The knives are out in Olympia again.
The state senate’s proposed budget that came out a few weeks ago was nothing less than a blueprint to increase homelessness.
All homeless programs administered by the Department of Commerce would be cut by 52 percent. And the Washington State Housing Trust Fund would be zero-funded. So much for the political will to end homelessness.
Worse, the paltry monthly $197 for Aged, Blind and Disabled (ABD) assistance that 22,000 people rely upon for survival would be eliminated entirely on July 1.
And, despite the expanded caseload from the elimination of ABD, the Housing and Essential Needs (HEN) program, which now exists as the tattered remnant of Disability Lifeline, would be slashed once again. This program that now provides a small housing allowance and some basic toiletries to the disabled is again on the chopping block to be slashed — by more than half.
The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance estimates that, if this senate budget passes, the cuts could result in 20,400 more people becoming homeless during the 2013-2015 biennium.
While the house budget is a significant improvement, this remains one of the meanest budget seasons in memory.
To those of us who still think of the very poor as human beings, this state of affairs seems almost inexplicable. The senate budget speaks to the human capacity to dehumanize and abandon those one neither knows nor sees.
A study performed at Princeton back in 2007 makes clear how this is possible.
Students were shown various images as their brains were scanned with an MRI. Researchers found that most students failed to feel compassion when shown images of homeless people and drug addicts.
While athletes, movie stars and elderly people, for example, registered in the medial prefrontal cortex region of the brain — which is associated with recognition of another human being — and evoked various emotions ranging from envy to pity, photos of homeless people and addicts ignited other parts of the brain. They instead lit up areas associated with disgust, as did images of trash and overflowing toilets.
Although it’s tempting to conclude that Princeton students are less empathetic to the poor than others, I doubt that’s actually the case.
Their perceptions are formed through the same cultural associations as the rest of us.
The good news was that the students’ reactions were not hard-wired, and that their perceptions of the homeless and addicted could be changed relatively easily.
It seems to me that the perceptions reflected in this study are alive and well at our state capitol. How could we cut off support to those whom we regard as people, much like ourselves? Assuming that the majority of the senate isn’t made up of sociopaths, it would seem our state senators could use a little remedial training to broaden their circle of concern.
Were they to look their victims in the eye once or twice before casting their votes, they might not abandon them quite so easily.