Writing From Exile

King Diddler and his Gang of Pedophiles (GOP) have moved to escalate the criminalization of homelessness. It was bad enough that the Supreme Court previously ruled that cities and states can make it illegal to be unhoused within city limits. Now, the Sex Offender in Chief just signed another executive order fiat ordering cities to round up and institutionalize the unhoused, offering bribes to the cities that acquiesce and implied threats of loss of federal funding to those that do not (this bribe/extortion tactic seems to have become his go-to approach for any and all issues). This executive fiat will only make homelessness worse, as it will do nothing to address the issue and will only seek to criminalize and incarcerate those who are unhoused (institutionalization is still a form of incarceration).

One has to wonder where they’re going to put all the unhoused folks (or homeless folks, depending on your preferred nomenclature). I can’t imagine there’s much space in psychiatric facilities, since those have also been systematically underfunded and are often at capacity. Perhaps they’ll simply throw them into the concentration/labor camps that ICE is now building with their record-breaking funding. They certainly don’t seem to be allocating funding for mental health treatment facilities, since that would be “woke.” No doubt the private, for-profit companies who will run the camps, and who will be eager to maximize their profits, will enjoy the prospects of putting all those unhoused folks to work at low or no pay. The U.S. has been trying to get back to slavery (more so than it already has) ever since it was abolished. It looks like King Trump the First, the Orange and Vindictive, Leader and Friend to Pedophiles and Sex Offenders, will finally help it succeed.

For context: This is happening at a time of a growing homelessness crisis; a lack of affordable housing; the freezing of funding for affordable housing projects; companies being sued for engaging in algorithmic price-fixing of rents; cuts to the (already meager) social safety net, including a loss of health insurance for 11 million to 17 million people (depending on how you count it), which will result in many more people being bankrupted by medical debt (already a crisis of its own), with many of those then becoming unhoused; cuts to food assistance in the form of SNAP benefits and funding for food banks, which will lead to many people having to spend more on food, which will result in many then not being able to afford rent, thus ending up unhoused; cuts to workplace protections, which will lead to more on-the-job injuries, more people then losing their jobs because of those injuries, and thus ending up unhoused; private equity firms buying up homes, rental properties, and mobile home parks, and then jacking up the rent; the rolling back of a rule that would have kept medical debt off of people’s credit reports, which will lead to more people being denied housing because of medical debt (which already comprised the largest percentage of debt in collections, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—another agency the Mad King is trying to illegally shut down); the elimination of income-based repayment plans for student loan borrowers and the pausing of loan forgiveness, which will likely lead to many having their wages garnished to the point of not being able to afford rent, which will throw many student loan borrowers into homelessness; etc., etc., etc.

This will, of course, disproportionately impact the most vulnerable—black and brown folks, the poor, the working-class. And yes, even the poor, white, rural MAGA folks who voted for this shit show. Trans people will also be among those most affected, since they were already facing a poverty rate of 34% and experiencing homelessness rates of about 30%. Homelessness among trans folks is now poised to become much worse in light of Dear Leader’s all-of-government approach to targeting trans people in almost every aspect of life.

During the Orange Menace’s first term, he sought (unsuccessfully) to bar trans people from accessing homeless shelters that correspond to their gender identity. He hasn’t yet gotten around to doing that again (he’s been a little busy, what with all the Epstein stuff), but I’m sure he’ll get around to it. After all, his Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is already hard at work dropping all the housing discrimination cases that trans people have filed and that were under investigation when his regime took control. But we can expect the Gang of Pedophiles (GOP) to bar trans people—especially trans women—from accessing homeless shelters that match their gender identity—all in the name of protecting women and children, of course, which is rich, given that the GOP are the ones that keep getting arrested for child sex abuse (oh look, another one).

It is not unreasonable to predict that a massive amount of trans people will be forced onto the street due to increasing housing and employment discrimination, whose status as unhoused will then be criminalized or used as justification for detainment, and who will then be rounded up and thrown into psychiatric facilities or concentration/labor camps—and not just into camps or facilities, but into camps or facilities that correspond to sex assigned at birth and not gender identity, regardless of where they are in their transition. This will mean, for example, trans women who have breasts and vaginas being thrown into men’s detention facilities (or psychiatric institutions, concentration camps, jails, prisons, whatever) where they will be raped and/or sexually assaulted all day, every day.

But trans people in the U.S. aren’t eligible for asylum or refugee status. Okay, sure. I guess we have to wait until they’re already locked up and unable to actually flee until they’re eligible.