Accounts of people dying from typhus go back to the Middle Ages. Spread by the rats and infected fleas, it’s a disease associated with the destruction of war, with people living in ruins or forced into camps. And there’s an outbreak going on in Los Angeles in 2019.
As The Atlantic reports, the problem in California, and elsewhere in America, is largely due to homelessness—or, more accurately, how American cities handle homelessness. In many locations, homeless citizens are forced together into camps that are mainly created through neglect. It’s not that the city provides facilities at the camp location. It’s just a place where the homeless are allowed to be without being arrested, or harassed, or having everything they own taken away from them by the police. In many cities, well-intentioned attempts to provide facilities in these locations are met with resistance, or actively destroyed, on the grounds that they will only “attract more homeless” to the area.
In these centers of not-so-benign neglect, homeless Americans are left to deal with the lack of sanitary facilities, the lack of garbage collection, the lack of medical care, and often with the presence of drug abuse and violence. And disease. Huddled in the damp spaces under bridges, or out of sight down alleys, or anywhere they’re allowed to simply exist, the homeless are contending with diseases that most of the nation thinks are found only in history books, or in some remote and impoverished corner of the world.
That doesn’t just mean the literally sickening idea of typhus outbreaks in Los Angeles. It means “trench fever,” a disease suffered by soldiers in World War I, is afflicting people on the streets of Portland. It means that hepatitis A, which is spread primarily through untreated human waste, is appearing in not just Southern California, but in Ohio and Kentucky.
Americans have been justifiably anxious about the possible threat posed by unvaccinated individuals who can spread disease to those who, because of age or immune issues, can’t be vaccinated. But much less attention has been given to the way America treats its homeless population, and how that neglect is brewing a potential threat that could affect many more people.
The Atlantic reports:
The infections are not a surprise, given the lack of attention to housing and health care for the homeless and the dearth of bathrooms and places to wash hands, says Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, Washington, which has seen shigella, trench fever, and skin infections among homeless populations.
In many cities, attempts to provide facilities where the homeless can clean up and simply attend to basic hygiene are banned, blocked, or torn down. The reason is that some who live in areas near to homeless encampments worry that creating anything that would help people only makes the encampment more permanent, decreasing the value of their property or increasing crime in their neighborhoods. In turn, local officials often respond to that pressure, and as a result perpetuate a cycle that leads to ever-worsening conditions.
In too many places, both locals and officials act as if simply allowing the homeless to be miserable, neglected, and genuinely disease-ridden will encourage them to go away. But short of a much more serious effort to provide shelters, permanent housing, sanitary facilities, and basic income, that’s not going to happen. And by not addressing the issue, Americans are creating the perfect breeding ground for diseases that could easily spread to the broader population.
