Collection day morning in Midtown. Heralded once again by the clatter of shopping cart wheels, arguments over territory rights, and cans and bottles strewn about makeshift recycling centers upon the front yards of residents.

The Police are powerless. Worse, the City of Sacramento’s utility code unwittingly encourages marginalization of the Homeless. By providing residents no choice in how their recyclables are reclaimed, and no alternative to a monthly fee for recycling pick up, Sacramento residents automatically subsidize the burgeoning activity of scavenging. Leaving many recycling bins nearly empty well before pick-up time, and many residents with increasing—and misplaced—animosity toward the Homeless.

It’s time to re-write this city’s utility code and the processes that it supports. And to redirect the average $1.00/week fee that residents are now charged toward social services assisting the Homeless.

Only in this way can we halt the creation of a quasi-legal business that divides the Homeless against themselves, divides residents against those who have none, and encourages violation of the very laws of our city, including those which subsidize scavenging in the first place.

True, a large percentage of the Homeless population falls through the ever-widening tears in our tattered social service safety net. But others fashion tools and contrivances, and keep regular and rigorous schedules, in pursuit of something very different than subsistence: profit outside the system. Most residents have seen ample evidence of this while going about their daily business, while others have actually been approached directly and ‘encouraged’ to form an exclusive scavenging contract between themselves and a scavenger.

Utility code reform is a chance for us to assist everyone in need. Regardless of their gender, age, and—especially—their physical ability to scavenge.

The environment suffers, too, from the current situation. In an effort to reduce scavenging and trespassing, some Midtown residents have ceased recycling entirely and now bury their recyclables in the trash. Others redeem recyclables on their own, but are forced to pay for services unused. Still others, acting primarily on fear of trespassers, hide the bins far from the street, covered in blankets or tucked into dark corners, unused.
Let us now fulfill our responsibility to those less fortunate than ourselves, and do so in a manner that does not directly undermine the laws that we all, the Homeless included, rely upon for our survival.

Let us encourage the City of Sacramento to re-write the utility codes that currently mandate fees for recycling collection, regardless of use, and let us direct those revenues toward immediate support of Homeless social services.

We must now end the perpetuation of ill-conceived and outdated processes that divide—with ever-increasing acrimony—the people against themselves.