The left continues to push its fakest narrative, that any legal action against lawbreakers who are poor constitutes “criminalizing poverty.” I’ve dealt with this myth many times in this column, but the left keeps on trotting it out, practically begging me to slap it down again. I’m happy to oblige.
The latest example comes, yet again, from the woke San Francisco Chronicle, which published an opinion piece on Monday arguing that “poor people” shouldn’t have to pay parking tickets. “Our current laws,” argues author Patrice Berry, an anti-poverty activist, “are penalizing people for being poor and driving them deeper into debt.”
This is part of a greater movement to exempt poor people (or people who claim to be poor) from paying for things the rest of us have to pay for. We’ve seen how Oakland has repeatedly tried to allow tenants to skip paying rent, with disastrous consequences for property owners. The woke politicians who dream up these policies like to argue that we, as a society, have an obligation to help lift up poor people, and that part of that obligation is to let them have stuff—like parking and rental apartments—for free.
I don’t know about you, but this rubs me the wrong way. If we’re speaking of obligations, how about the obligation a renter has to pay their rent? That’s kind of at the heart of our entire economic structure; after all, if people are allowed to simply seize someone else’s property (the way Carroll Fife did), then America breaks down, and is replaced by anarchy. My feeling is, if you can’t afford to pay rent, then you have two choices: go homeless, or find someplace cheaper.
Same with parking tickets. I’ve been poor. I’ve lived in places (New York City, San Francisco, Oakland) where it can be tough to find a parking space. And yet I’ve never chosen to park illegally, and on the rare occasions I’ve been ticketed, I’ve promptly paid the ticket. And I learned my lesson: don’t park in red zones. Curb your front wheels on hills. Keep the parking meter filled, or place the receipt on the dashboard where parking enforcement can easily see it. In other words, play by the rules.
The op-ed piece’s author, Berry, advances the argument that people like me, who want renters and drivers to obey the law, “demonstrate a very basic lack of understanding of what it means to be struggling in California, and what is required to make ends meet.” This is a very disingenuous statement; it’s also false. We don’t “lack understanding” of what poor people go through. But we do believe that the mere fact of being poor doesn’t entitle anyone to a get-out-of-jail-free card. Poor people may find the cost of public transit too high, but that doesn’t entitle them to jump the BART fare gate. There has always been a certain cost for participating in society: we all get to enjoy society’s benefits, but we have to pay our fair share, so that everybody can enjoy those benefits. The moment someone decides they’re no longer required to pay for stuff, that’s when that person has effectively removed himself from the greater society. And we, in turn, have no obligation whatsoever to underwrite the existence of someone who has voluntarily told us to go screw ourselves. We have the right to demand certain standards—the same standards that have enabled human culture to exist for millennia.
There is a role for government to play in helping those in need survive tough times. We have welfare, food stamps, rental assistance and all sorts of other programs that cost us billions of dollars annually, but help to lift up the poorest among us. But I would argue there’s got to be a line beyond which we tell poor people, “Your life may be very hard, and we’re sorry you got yourself into this mess, but you’re going to have to figure out a way to get out of it by yourself.” We can’t let poor people off the hook for paying their legitimate bills simply because we feel sorry for them. If you want to live in a rental apartment, pay your rent. If you want to drive and park, then avoid parking illegally. If you want something from the supermarket, don’t shoplift it. Simple rules for keeping society intact.
Steve Heimoff