What does it look like when a city dies? It’s not hard to imagine. Social services such as schools, hospitals, and grocery stores close. Folks sleep under big buildings with the names of banks over their heads. People pass you on the street, wracked with the pain of withdrawal. All while luxury apartments and condos are built by wealthy private developers. Anyone who lives in Dayton, Ohio understands what it means to watch a city die.

What is more spectacular is watching city leadership completely and utterly fail to address the needs of its poorest residents: the homeless. Despite the rapid closings of public services, despite the formation of food deserts and rampant unemployment, even despite a vicious drug epidemic that makes national headlines, Dayton City Commission passed legislation on May 27th that effectively bans panhandling on 51 major area roadways. This bill targets panhandlers and the poor who are forced to rely on public assistance to live. The commission passed this legislation under the guise of addressing traffic safety concerns; however, this is not the first time they’ve done so.

Our city has a long history of anti-panhandling laws. From requiring panhandlers to obtain licenses, to banning the act altogether, it’s clear that Dayton City Commission and its big business partnerships are more concerned with putting the poorest in our community in jails than they are with getting them into homes.

At the City Commission meeting on May 27th, several community activists showed up to speak out against the proposal. Five people, including myself, asked the commission to stand opposed to the proposal; no one came to show support for it. After speaking to Commission, activists were told by Mayor Nan Whaley that many panhandlers “make more money” than folks working full time jobs, a statistic that I cannot confirm, and one that nonetheless points to a problem of folks being dramatically underpaid for their labor. Then commission unanimously passed the legislation.

Now, we didn’t show up to demand that commission ignore the issues of panhandling, homelessness, and extreme poverty. It was just the opposite. Folks came out at 8:00 AM on a Wednesday morning to demand that the commission seek responsible methods to help the most vulnerable in our community, rather than criminalize them. We put forward demands of taxing the wealthy to fund affordable housing so we can take homeless folks off the streets and put them into homes, to fight with working people in demanding a livable wage of $15 an hour, and to invest in safe injection sites to combat the growing overdose epidemic. All of these demands would be the first step toward creating a safer, more inclusive Dayton.

Affordable housing and rent control are quickly turning into hot button political topics all across the country, I think it’s time for Dayton to join that movement. In Seattle this year, for example, city council fought to tax Amazon to build for an affordable housing fund in the city. In Minneapolis, community members regularly meet together and discuss how to put affordable housing initiatives into action. In New York City, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated longtime Democrat incumbent Joe Crowley, in part due to her platform of providing affordable housing. Rent costs are crushing the working class and homeless communities, especially in Dayton. Taxing the wealthy to fund these vital services should be common sense, not a divisive or radical political message.

We can’t keep lying to ourselves. Criminalizing the act of asking people for money is more convenient for the city and its business partnership, better known as the Downtown Dayton Partnership. This legislation went through because Commission, along with DDP, are more concerned with evicting the poor from their city limits than they are with addressing the underlying problems that got us here in the first place. We can see this in the further gentrification of the downtown area. Apartment buildings, condos, and the Dayton Arcade seem to be the only thing Commission has their eye on. Displacing the poor and failing to address their needs will be the final nail in the coffin for the great city of Dayton. There is no coming back from violent gentrification and falsification of information.

Working people in Dayton need a dramatic change to the establishment line of business as usual. We are hungry for solutions to the problems that plague our city and are tired of watching these issues swept under the rug and out of sight. Poverty will not go away because of a law restricting panhandling; poverty can only be fought when the wealthy pay their fair share into the communities they profit from. We need to see folks lifted from their poverty stricken situations by enacting smart, common-sense policies which work to address the underlying problems of the capitalistic system we live in. We want to see the homeless taken off the streets and into permanent homes and good paying jobs rather than into cop cars and jails.