No One Challenges Boring

[from 6/30/10]

Let's talk about something incredibly boring!

Even the title of "Open Doors/ Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness", which I'll abbreviate as "OD" (because OD/FSPP&EH is stupid) is stunningly boring. It reminds me of my 1979 PhD mathematics thesis, which I titled something like "On the Classification of Some Types of 2-Dimensional Dealies of Some Certain Description or Other." Cleverly, it said it was ON the classification of dealies, it was not THE classification of dealies, that being something I couldn't do. Also, the title made sure no one would ever read it, so I wouldn't have to be bothered by their bound-to-be boring questions about it.

I'm sure no one at the department of the federal government in charge of putting out this snoozer wants to hear your bound-to-be boring questions, either. Remember when the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness came out? Remember how excited everybody was to hear that we were actually going to end homelessness in ten years? Remember all the questions that were raised in the course of the excitement, and how it emerged that the title was a fraud? Well, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness doesn't want that to happen again.

Now they're being up front in emphasizing the Plan part of the Plan. We're planning it, we're not doing it. It's a plan of action, not an action. For example, when the OD document gets down to stating the goals of the Plan, on page 11, bullet number 4 is NOT "to end homelessness before the End Times end it for us," but instead merely "Set a path to ending all types of homelessness."

You'd think after 6 years of the Ten Year Plan to Plan Planning to End Homelessness, these people would be past the trail blazing stage. But, no. Apparently no one had thought of setting a path before. So we've spent the last 6 years tangled in brambles up to our nostrils? Whoops!

Following the stifling bit about setting the path, OD goes on to set forth 5 themes of the strategic plan, of which 3 consist of two objectives each, one consists of 3 objectives, and one other consists of one objective. That's ten objectives altogether, so the number ten still looms large in the homelessness end-planning business, speaking sarcastically.

None of these objectives goes quite so far as to call for the creation of new housing. The closest we get to that is under the Theme "Increase Access to Stable and Affordable Housing", where we have 2 objectives calling for providing 1) affordable housing for those needing it, and 2) permanent housing for those really, really, really needing it (the "chronically" homeless, an arbitrary manipulable category lacking natural definition). In other words, those only needing housing would get provided housing, but not necessarily permanent housing. And no one gets housing created for them, only provided. You can easily provide everyone in the country housing, if most of it's not permanent. And you can provide some housing permanently, without creating new housing, by simply making the same housing temporary for other people.

Even the Vision of the OD plan is boring. Visions are supposed to be inspiring and forward-looking. The best they could come up with was that there shouldn't be homelessness. That's about it. Homelessness bad. No, I said it wrong, their vision is that no one should experience homelessness. It's alright if people ARE homeless, it's only a shame they have to be conscious for it. They could realize their crappy boring vision by passing out bottles of Jack Daniels on the streets.

"Objective 10: Transform homeless services to crisis response systems that prevent homelessness and rapidly return people who experience homelessness to stable housing."

When someone tells me they'd transform a thing to a thing, they're saying they don't need to create anything new. They're just going to turn lead into, ah, metal.

If only it all were interesting enough to induce people to ask, "What?"