Letters to the editor Jan. 31

It’s a housing issue

Dear Flathead County Commissioners: As a psychologist, I, too, find it easy to look at unhoused individuals and speculate on the causes of their problems. Though my perspective tends to be a bit more compassionate than our elected officials, it remains a myopic one — focused on the individual and their personal life arc.

What we are both missing, however, is the true cause of homelessness: not enough housing. It is easy to blame policies and nonprofit organizations for their liberal agendas of taking care of community members but the theory holds no water. Flathead County is among the most conservative in the state. It’s also a particularly inhospitable place to live if you have no bed, no roof, and no source of heat.

In my work, I am often tasked with identifying and conceptualizing problems that are complicated and long-standing. In teaching my supervises the art of assessment, I am often reminded of the human mind’s tendency to overcomplicate things that are often simple. When conducting research, we aim to think by the rule of parsimony — that is, find the simplest answer to a problem.

Imagine if you will that at the next commissioner’s meeting, they all enter to sit and one commissioner has no seat to sit in. Few would berate that commissioner with questions about their relationship to chairs, money or drugs. Even fewer would wonder why the commissioner had come over from another county to poach doughnuts and coffee at this meeting. I think all of us would just look around and find them a chair. Parsimony.

We know we have a housing crisis here. We also know we have a homelessness problem here. Let’s not complicate things and let’s realize that the two are tied in a simple explanation: Homelessness is a housing issue.

— Sara Boilen, Whitefish

Commissioners’ letter courageous

I read with some interest the Jan. 22 editorial “Officials should follow compassion rather than stigmatizing unhoused.”

It only hinted at a brief mention of the greed-driven and astronomical increase in rental costs in the valley. It made no mention of the network of the homeless that attracts these folks when they find some location willing to “give” to them. It did go on by casting suspicion for the purpose of the letter, and the underlying motives of the county commission. I could find no reference in the editorial offering real preventive solutions to the problem.

I suspect that the county commissioners wrote a courageous letter, given the circumstances surrounding the problem. On one hand, the health care needs of our homeless should be addressed, assuming that these folks even want to get help. Do they? Do we even know? The better question might be, does the editorial board know? Or, was it just to ding our county commissioners?

It appears that this editorial was written with little knowledge about the issues, and certainly offered no potential solutions, whether from the perspective of the homeless or from the view of the taxpayer who might otherwise want to benefit from the park and its facilities which they built with their tax dollars.

Understand, I have helped several folks in the past. I once had a picket fence around my property. When someone approached me for a handout, they got ignored, for I am not into buying alcohol, drugs or needles for anyone.

If, on the other hand, they were looking for work, any kind of work, I had them paint my picket fence. I would provide a different color for the fence each time, and I honestly don’t remember how many different colors it had over the years. The end result was that those who painted my fence left feeling like they had earned what I managed to give them, and I felt that I was actually helping someone retain their pride through their accomplishment.

Once, many, many, years ago, I was sitting at a counter of a little restaurant. I watched a young mom come in with a little girl, maybe 4 or 5, and sit at a booth. I listened to the mom ask for a bowl of hot water. She proceeded to squirt ketchup into the bowl of water to make a soup for the little girl; she had not ordered anything for herself. I ordered a good meal for both of them, and the gratitude from the mom was overwhelming to me.

If these homeless people are just takers, they need to move on. If they need our help, then we need to figure out how to help them in a meaningful way. I challenge the editorial board to figure out which case may be more accurate, and then to help understand how to help, actually help, those who need and want help. Suggestions to do so are in order, rather than just throwing rocks at our county commissioners.

— Russell Sias, Columbia Falls