The DAWG promotion in the June 6, 2013 Independent, and the hope expressed for a world where “every dog has a home” is kindly and compassionate in nature but seems almost cruel when we consider that there are hundreds of people living in Santa Barbara’s streets, many of whom are in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties.
So although DAWG’s aims are good ones, it is more urgent to resolve the horrendous cruelty of old and disabled people living in the street while there is, in some parts of Santa Barbara County, great opulence.
It would take approximately ten million dollars a year to house the homeless in Santa Barbara. A limit could be based on Santa Barbara’s percentage of the national population, by housing that percentage of the number of homeless in the nation. It would come to about one thousand people to be housed here. Then it would be up to other communities to do the same.
Where would the money come from? Ideally, the money would come from those in our society who have had much great financial good fortune, on a voluntary basis. For example if ten million is the amount needed annually in Santa Barbara to house our corresponding percentage of the homeless, then a voluntary annual donation of ten thousand would be needed from one thousand wealthy people in Santa Barbara County. Of course, people who can afford to can offer more, and others something less.
Is this a wild dream? Perhaps. But then, so is but then so is “a perfect world where every dog has a home.”