This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

The Law Giveth and the Law Taketh Away

I lived "on the streets," for 8 years, before I moved to Albany. 

When Albany Police first told my partner and I that we could stay on the Albany Bulb as long as we'd like, it was a dream come true.

Within 2 years of moving to the Bulb, my life was stable enough that I built up the confidence to go to traffic court and took care of the 7 warrants that I had when we first moved here.

All of my warrants were for "homeless tickets."

To be able to "come home" at the end of my day is still the most wonderful feeling.

When Albany instructed the police to cease enforcement of the camping ordinance shortly after they drafted and passed it in 1999, they essentially gave people who had virtually nothing, something...

The City of Albany gave us (people who were homeless prior to moving to the Bulb) a place that we could call our "home".

With Albany's poorest inhabitants living on the Bulb, the city's administration was free to opt out of: setting up services, zoning sites to house, or pretty much even acknowledging the existence of a fluctuating number of people who have been living in Albany at the very bottom of the level below the poverty line, for years.
Namely: "Albany's Homeless."

As such, the only Albany citizens, or staff, who have had regular contact with the Bulb-dwelling community are the officers of the APD.

Their orders (to not enforce AMC 8-4 on people who took up residence on the Albany Bulb, who otherwise had nowhere else to live) meant that they essentially told police to let us have homes (by telling us it was okay to stay where we had made homes for ourselves).

For police to now be ordered to enforce that law means that they would have to kick us out of the homes that the police, themselves, were (essentially) told to *give* us.

I am not the only Bulb resident who feels that (particularly when compared to virtually every police force in the area) the officers of the Albany Police Department are remarkably respectful in their interactions with us.

The City's policy has enabled the police to treat us, for the most part, like the residents of any other neighborhood in Albany. They patrol on a daily basis (as they have for years) and if they hear or see someone who needs assistance they stop. They know us all by name, and we even know a few of theirs.  When some of us see them, we smile and wave and most of them wave back.  If we call them for assistance, they respond.

They actually KNOW us, as Albany residents, whom (like the rest of the residents of Albany) they are paid to protect and serve.

Contiguous Albany has (roughly) 18,500 residents, most of whom don't know any of us Albany Bulb residents, at all. They don't know what struggles we've been through, individually, in our lives (both before we came to Albany and since we've been living here).

With the exception of a few outstanding individuals, Albany's paid staff members don't know us either. The Council, Manager and Staff have historically delegated the "job" of interacting with "the homeless" to APD.

Albany has a little over two dozen police officers. At least half of whom have had contact with (and, in some cases, helped) many to most of the Albany residents who live out on the Bulb.

The men and woman of the Albany Police Department see us as people, as human beings.

The City Council's decision to kick us out of our homes (and back onto the streets) has to be hard for the officers of the Albany Police Department to stomach, on a human rights level.

In these difficult financial times it must be horrible to be a public servant whose new orders are to take away that which you have given the neediest citizens.

To have to take away someone's home in order to keep your job and thus your home, taking orders from the wealthiest people in town to throw out the poorest.
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