?  If asked, Mayor Michael Nutter's office would likely say it was the start of a plan announced last year to redevelop the section of Vine Street that tourists and urban gentrifiers might see if they go walking.  

The Vine Street project is a dubious use of public money in a city full of decaying neighborhoods that have gone decades without visible public investment.  To the majority of city residents who live in those decaying neighborhoods, the completed project will be another in-your-face reminder that only Center City matters to policymakers.

But the Vine Street project wasn't the real reason why the trees were removed yesterday.  They stood near areas targeted by the project, but not on them.  And apart from the tree-cutting, the project itself has yet to begin.  The real reason the trees had to go immediately is that the city government wants to make homelessness invisible to tourists and people with money to spend.  

Homelessness may be the cruelest indignity a person can suffer. Throughout the year, between 500 and 800 homeless people live on the streets of Philadelphia.  More homeless people live on the streets during the warmer months of the year.  The city government, which is the source of these numbers, believes that more than 300 homeless people live in the Center City area.  Those people are the ones city officials want to make disappear, ideally before big upcoming events like the visit of the Pope in September and the Democratic National Convention next year.  When the Pope says mass on the Parkway, which crosses Logan Circle, the city government evidently hopes that he will have no opportunity to call attention to the embarrassment of homelessness in the midst of abundance.

As far back as I can remember, homeless people used the trees near Logan for shade during the warmer months of the year.  People set up boxes and tarps an lived under those trees.  Others congregated under them, waiting to receive a donated meal from a very thoughtful charity group.  By cutting all the trees down on the last day of winter, the city government ensured that when homeless people emerge in springtime from shelters and from sleeping spots underground, they will find that there is no place for them to go at Logan.

So, where will they go?  Mayor Nutter, City Council, and rich property investors who have their ear want to make Center City homeless-free.  Dilworth Plaza, formerly the summer abode of many homeless people, was made into a windswept, paved-over "park" for that purpose last year.  Rather than plenty of seating under trees, Dilworth now features little seating, no trees, and two city workers who stand around at night to call the police if anyone is brave enough to lie down on one of the few uninviting patches of grass.  Vine Street, and soon Love Park, will also be remade with the same insidious purpose in mind:  erase the homeless.

Ultimately, the city's elected officials want to see the homeless move out of Center City and into the neighborhoods. Too bad for the homeless people, who will find few services there. And too bad for neighborhood residents, who desperately need to elect new leaders whose focus is on the places where they live.  The current political class has only contempt for the neighborhoods and their residents, a contempt it demonstrated in 2013 by raising residents' taxes to provide tax cuts for owners of business properties, in the so-called Actual Value Initiative, and demonstrated again recently with talk of a further property tax increase.  

The Mayor and Council don't care about the plight of either the neighborhoods or the homeless.  Neither writes them checks.  But politicians care a lot about helping the developers who want to sell overpriced residential and office space downtown.  Helping the developers means finding a rug big enough to sweep all the homeless people under.  The neglected neighborhoods are the biggest rug of all.

The 170th District Special Election: The Parties Fail the People

When I left church yesterday morning, a fat guy in a large SUV was idling down the street outside.  He had a trailer painted in a bright red color, with the words "Martina White State Representative" painted on it in white letters.  

The driver must not have been personally familiar with the church. The less-used doors that I exited look like the main ones from the street.  He had idled past several sets of doors where more people exit on the side of the building.  It was too late to turn back, so he parked briefly in the street, blocking traffic.  The driver must have been disappointed when only a few people came out to see his trailer.  He would have been more disappointed to have heard the women leaving church behind me say they thought it was offensive that Martina White turned the mass into a campaign stop.

For an example of the total contempt shown by both parties for voters in Philadelphia, consider the special election being held in the 170th State House District in the Far Northeast.  White, the Republican, is opposed by Democrat Sarah Del Ricci.  The circumstances of the election and the choice of both candidates suggest that, in the estimation of both parties' leaders, voters in the district are suckers.  

The election is costing the public extra money.  It isn't being held on May 20, the day of the primary election, when it would cost nothing to add another race to the ballot.  Instead, it's scheduled for next week on March 24.  Nothing else is on the ballot that day; it will cost taxpayers extra money to hold the special election separately. 

This waste is taking place for two reasons.  First, Brendan Boyle, who held the 170th District seat until January, decided it was in his interest to run for that seat in November 2014, at a time when he was also running for a seat in Congress.  The 13th Congressional District has a large registration advantage in favor of Democrats, and Boyle's Republican opponent in that race had less money, less of an organization, and a message designed to appeal to voters in Wyoming.  

By running in two races, Boyle bought himself an unneeded job insurance policy, costing the 170th District its representation in the legislature for a few months.  Boyle won the Congressional seat in November by a huge margin, as everyone expected.  He resigned the state house seat in January. 

Under Section 628 of the Election Code, State House Speaker Mike Turzai had to choose between scheduling the election for free on the day of the primary in May, or forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for a separate election in March.  Turzai knew he would give White a better chance of winning by keeping turnout down in the 170th District, where voter registration is about 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats.  That could be achieved by scheduling a standalone special election separate from the primary, at a time when few voters would expect it.  Judging the responsible stewardship of public money to be less important than suppressing the vote, Turzai chose the March date.  His choice was the second reason why money will be wasted.

Boyle's and Turzai's choices also ensured that there would be no primary elections in which voters might choose someone for one of the parties' tickets who was not hand-picked by party bosses.  He also ensured that the special election to fill the state house seat would be held by itself, on a day when fewer people would be likely to remember to vote or deem it important enough to do so.

Who, then, did party bosses select for the two-item menu of choices on offer for voters?  The Republicans chose White.  At a public appearance, she sounded like a sophomore on a high school debate team, saying nothing of substance and saying it nervously like she had ants in her pants.  She may or may not be talented, but at 26 years of age, she is unrepresentative of the largely older group of people who live and vote in the 170th.  She cannot have much experience of the world; indeed, she does not have enough experience in her line of work in the financial services industry to have more than an entry-level job.  That the Republicans could find no better candidate says a lot about how small they've gotten.

The Democrats chose Del Ricci.  She is slightly older than White, but also seems to have no useful experience that might bear on serving as a legislator.  She runs a horse-riding program for the disabled, a noble pursuit, but one with little bearing on either policy-making or understanding issues important to the district.  She is the wife of a Democratic Party hack who was reportedly offered the nomination himself, but chose not to take it in order to finish earning a pension at another job for the politically connected.  Wise move on his part.  But aside from being a party hack's wife, it's hard to see why Mrs. Del Ricci is on the ballot for State Representative. There are an awful lot of Democrats in Philadelphia.  Can it possibly be true that she was the best one available? 

Special elections are supposed to be for emergencies, like the death or involuntary resignation of a legislator.  They're not desirable because they cut the campaign very short, robbing voters of the chance to learn anything meaningful about the candidates.  In this special election, there has been almost no news reporting of the candidates' views, no debate between the candidates, and no effort on the part of either to commit to a clear stance on any issue.  Both candidates have sent plenty of mailers, but they repeat endlessly that both are from the area and would like there to be more jobs.  That doesn't distinguish either of them.  What either would actually do in office is still totally unclear with about a week left in the race.

In my part of the district, at least, White's campaign seems more active and better-funded.  She is clearly getting a lot of money from the Republican State Committee.  She would make a fine instrument in their hands:  a novice in Harrisburg with no relevant training, there to follow rather than to lead.  White would provide an extra vote for whatever the Republican leadership desired.  They could trust White to vote with them even on matters unpopular in the 170th District, because she would have little chance of reelection in 2016 no matter what she did in office.  The large Democratic turnout to be expected in that year's presidential election in Philadelphia means that she would very likely be a one-term legislator.  When a legislator knows that they have no incentive to please voters at the next election, those voters had better beware.

As to Del Ricci, her campaign appears slow to get off the ground.  I haven't seen her yet, even though I attended an event where she was supposed to appear.  She was a no-show.  That doesn't bode well for a wannabe legislator.  Unlike White, I haven't seen her knocking on doors or showing up at train stations, either.  In fairness, it could be that I've missed her.  But it's funny that I haven't missed White, on several occasions.  Like White, I would expect Del Ricci to take no independent initiatives at all if elected. If she has plans of her own, she hasn't informed voters about them. If Del Ricci bothered to show up for a House vote, she would do whatever Democratic leaders told her to, whether that was good or bad for the 170th District.  Despite the registration advantage, she may well manage to lose the race.

Sadly, one of these bad candidates will win the election. In fact, everything about this election is wrong.  The public should have much better choices than these.  It shouldn't be forced to go without representation or pay for extra elections.  It shouldn't be the object of public officials to suppress the vote.

Northeast Philadelphia is one of the last parts of the city where Republicans are even close to being competitive.  Clearly, the sort of things that have happened in this special election couldn't play out in the same way in many other parts of town.  But in the eyes of both major parties' leaders, there's probably nothing unusual about my section of the city in terms of the low degree of respect they think the public deserves.  Everyone in Philadelphia can take the lessons to be learned from this election:  that both major parties' leaders think we are stupid; that we don't deserve to be represented by a people of our choosing; and that without other major parties to offer the current two effective competition, they will continue to fail us.