This is the second part of a two-part column about how homeless people have been criminalised by the City and the local media.
City politicians have realised that it benefits their chances at the polls if the homeless are portrayed as “violent drug addicts with criminal intent and dangerous”, because the public is then supportive of the City’s criminalisation of those living on the streets.
City politicians and the media tend to use footage and picture content out of context. Examples of this can be found in the ever-rolling online footage of a drug bust and arrest at the notorious encampment at the Castle in the CBD. The footage is often shown when news people speak about the homeless crisis.
The reason this is misleading is that while some homeless people are addicted to drugs, most people become homeless because they can’t afford housing. Footage of a drug bust at an encampment, which the City has been at pains to paint as seedy, dangerous and drug infested, is being used to demonstrate homelessness.
It creates an inaccurate depiction and a subliminal association in the mind that makes viewers correlate homelessness more with drug addiction and less with housing, while the truth lies in the inverse. The distorted thoughts then become public opinion which is used to shape policies.
Have you ever wondered why none of the laws we pass are making a dent in the homeless crisis? This is why:
Impact on Homeless Individuals:
Misinforming the public leads to legislative disasters as it is difficult to solve a problem when your focus is on the wrong detail. When politicians and the mainstream media hone in on the wrong details, redirecting attention away from the housing crisis that is causing the homeless crisis, members of the homeless community suffer in the following ways:
They become stigmatised. They are misunderstood by their peers.
They are discriminated against. The combination of stigmatisation and discrimination hinders access to the services they need to get out of homelessness.
The cycle continues perpetually as we take in more media and more misinformation. As a direct result of misleading content being churned out by politicians and pushed through by the mainstream media, homeless people suffer. Housed people suffer, too.
They vote for policies that promise change, but, in the end, the change is temporary at best. At worst, the change is merely an illusion. This is because the policies are rooted in misinformation. They do not address the issue, which is the lack of affordable housing. Instead, they zero in on the possible personality flaws of our unhoused neighbours across the City, insinuating that their homelessness is their fault.
The lie is a dangerous one for us all. If we are not preventing homelessness by rectifying the problems that are causing the crisis, what prevents us from witnessing even more homelessness or perhaps even experiencing it first-hand?
Think about all the amended by-laws “to allegedly address the homeless crisis”. Pieces of legislation floating around, making it illegal for people enduring homelessness to engage in life-sustaining actions such as: Eating.
Sitting.
Sleeping.
Lying down.
This is because politicians and the mainstream media have vilified the victims of the homeless crisis, amplifying negative stereotypes across a wide variety of media channels and opening the floodgates of hate and discrimination. Media influences public opinion, distorting it beyond repair. The distorted perception then gives way to harmful, ineffective legislative policies voted in by the people who’ve been intentionally misinformed.
In the end, what we wind up with is a homeless epidemic that claims many lives a year, an ever-growing prison population, a crippled healthcare and justice system, and, of course, the rocketing rental rates and housing prices that got us in this bind to begin with.
* Carlos Mesquita is a homeless activist and also works as a researcher for the Good party in the Western Cape Legislature.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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