The truth about living in California: You can’t be honest about homelessness | Opinion
I was once homeless and lived in a shelter. That experience gave me empathy for people on the street because I know how close I came to being one of them. But living in California has shown me that compassion for homeless people — the compassion that many of us feel -- can be weaponized to stifle honest discussions about the tension caused by homeless people living in public spaces.
I’ve noticed that in California, self-appointed moral police dictate — homeless advocates, elected leaders, and young progressives, among others - try to dictate a narrative about homeless people designed to silence us through guilt. Our discomfort is waved off. Even I, a formerly homeless person, can be made to feel like I need to “watch my priviledge” because I graduated from a university, have a whte-collar job and my own place to live.
This has been quite an education about California since I moved to Sacramento from Tennessee almost 18 months ago.
Last week, for example, I was on a picnic date at Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. Out of nowhere, a woman approached — barefoot, in dirty clothes, her hands and feet stained black. Her gums overlapped her teeth.
She held out an empty Gatorade bottle and asked, “Can I have some of your wine?”
I froze. Do I enable her behavior? Do I refuse and risk confrontation? My date shrugged, so I poured some wine into her bottle. She immediately stretched out on our picnic blanket and announced she was taking a nap.
That moment captured the dilemma faced by Californians. I didn’t want to strip away the small comfort the woman had found, but I couldn’t ignore the unease her aggressive behavior caused me — and my date. We packed up. The woman asked for more wine. I capped the bottle and said no. She pressed again, and I walked away.
“I felt unsafe,” my date admitted.
So did I. But in California, we’re told that feeling unsafe around a homeless person is somehow different from being unsafe. As if your own instincts, your own reactions, don’t matter. But they do. When people feel unsafe, that feeling is real. That’s not just guilt talking — it’s discomfort and anxiety born from the situation.
Adding more to the conversation
Californians experience the brunt of this crisis. Encounters like mine happen every day. People want to empathize, but they also want to protect themselves. Yet admitting it is treated like a moral failure.
We’re told to bury our annoyance and unease because it might sound unfair to the unhoused. But what’s truly unfair is forcing Californians to shoulder the weight of this crisis and then shaming them for saying how it makes them feel.
If California wants a real path forward, we need space for honest conversations — not just guilt trips. Compassion matters, but so do the daily realities of people who live with this crisis in their neighborhoods, parks, and sidewalks. Homelessness is complicated. The emotions it provokes are complicated.
Until we face the tension and unease alongside the compassion, we’ll never find a balanced solution.
This story was originally published September 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The truth about living in California: You can’t be honest about homelessness | Opinion."
