BRACE! THE FLOOD OF NEW-HOMELESS COMING AT THIS MOMENT WHEN EVICTION MORATORIUM E!N!D!S!

 The eviction moratorium in Jefferson-County/Louisville KY has come to an end. I must anticipate that what this city shall witness is a huge increase in the homeless population, beyond our now-incredible showing of  'bag people,' 'shelter-dwellers,' and 'campers' at common sites all over town. It could mean that I with a shelter at St. Vincent de Paul (for men) will have been the envy of those now almost surely destined for the kind of 'sleeping roughly' that I see for myself and for a substantial if undercounted cohort of homeless here.

I do not know if by comparison with other metropolises, Louisville is more 'eviction crazy' than any other comparable demographic area. All I know is that IF in the face of federal and state injunctions against evicting folk-- particularly people as aged and as challenged by health problems (heart needing open-chest surgery according to some doctors, cataracts both eyes (blind in right), NOW vaccinated for C19, but not at all at the moment of eviction (May 12, 2021)-- but from what I can tell about Eviction Court here is that it is lopsidedly favoring landlords, as if the tenant were merely a negligible part of the rental contract. . . which from what I read is NOT the case in 'cosmopolitan places' like the Atlantic Northeast and perhaps the Pacific Coastal Regions.

The common view as I see it about the homeless in Louisville is one of disparagement, that is to be described as 'those people are deadbeats. bums, littering up our Southern-Pride-Heritage community with riff raff, sock-it-to-'em.'  Only the occasional person will speak with sympathy or better, empathy, with regard to our seemingly-to-the-crowd UGLY visages, as 'refuse' cluttering streets and alley-ways.

I must say, though, that there are folk who are indeed 'without where to lay their heads' who do approximately what-it-likely-would-take to lose domicile. I do not know where these folks would be in a bygone period=> I have lived here since 1972 nearly 40 years, and 'it has never been so bad' a time for witnessing the hosts of 'the sleeping roughly as I term all-of-us variously disposed. Never before now have there been tents with dwellers in them under the preponderance of overpasses and bridges, what to my perception began with some odd-phenomena-of-seeing rough sleeping and 'bag people' in about the 1980s has  become riveting visualization everywhere downtown, and to the suburbs in certain cases.

At one time, I was certain that most of the 'campers in-city' were predisposed to mental illness; while it now seems that indeed a substantial portion of 'mental health consumers' are out-there, it looks more likely that these are comparably just average people who for one reason or another just-got-caught in situations that foreclosed into street living, AND WITH THE END OF THE EVICTION MORATORIUM, I FEEL CONFIDENT THAT THIS SWELL OF HUMANS WILL INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY.

I want to get out with this cohort, the homeless, and my study in fact will at least now in-inception be a "participant observer" study, and I think then that my own observations about just-how-to-DIY/do-it-yourself in this near-vagrancy near-loitering near-trespassing in Louisville will be germane and constructive. For the others, IF I can find domicile that (especially would be in Nima Kulkarni's KY Legislative  District as it becomes a moral urgency to help a person whose grasp of this problem of indigent itineracy as well as a great number of social problems this Louisville avoids as being 'to dirty to discuss in public.'  If I can find housing quickly, this effort as motivated could be an OUTREACH by beginning as a 'friendly visitor' to these said-encampments and the street-people so described; a good way I have learned as peripatetic 'Good Samaritan' would be to make cigarettes and distribute them in person, as I have done with cheapside commercial sex workers; after the cigarettes could come face masks and condoms, then could come the digital recorders and cameras, for meaningful informedly-consenting documentation, with a reach for motivation and narration of the historical moment-- at the very bottom of community-- in which these folks live.

My main hypothesis would be that the prime reason for this explosion of campers et al. is squarely due to the harsh way the legal system regards the-Big-Man who has the 'title' to 'a property' rented, yes deemed an investment and hedge/diversion from say the stock/bond market, WITH LESS OR MUCH LESS CONCERN THAT THE PERSONS ON THE RECEI VING-END OF THE LEASE CONTRACT, THE RESIDENTS, WHO ARE IN THIS WAY OF REGARD 'EXPENDIBLE.'  From what I can tell, this hard-line favoritism of  Lords of Land is getting less-pronounced elsewhere. Pray let us hope that the day hastens when the rental contract in Louisville is indeed in full regard of BOTH the leasee and the property 'owner.'