A Satire about solving the homeless problem and California agriculture labor shortage at the same time
Disclaimer – Please understand that this is written as satire. If you don’t know what that means, look it up in the dictionary. It will be good for you (that’s sarcasm)
The landowners of Southern California demand that the homeless be taken care of. The next two quotes from the 4/1 Sunday LA Times summarize the problem we face:
- ”They need to put them somewhere, maybe somewhere else in California,” resident Angela Liu, who owns a legal services company, told the Board of Supervisors. “I really don’t know where they can go. But Irvine is beautiful, and we don’t want it to get destroyed.”
- U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) said he joined “the outrage that we are assuming responsibility for homeless people, taking care of their basic needs and elongating their agony.”
Our elected officials are giving voice to the silent majority’s outrage at having to take responsibility for the homeless. Dana Rohrabacher even goes so far as to say that we are “elongating their agony”, which may be going a bit far (even for this piece). However, we can all agree that the homeless need to be put out of their misery.
So we have the unique opportunity to leverage the solution for this problem and solve another state crisis at the same time, namely the lack of low-priced labor in the central valley to harvest our crops.
We are currently faced with the problem that there are too few illegal immigrants to exploit. Our compassionate government has been diligently sending the illegal immigrants home to be with their loved ones. However, that leaves us without that low-cost source of labor that we rely on to provide our fruit and vegetables.
The solution to both problems is to create work camps in the central valley to house our homeless. The camps could be modeled after the facilities that we built to protect the Japanese in during world war II. I’m sure the plans are out there somewhere.
The government would pick up the tab for building housing, malls, and recreation facilities. Barb wire fencing and guard towers would keep drugs and bad “hombres” away and contain the homeless at night so we would not have them wandering our neighborhoods.
Given the growing shortage of affordable housing in the state, it will be easy to replace all illegal workers in California in short order and replace them with affordable US citizens in work camps.
Facilities could also be placed close enough to population centers to allow clean and inspected nannies and burger-flippers to be bussed directly to their work assignments without inconvienencing the sensibilities of the landed gentry.
I think this will be a win-win for all. The best part is that the homeless can always earn their way out of the camp by proving they have landed a well paying job, and a place to live, guaranteed for at least 6 months. Anybody meeting that criteria (with proper documentation) is welcome to strike out on their own with progress monitored in case they end up back on the street. This would allow them to be re-assimilated into the camp system and not become a nuisance to civic sensibilities.
In conclusion, this would enable our great state to stay clean and free of unsightly homeless camps and provide a never-ending supply of cheap labor to harvest our food and take care of our children.
Walkabout Today 