Damn bums belong in jail!

Contradictions fascinate me, and last night I was reminded of a longstanding moral/cultural contradiction which will not go away.

Local homeless rights activists are championing a tent city and asking for donations. No surprise there, nor is the usual rhetoric (that there are no jobs in this economy) surprising. Homeless people (mostly men) are seen as and portrayed as victims, as down on their luck, as suffering from substance abuse and mental health problems, and whether and the extent to which these conditions cause homelessness or simply correlate with it can be endlessly debated. But the bottom line is that the homeless are victims in need of our help.

I have mixed feelings about homeless people. Over the years I have helped them out and even put some of them up, and I’ve been a pretty good judge of character, so I have never been burned. At the risk of seeming judgmental, the homeless guys who are the most “reliable” (in terms of being honest, appreciative, possessed of some sense of work ethic and ability to remember and return a favor) are the ones who have become hopelessly dysfunctional deadbeat dads. These byproducts of the divorce courts have little or no income, yet owe insurmountable mountains of debt, and do not want to officially surface on any legitimate level lest they be immediately pounced on by government bureaucrats enforcing garnishment orders. They have no incentive to “get ahead.” Such a thing is impossible, and they know it. They are not happy with their plight, so they typically turn to alcohol or sometimes drugs.  These kinds of guys are not the hallucinatory schizophrenic types, nor are they likely to commit crimes. They just want to avoid society and get by whatever way they can. Yet the constantly lurking threat of  debt enforcement ensures that they have a major disincentive to ever get ahead. They know that they never will. They are classic losers. Society disapproves of them and they know it.

Anyway, my experience with the deadbeat dad type of homeless guys has been positive. When I ran a nightclub, I gave our bottle and can recycling “franchise” (if that’s the right word) to one man and allowed him to sleep in a tent in the bushes. In return he provided unofficial security and would call me from the pay phone in the event of any trouble after hours. He was a really nice, sweet guy, but of course a total alcoholic, and if you took the time to drink with him, he would pull out the pictures of his kids (whom he was not allowed to ever see, natch) and get all weepy. Hopeless loser by any standard. No way to get ahead. Ever. He is not the only one like that I have known and even loved. I have seen this pattern over and over with the “good” homeless guys, and last night I saw it when I Googled the local homeless activist group and saw an interview with one of the main organizers. Same deal. A once basically normal man who got way behind on his child support, and once that became hopeless he was unable to pay rent, eventually giving up and became another homeless drunk. I have seen this pattern so many times that I believe there may be millions of them nationwide. Not being a sociologist, I do not know what percentage of the homeless they are, but I did find this statistic, and I have no idea whether it still holds:

…of those not paying support, 66% are not doing so because they lack the financial resources to pay (Source: GAO report: GAO/HRD-92-39 FS).

Simple logic dictates that if there is inability to pay, the situation will become compounded over time.  Unlike ordinary obligations like rent or house payments, there is no possibility of having the debt terminate in foreclosure or eviction, and of course there is hope of bankruptcy. Unlike other debtors, deadbeat dads often must forfeit their drivers licenses and even professional licenses. (You’d almost think that the system was designed to prevent them from ever getting ahead again.)  There is also the constant threat in many states of imprisonment. Imprisonment for nonpayment of child support is not unusual, but one case attracted media attention only because the imprisoned homeless man turned out not to be the actual father!

Similarly, in California a homeless deadbeat “dad” who wasn’t the dad inherited money and the court took it away from him anyway — even though they know he was not the father. It’s a charming illustration of how the legal system “works”:

In 1991, Cathy Tate named Wilburn as the father of her five-year-old child Alexis in a restraining order proceeding. Wilburn, who was homeless, was never personally served, and there is no record of any service except by mail to Wilburn’s mother’s address, which is not legally proper. Nonetheless, the court found Wilburn was served, issued a restraining order and ordered Wilburn to pay child support. Wilburn was not present.

Seventeen years later, in 2008, Tate asked the probate court to intercept tens of thousands of dollars Wilburn was about to inherit from his deceased mother, based on the 1991 support order. Wilburn’s family tracked down 22-year-old Alexis and asked her to take a DNA test, which excluded Wilburn as Alexis’ biological dad. Wilburn’s family hired an attorney, who filed a motion challenging the support order. Alexis swore under oath that Wilburn never acted as her dad and she only saw him a few times in her life. The court denied the motion, ruling Wilburn should have challenged the order sooner, despite the fact that he was homeless and living under a bridge. On appeal, the Third District Court of Appeal upheld the order on the same grounds, and the California Supreme Court has now declined review.

“This is totally unjust,” said Angelucci. “It is wrong to force a man to pay child support for a child that is not his, especially when he never acted as the dad.”

Hear hear. (I do hope that at least the attorneys got their fees paid. Fair is fair.)

Hell, a nightmare like that would make almost anyone hit the streets and turn to drinking.

Whether deadbeat dads deserve debtors prison is an interesting (and not new) moral question, but there is no question that a large percentage of the homeless are deadbeat dads. Not that anyone cares. This man’s plea for advice from an attorney was treated with little more than contempt:

In Jan of this year I lost a custody case and have to pay child support. My take home pay prior to this was $1000 every two weeks. I was ordered to pay $446 a mnth, plus medical ins ($184 for the child added to my policy) My % of child care $199. $100 to my ex for a past Dr. bill, I was unable to pay rent March 1st and had to move in with a friend. I am homeless!! My other bills are studnt loans $100, car paymnt $380, car ins $180, gas to get to and from work $125, food $200. I am literally left without enough money to pay for rent.

I filed for a reconsideration but it was denied as I provided no new information. I do not believe the judge took the time to review the case properly? Does the child support rules really want non custodial parents to be homeless? What are my options?

If you take the time to talk to them, the above is typical of what you will hear from many a homeless man. And the attitude of most people is similar to that of the attorney, who responds with a moral scolding ( lot of good that will do when the man finds his niche living under some lovely bridge):

What option did you leave your child? The best interests of the child, not your best interests, are at the heart of the matter.

You have the parental obligation that comes from having a child. Your decision had and continues to have consequences. Your child cannot get a job to make money to buy food or clothes or medicine. That is your responsibility.

Many people feel that once they leave a marriage the obligation to support the children of that marriage ends. That is not the law.

You made your motion to reconsider and lost so that is the legal view of your position.

Serves that loser right!

The answer to the poor man’s question is that of course the system does not care whether they become homeless. Homelessness is the price they must pay for not having done the right thing, and either abstained from sex entirely, used contraception or persuaded the mother to have an abortion. Having a child that you later prove unable to afford is one of the most heinous moral offenses in modern America. Especially if you hail from a middle class or working class background and once made an actual living, and even police are not exempt from being turned into homeless deadbeat dads against their will.)

And therein lies the contradiction which fascinates me.

Many of the activists who prattle on endlessly about homelessness are also strongly supportive of the system which provides a disincentive to getting ahead and thus assures continued homelessness. Perhaps that is why they tend to downplay the fact that so many homeless men are deadbeat dads.

The moral narrative is that deadbeat dads are not only scum, they are the lowest form of scum in society. We can’t have one moral narrative interfering with another, can we?

Lest anyone misunderstand, the point here is not whether homeless deadbeat dads are victims. That can be debated. What annoys me is to be lectured about the plight of “the homeless” by people possessed of the same mindset which countenances sending many of the “victims” they champion directly to jail.


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8 responses to “Damn bums belong in jail!”

  1. Simon Avatar
    Simon

    In the “old days” (before computers) a man could just leave and start over.

    And now because of the way the law is there is no way to start over and women have no incentive to make the marriage work. In fact the incentive is in the other direction.

    We have emancipated women. And the results are starting to look uglier than the previous situation.

  2. Bram Avatar
    Bram

    Wow. I’m shocked there aren’t regular assaults on divorce judges.

  3. bob Avatar
    bob

    Sharia law would cure this problem.

  4. John S. Avatar
    John S.

    I wish there were some way for the man to take custody of the kids instead of paying crippling child support… I bet that most men could find a way to make that work, even if they had to cut back to do it, but of course women won’t let that happen. Sometimes I’m glad I’m gay, and then I read something like this, and I’m utterly overjoyed that I’m gay.

  5. latte island Avatar
    latte island

    I agree that there are many male victims of divorce. But this isn’t the fault of “women,” any more than the horror stories about women who have been abused and destroyed by their marriage to men, prove that all men are responsible. Setting back the clock isn’t the answer. Maybe honest men and women can agree that abuse is bad, and look for a better way to prevent it than by oppressing one group or the other.

  6. Bob Smith Avatar
    Bob Smith

    “I bet that most men could find a way to make that work, even if they had to cut back to do it”

    Of course they could. That guy above is paying $446 a month tax-free to the mother, plus 100% of health insurance costs. What 5 year old costs $446 a month to care for? Not to mention that the child support guidelines contemplate her paying more on top of that. Child support has ceased being that decades ago. It’s tax-free disguised alimony now. That’s why women fight so hard for custody, even when they simultaneously complain how hard it is to care for a child. They’d rather have the excess cash coming in, along with garnering sympathy for being a mother, than give the kid to dad and rid themselves of their self-proclaimed burden.

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  8. […] losers, and while they have a point, it often does not occur to them that the state has a fairly major role in fostering and perpetuating this loser mentality. The ordinary remedy for bad decisions — bankruptcy — is not available to them. They […]